Page 102 of The Keeper

Grief, guilt, and anger sucker-punched me, flooding my mind withthe memory of the last time we saw each other. The funeral home parking lot. His fist connecting with my jaw. The raw grief and rage in his eyes as he’d blamed me for not doing more to save Levi.

“Remember how much you love me,” Piper whispered as she reached up on her tiptoes to press her lips to my jaw before bailing on me to greet a customer.

Teddy approached, his expression unreadable. “Dane,” he said, his voice gruff.

“Hey.” I worked my jaw back and forth as I fought to keep my composure. “You came all the way from Colorado for a bakery opening?”

A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Heard the cinnamon rolls were to die for,” he said before playfully slugging me in the arm like he used to when we were kids. “Nah, little brother. I came for you.”

My throat tightened as much at the familiar gesture as his presence. “How’d you find out about this?”

“Your Ol’ Lady reached out to me about a week ago and invited me to the grand opening,” he explained. “Said she wanted your kids to have a relationship with our side of the family. Figured the only way that’d happen is if you and I cleared the air.”

I swallowed hard, unsure how to respond. Part of me wanted to pull him into a hug, while another wanted to deck him for showing up unannounced.

“Think we can step outside for a minute?” Teddy asked. “Might be good to talk somewhere a little more private.”

Probably better that my wife didn’t witness me getting taken down a peg by my fifty-three-year-old brother. I nodded, leading him out to one of the bistro tables set up on the sidewalk.

He settled onto one of the chairs, his joints creaking as he leaned back. “Sit,” he commanded when I started pacing. “Ain’t here for the reasons you think I am.”

I dropped into the chair across from him, my leg bouncing with nervous energy. He studied me for a long moment, the weight of two years’ worth of unspoken words hanging between us.

“‘Bout time we sat down and hashed this shit out, don’t you think?Could have done it over the phone, but you won’t take my calls… Not that I blame you with the way we left things.”

I stared down at my hands, unable to meet his gaze. “You were right to react the way you did?—”

“No, I fucking wasn’t,” he interjected, raking a hand over his weathered face with a heavy sigh. “You know why we chose Ghost for your road name?”

I shrugged, keeping my eyes fixed on the table. “Because I’m so quiet that people forget I’m in the room? I don’t fucking know.”

Teddy barked out a rough laugh. “If that were the case, we’d have called you Mouse.” His expression grew serious. “It’s ‘cause you’re just like our old man—haunted by every fucking mistake you’ve ever made.”

He reached across the small table to grip my shoulder, his hand trembling as he squeezed. “I need you to know that what happened with Levi wasn’t your fault.”

A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it, and I hastily swiped it away, finally meeting his gaze. “If I’d just said something different or stayed on the phone longer...”

“It wouldn’t have changed a damn thing,” Teddy said firmly. “Listen to me. There was nothing you could have said or done differently that would have changed the outcome. Nothing.”

I shook my head, the guilt that had been eating me alive for two years bubbling to the surface. “You don’t know that?—”

“Yes, I fucking do. You think that was the first time?” he asked, mashing his lips together to mask the quivering.

My head snapped back, shock reverberating through my entire body. “What?”

Teddy’s jaw tightened, and he took a shaky breath. “About a year before... I found him out in our barn. We kept it quiet, thinking the less people knew, the better. By that point, we’d already been to a slew of child psychologists and psychiatrists who prescribed a fucking pharmacy’s worth of meds.”

He huffed out a bitter laugh, slowly shaking his head back and forth. “Kels and I went through every fucking fertility treatment just to have Levi, but it was like something in his brain was programmed to self-destruct, no matter what we tried to do.”

All this time, I’d been carrying the burden of Levi’s death, believing I was solely responsible. But there was so much I hadn’t known, so much pain my brother had been silently shouldering.

“But at the funeral home, you said?—”

“I know what I said,” Teddy cut me off, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “I was hurting and looking for somewhere to place my anger. It was easier to blame you than to face the truth that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t save the people you love.”

He knelt in front of me, his rough hand moving to cup the back of my neck, bringing our heads together. “I’m sorry, Dane. For blaming you, for pushing you away,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I know what it did to you, and it’s why I’ve spent the last two years trying to reach out and make it right.”

The weight I’d been carrying for so long began to lift, all the grief and blame I’d shouldered falling away as I let myself be held by my big brother for the first time in years.

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