Page 27 of Unmade

Once I was done, I headed down to the basement and the gym.

It still didn’t feel natural to work out with earbuds and music, but I’d come to terms with it inside a gym. Music was the only thing that prevented me from hearing Army cadences in my brain.

I refilled my water bottle and found a playlist, and I stretched a little on my way to the rowing machine.

Another day, another mindless chase toward the unknown.

Halfway through my set on the rowing machine, two men came in to work out. I didn’t recognize them, and they didn’t talk.

I turned back to the mirrored wall in front of me and pushed harder.

It was surreal staring at your own reflection and not having a clue who that person was.

I was no longer the scrawny scaredy-cat my mom had sheltered from truths and dangers. I’d killed him. And Mom’s voice was almost gone. I’d sort of forgotten what she’d sounded like. I remembered the slight accent, just a soft drawl that had come out when she was tired. That’d been her Georgia childhood coming up for air. But the voice itself—I couldn’t recreate it in my head.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

I blew out a harsh breath and screwed my eyes shut.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

I pulled harder along the beam and felt my knees crackle a little.

What had my dad’s voice sounded like? Had it been similar to Ethan’s voice? Or Ryan’s? Actually, they sounded similar to each other, so maybe Dad had shared that same low timbre.

It’d been a while since I’d stalked Ethan’s Instagram.

To be fair, he mostly posted gym selfies and workout videos. And some updates were dedicated to his family…

One, coward.

Two, coward.

Three, coward.

I gnashed my teeth. I wasn’t a fucking coward. I was just… I didn’t see the point in reaching out to a dead man’s family anymore.

When I was finished, I wiped down the machine and brought my water bottle over to the racks of dumbbells. I grabbed two ten-kilos to take with me to the bench press and wondered if Ethan would call that weak. He ran his own fitness center and all. But I’d never wanted to build a bunch of muscle. I wanted to stay trim and fast.

I still remembered the moment I’d found him. Aunt Laura had sent me the details we’d been given from Jake’s records, and all of a sudden, the search became so simple. I’d found the whole damn Quinn family in a small town in northern Washington. Well, almost the whole family. I’d found most of Dad’s siblings on social media. Ethan, Ryan, Lias, and Elise. It’d taken memonthsto discover two more. There was a second sister whose name I still didn’t know, but I’d learned the last brother was named Darius Quinn. I only knew because he owned a restaurant, and his name was there on the website. He just very clearly avoided social media, along with the unnamed sister.

I leaned back on the bench and began lifting the dumbbells, and a blanket of heat fell on my chest.One. Two. Three… There he’d been, Ethan Quinn, on Instagram. Flashing his abs and sweating under bright spotlights.

I could see the similarities. Those were kind of undeniable—except I hadn’t been blessed in the height and body mass department. The men in the Quinn family were all ridiculously tall and built strong. But the features. The eyes, the jawline, the hair color.

The biggest surprise had probably been Lias. He was clearly the youngest brother by quite a lot, so I’d seen way more similarities between him and me. He wasn’t as big either. Unfortunately, he didn’t post frequently, so…

One thing that hadn’t surprised me was that my dad hadn’t been the only soldier. One time, Ryan’s wife had posted a photo of him and his dad—my grandfather. Some game had been on, and Ryan had worn a USMC tee and a big smirk, while his pop had held up a Go Army tee. He hadn’t actually worn it. Perhaps it didn’t go with his flannel fashion.

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