Page 62 of After All The Wreckage
My breath caught. “You want to find Demi?”
His eyes were tortured when he looked up. “If we don’t do something, she dies, Gage. Whatever she’s done… however much she’s hurt us, she’s still our mom.”
His words echoed my thoughts from the night before. Helping her didn’t mean we had to let her back into our lives—I’d be damned if I’d give her a chance to wound us more—but neither of us would be able to live with ourselves if we did nothing.
“We’ll think of something,” I finally said. He didn’t respond, and I knew he was holding back. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
We both knew it was a lie, so I pushed. “You don’t have to protect me, Monte. It isn’t your job.”
He stood up abruptly, grimacing at the pain. “It wasn’t your job to protect us either. But you did it. All you do is work yourself to the bone for Ives and me. We aren’t your kids. We aren’t your responsibility, and yet you’ve carried the burden of us without once complaining. You gave up every dream you ever had to be here, and I can’t—I won’t—be the reason you lose your freedom on top of everything else.”
I stared at my brother, grief and loss running through me along with a hefty dose of frustration. I’d been careful to hide mysorrow over the loss of the future I’d seen for myself. I tried every damn day to only show the love I felt for them. To act like the tavern was where I’d always intended to end up, but he’d seen the truth.
“First, neither you nor Ivy are a burden, so get that out of your head.” Monte crossed his arms over his body in a way that reminded me of myself so much I almost smiled. “I mean it, Monte. It’s a privilege to be here watching the two of you become the incredible people the world is lucky to have in it. I don’t know what you and Ivy will do with your abilities, but I do know, you’re going to make a difference. I believe that in here.” I pounded my chest. “Second, you’ll see as you go through life that dreams change. Sometimes when you think you’ve lost something, you’ve actually gained. What I have here, with you and Ivy and River and Audrey, I wouldn’t trade it to get back in a tank heading toward a tornado.”
The truth of my words hit me hard.
If Dad hadn’t died, if Demi hadn’t left, I would never have had the chance to know my brother and sister the way I did now. I would have loved them, but it would have been from a distance. Instead, what I had with them—the bond we shared—was a thrill chasing a storm could never have brought me.
Monte started to speak and I cut him off. “And third, it absolutelyismy job to protect you. That’s why they gave me the title of guardian. I know you went to D.C. to prevent what happened after the train derailment from happening all over again. But it won’t because we know to be careful now. You, going out on your own, all that did was stress me the hell out. It will only end up with me feeling like I failed you.”
His gaze met mine, startled. “You’ve never failed me.”
“I did. I should have taken you myself.”
“Then we both would have ended up in that basement, and who would have taken care of Ivy?”
My heart couldn’t take much more of those dark thoughts. Audrey and River were listed as my next of kin on any legal paperwork, and they would take my brother and sister if something happened to me. They were good people. Good humans. They’d do right by my family, but I didn’t want them to have to.
I wanted to be the one there when Ivy woke up with her hair in ten different directions. I wanted to be the one Monte came to when the visions made him sick. But I also wanted to be the one he turned to after his first kiss and when he got into the college of his choice and when he eventually walked down the aisle with someone at his side if that was what he chose to do.
“Or maybe we would have been home long before they tried to come after you,” I said gently. “We’ll never know. But I can’t live through it again, Monte. God… I thought… I thought I’d never see you again.”
Monte’s eyes filled with tears, and he pushed the heels of his palms into them.
“For a while there,” he said softly, “I thought I’d never see you or Ivy again either. I was worried about her… about what she might feel if something happened to me. If they hurt me worse than they did… I knew she’d feel it too.”
I scratched the back of my neck, chills racking my body at the thought.
“She knew you were scared.”
He looked down the hall and back. “They asked me so many questions about the vision, Gage. Like how I had them and if I’d had them before. What else I saw. What other abilities I had. They asked about you too. After what I saw last night with Demi there? Maybe they’re holding her like they were me.”
I sat there, stunned. Even when he’d told me about Demi being in the dream, I’d never once considered the idea that shewasn’t there of her own free will. After all, Demi was never anywhere she didn’t want to be.
“Maybe,” Monte continued, “maybe that’s why we hire Rory.”
I swallowed and fought back the bitterness to say as calmly as I could, “You’d be okay with finding Demi even if Rory ends up shooting the congressman?”
“We can make her promise not to shoot him, right? Like as part of our deal to hire her?”
The truth hit me, and I said quietly, “You think you can change things this way.”
Another careless shrug, but I’d landed on it. He was desperate to have control of the situation at least one time. To see a different ending than the one he’d been shown. To change bad into good. My heart squeezed tightly as I realized Monte and Rory wanted the same thing.
But what they wanted meant keeping Rory close instead of sending her away.
