Page 56 of Last Chance Love

“Seemed weird at the time and out of the blue, but yeah,” he said with a snort. “All I could do was stare at him, trying to figure out wherethathad come from before Max appeared and dragged him away, muttering.”

“Is it weird that after thinking about it for a bit, the idea of the two of them being a thing is kind of cute?”

“A little,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Kind of like this crabby old cat somehow getting along with the new golden retriever you just rescued. The sort of thing that would get popular online.”

“That’s…pretty accurate, actually,” I said as I sat on the edge of his bed. It amused me that it was neatly made when my own rarely was when I told myself I was just going to collapse into it anyway. Then again, just like he’d said earlier, his life had been chaos and noise growing up, and he’d always been particular about things. Maybe he found the noise comforting because it was what he knew, but on the other hand, he still craved some measure of control and order in his life.

Which brought me right back to what I had been thinking before, with Leon and his brothers. “I don’t want to push you into having the conversation or anything.”

“Oh boy,” he said with a sigh.

I took that as permission to continue. “But was it because of Ian?”

Leon took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. I mean, sort of. It’s complicated. So I guess it’s easier to say yes because of that…it came from it anyway.”

So I had been right, a ‘victory’ that had no real meaning or pleasure. For whatever reason, he had decided to pull away right after the worst disaster in his life had struck. He had made it so he was alone, and I was left completely in the dark about what was really going on.

“It was a perfect set of circumstances, wasn’t it?” I said with a shake of my head.

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t have any friends other than me, and I obviously wasn’t going to talk to your parents…ever. Ray had never tried to talk to me, though Ian did off and on…fuck I should have known.”

“Wait, he did?” Leon asked in surprise.

I gave him a small smile. “We passed messages back and forth whenever one of us thought about it and had the time. It wasn’t frequent, but enough for me to know he was around. I figured he decided to drift off like you had and let it go. I never once thought about it being anything else. And without anyone to tell me, how could I have known?”

“Yeah,” he said in a brittle voice. “Even if you were keeping up on the news, what would they say? Some lowlife kid from the shitty part of town killed by a drunk behind the wheel? Shocking news at eleven.”

I knew his bitterness wasn’t about his brother but about the world we lived in. His brother had been one of the most important people in Leon’s life, and knowing so few people would care about his death was still a hard pill to swallow. It didn’t matter that Ian had been building a good life, that he was a good kid who had grown into a good man who was in love and getting married, or that he was just as inherently valuable as someone from a higher tax bracket. No one cared about the poor and downtrodden, something Leon had always known, but it had to be worse when it was about his brother.

“He deserved better,” Leon said quietly, staring into his cup blankly.

“He did,” I said because it was the truth, even though we both knew life didn’t operate on fairness. Lord knew the number of people on this ranch who had been the product of unfair circumstances beyond their control. Not that it absolved them of their choices, but it was difficult to hold it against most of them when you learned about the homes they came from.

“I wish you’d told me,” I admitted, completely flying in the face of what I had told him earlier.

“Look,” he said, and I watched him try to bring the cup to his lips and struggle before switching to his other, less damaged arm. “I know what’s about to come of this, and you can’t say I didn’t warn you about leaving it alone.”

“Because I’m incredibly well known for leaving things alone when it comes to you,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “And you were the one who welcomed me back into the friendship circle, so you’re partly responsible.”

“I didn’t tell you because if I did, you would have dropped everything and come flying back to help me.”

I stared at him for a moment as if there was going to be something else thrown into the mix, and when he didn’t add anything, I scoffed. “Well, yeah, that’s exactly what I would have done.”

“See?”

“Leon, that was yourbrother. Who you basically raised…no, not basically,literallyraised. Of course I would do everything I could to be there for you in your time of need.”

“Just what? Drop your whole life? You were in med school, Reed. You couldn’t just ditch everything. Your life was on the fast track. No need to hit the brake because my shitty life fell apart again.”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to find grace and compassion, and realized I would have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. “And who was there for you?”

“What?”

“Who did you have?”

“I—”

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