Page 31 of Love Thy Brother
I waited for him to stomp away.
He took a seat on the coffee table instead. “Nash lamped you one?”
“You didn’t see it happen?”
“I saw him come for you. Figured I didn’t give a fuck and went home.”
“Fair enough.”
“Is it? If he punched you because of what he walked up on, I’d say it was pretty much my fault.”
“Nah, you did me a favour. Keeping stuff from him gives me nightmares.”
“Why do it then? He wouldn’t have told Cam.”
“But then he’d have guilt nightmares instead of me, and that shit ain’t right.”
River leaned forward.
Changed his mind and retreated. “I don’t care.”
“Okay.”
He rose and went back to work.
I vacillated between him and the phone I’d dumped on the table. A migraine was yesterday’s problem, but I still felt kinda bamboozled.
In need of a distraction, I hauled myself up and snuck into River’s tiny office space. There was shit everywhere—paperwork, receipts, invoices. Customer records he kept by hand instead of using the cracked and dusty laptop buried beneath everything.
I shuffled through some of it, paying attention to context, not numbers. River’s business wasn’t mine. I made a rudimentary inbox tray and filed bills that had been settled, finding a rhythm. Organising things wasmytherapy. I could do it all day.
So I did. And River let me, most likely because it saved him from having to talk to me.
Twelve hours later, I was so engrossed in colour coding his tax returns that I almost missed him packing up for the day.
Dammit.
I caught him at the door, stepping in front of him before I gave myself a chance to make better choices. “Where are you going?”
“None of your fucking business. Move.”
“No.”
“Move.”
I wasn’t one for repeating myself. I rooted my feet to the floor and filled the space between him and the back door. “Are you going home?”
“Fuckoff.” River rapped his knuckles on his skull too hard for me to be comfortable with. “Isn’t it enough that I let you haunt me here all day?”
“Hey, if I’m haunting you, I’m a friendly ghost. Ask Alexei.”
River wasn’t as familiar with the quirky Russian his brother adored. The joke went over his head and his frustration remained.
Too bad for him that I could live with that a thousand times more than him vanishing into the night.
He’s not going home. He never did unless he was dropping with exhaustion or Oscar was there.
I hate that guy.
