Page 5 of Tell Me You Love Me

“Mm. Something like that.”

“So I’ll keep up with the outside. But,” I add when she glares over her shoulder. “Not for a few days till you settle in. When does she arrive?”

“This afternoon.” She washes each tomato with shaking fingers, rubbing the skin until it shines bright red. “Dinnertime.”

“I’ll get started with that tree and make sure I clear out before your new friend arrives.” Releasing the door and allowing it to swing shut, I turn on my heels and jog down the porch steps. “I’ll come back on the weekend to mow. I can’t leave it any longer than that,” I call back,knowingshe’s apt to argue. “It’ll get too long, and then you’ll have to deal with critters. Chris.” I lift my chin and wait for my twin brother to swing my way. He leans against the front of my truck, one foot on the ground and the other on the grille, while a hat not all that different from mine shades his eyes, andhis lips, too often folded into a scowl, move into flat lines. “We’re on the clock. She’s got guests coming over tonight.” I stride straight past him and reach into the bed of my truck to free the chainsaw. Then turning again, I start toward the tree at the rear of Bitsy’s property, about thirty yards from her back door. “You ready to sweat?”

His two hundred and thirty pounds catch up to mine easily. His broad frame and long legs eat up the ground much like mine do. We’re essentially carbon copies of each other, but where I typically default to a smile and smartass comeback, he’s more of a quiet observer. A thinker.

And God help you if you fuck with his schedule.

“Class is at six,” he rumbles, tugging his hat lower to shield himself from the glaring sun. “Means I gotta be done here by five-thirty so I can shower. Eliza’s training the kids at four.”

“Bitsy’s got a carer coming in to take care of her. Starting today.” I glance across and wait for his eyes, knowing so few others get to see the hazel coloring within them. The fact is, Chris prefers his own company—or mine—and once upon a time, he liked Alana Page’s, too. But that was a lifetime ago, and she left him just as easily and permanently as she left me. “She doesn’t like that she needs a carer. And she hasn’t said the words out loud.”

“About her cancer?” He drops his hands into his pockets and swallows, the bob of his Adam’s apple as obvious to me as the llamas that bound away as we approach their little grazing area.

Llamas. Plural.

As in, a whole ass herd. Because Bitsy has always been a little ridiculous.

“I heard it got into her blood.”

“Yeah.” I stop in front of the massive spruce that took a bolt of lightning a week ago. It’s a damn miracle a brush fire didn’t erupt from the sparks, considering our too-dry summer heat. “Everyone is spouting off about doctor-patient confidentiality, but small-town livin’ and all that…”

“She’s dying.”

“Well…” I set the chainsaw on the ground by my feet and study the long tree.Where do I start?“I don’t know what it all means. Hugh Greenway had cancer in his blood when he was a kid, remember? And he’s doing okay.”

“Greenways were rich, then and now, and Hugh was young and strong. Bitsy’s getting old, and you know she ain’t following the doctor’s advice. She’d rather spend her money on chicken feed than treatment.”

“You think she’s not even trying to fight it?” My stomach turns heavy, an anvil sitting where my breakfast should be. “She’s just giving up?”

He only shrugs. “She’s still got her hair. And I haven’t seen her puke once. Hugh got real sick, swollen, and bald for the better part of a year because of the treatment he had.” He drags a pair of gloves from his back pocket and slides them onto his hands. “I don’t know what she’s planning, but I don’t think we’re gonna like the outcome.”

So she’s dying… and she’s allowing it?

“Fuck’s sake.” I bend and grab the chainsaw, yanking on the pull cord and powering the machine to life. “Wanna spar later? Get some anger out on the mats?”

He scoffs, then nods before backing up and giving me space.

Yeah. We fight to work through our emotions. So fucking what?

It got me through losing Alana Page a decade ago. It’ll get me through losing Beatrice Page, too. The woman is prickly and mean, judgmental and hardly good for a man’s self-esteem. But she’s the only decent maternal figure I’ve ever known. The woman who would scowl at my existence in one breath, but pick me up off the street and put a meal in my belly on the other. She saved me and my brother from death too many times to count, and kept us out of the foster care system every time child services swung by town to check on us.

Our real parents preferred heroin, using us as target practice for their fists and feet, and had no interest in properly parenting a couple of kids they claimed ate too much and never appreciated a damn thing anyway. And though, as an adult, I can admit we probablyshouldhave been swept into the system and shipped off to a family that would treat us better, I know for a damn fact we wouldn’t have gone even if they tried.

Forcing us apart would’ve ended with the world burning down.

And separating me and Alana would’ve led to blood on my hands. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done to come back to her.

So Bitsy kept us around. Even when she didn’t like us. Even when the hatred Alana and I shared turned to curiosity. Which turned to fire. Sneaking. A passion so hot, it burned us both up and left us charred when it was all over.

Or at least, it leftmecharred.

Alana, on the other hand, seemed fine, living it up in New York, marrying a banker looking motherfucker and having a baby quicker than it took me to catch my breath.

Such is life, I suppose.

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