Destiny (14 page)

Ethan remained coiled and silent behind Florence, listening and taking in every word.

Florence drew a deep breath and nodded. “We were told he refused to come. And though the state could have forced him, given the… circumstances… it was probably best that they didn’t press the issue.”

“Circumstances?” he asked sarcastically. “Is that the best you can do?”

“It’s not my story to tell,” Florence insisted. Eyes wide and moist, she spread her hands out in front of her, imploring him to understand. “But we wanted him too. Even after we found out why he didn’t… wouldn’t… come.”

Nash could barely think or feel. His heart pounded so hard in his chest, unspeakable anger and frustration at still not knowing everything eating away at him.

The idea that Dare had the answers… Nash couldn’t fathom it.

He couldn’t.

“And how do you justify lying to me all these years?” Nash asked in a clipped tone.

“You have to remember where you were emotionally and what you were going through at the time. You’d just lost both parents in the blink of an eye. You’d been abandoned by your oldest brother.” Her apologetic gaze shot to Ethan. “You were reeling and angry. You had one thing, one person you trusted, and that was Dare.”

Florence rose. She walked to the small desk in the corner, pulled a tissue from a hidden box, and blotted her eyes.

Nash knew he ought to stop pushing and let her take her time, but he couldn’t. He’d waited too long for answers.

Florence returned to her seat and met his gaze, crumpled tissue still in her hand. “Dare was young, but he had his reasons for not wanting to live with us. Here.” She swept her hand around the room. “Richard and the social workers insisted he’d be better off if we didn’t press the issue.”

“And I still don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me the truth.”

She shook her head. “Given how much you’d been through, if we’d told you that your brother wouldn’t come live with you, we knew you’d be hurt. Furious enough to explode or turn your back on him in anger.
And we didn’t want you to lose the only family member you had left.
”

Her words knocked some of his righteous anger down a peg. Barely.

A glance at Ethan told Nash he wasn’t taking this story any better than Nash. Firsthand knowledge of the pain and destruction he’d left in his wake must be killing him, Nash thought, somehow able to see his brother’s pain for the first time.

“I need to talk to Dare,” Nash said.

Florence, the woman he’d called
Mom
when he was in this house, and referred to as
adoptive mother
when he was with Dare, held out a hand. He’d spent his entire life feeling torn in two, split by the life before his parents’ deaths and the one after. Ridden with guilt that he’d been lucky enough to live here while Dare had been sent to the poverty-stricken Garcia family. Ripped apart by the gratitude he felt toward the Rossmans and his hatred for them for not taking his brother too.

And that’s when he realized—they’d been willing to shoulder the lie, the burden,
his
anger, just so Nash could have a relationship with his only remaining sibling at the time.

Maybe they’d been misguided. They sure as hell should have told him and allowed him to make his own choices, but they’d acted in what they thought was his best interest.

They were his second set of parents and they loved him. It would take him a long time to forgive, but his anger wasn’t clouding his emotions.

He reached out and placed his hand inside hers to tell her he understood what she’d done, at least a little. When he was finished with his adoptive mother, he headed out.

His next stop would be Dare. The last person he’d expected to have answers. The person Nash thought he’d have to break this news to. Because the brother he thought he knew best was now the brother he didn’t know at all.

“If you keep pacing, I’m going to have to replace the
carpet,” Faith Harrington Barron said to Kelly, who’d shown up on her doorstep and hadn’t stopped pacing since.

Kelly had hoped that Faith had heard from Ethan, but she hadn’t. Knowing how many emotional land mines lay ahead of the Barron brothers, Faith didn’t expect him to call soon. Or at all. He might just come home after he’d tried to help Nash, however long that might take.

“Sorry.” Kelly stopped in the middle of the large family room, Faith’s favorite room in the house, which she herself had decorated.

“Relax. I’m joking,” Faith told the uptight other woman. “Ethan and Nash have a complicated family history. Now Nash has to deal with his adoptive mother and then tell Dare. It’s not going to work itself out in five minutes.”

With a prolonged sigh, Kelly flopped onto the sofa. “Something tells me it may not work itself out at all.”

Faith narrowed her gaze. That was a negative attitude neither of them should entertain. “What makes you say that?”

“Other than Nash’s intractable views on lying and betrayal?” Kelly jumped up and started pacing again.

She wore a matching set of sweatpants and jacket and she kept rubbing her hands over the velour on the arms. Soon she’d wear out that fabric too. Faith knew how important this revelation was to Nash. She also knew how hard it was for Ethan to track his brother down and insist on being there to support him—whether wanted or not. But she wasn’t wearing a hole in the carpet or her clothing.

And she was married to one of the men involved. “Umm, Kelly?” Faith asked.

“Yes?”

“Why do I have a feeling there’s more going on in your head than I know about?”

Kelly met her gaze. “Am I that obvious?” She groaned. “Who am I kidding? Of course I am.”

“Let’s start with this. You’re in love with Nash, aren’t you?”

A shocked look passed over Kelly’s face. Then to Faith’s horror, Kelly burst into tears.

Faith blinked, rose, and wrapped her arm around her, an unusual act, since Faith wasn’t an overly demonstrative person with most other people. Except with Ethan. Then she couldn’t keep her hands off.

“Tell me everything,” Faith said.

Kelly obliged, revealing her entire past and future fears to Faith, who found herself grateful she was a happily married woman with all the uncertainty of the beginning of a relationship behind her.

She wished she could reassure Kelly that Nash would understand why she hadn’t told him about her past, or that he’d get over whatever was being revealed this afternoon. But she couldn’t. Faith barely understood Nash Barron. In her humble opinion, she’d landed the more simple of those two Barron brothers, and considering Ethan’s own complexity, that was saying a lot.

Kelly finally pulled herself together. “Sorry. I’ve been holding in a lot of things. You didn’t need me to fall apart on you.”

Faith shook her head. “What do you think family is for?” Ironically, it was Ethan who had taught her the value of that.

Kelly looked up through damp lashes. “I have no idea.”

“Considering the whole reason we met at all was because you did what was best for Tess, I beg to differ.”

Kelly smiled. “Thanks for that. As far as Nash is concerned, I know him. No matter how good or bad today ends up, he won’t get over it quickly. And I can’t choose now to unburden myself. It would be selfish. He needs a clear head to focus on his brothers. That’s more important than what I want or need.”

It didn’t escape Faith’s notice that Kelly hadn’t answered her question about being in love with Nash. Not overtly, anyway. But any woman who cared so much that she’d put what she thought was best for a man before her own concerns was definitely in love.

Even if she hadn’t yet admitted it to herself.

Nash stormed out and headed for his car, Ethan following behind him. He expected his brother to climb into his expensive Jag and follow him to find Dare, but instead Ethan came up beside the passenger’s side of Nash’s car.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Coming with you.”

Nash raised an eyebrow. Unwilling to waste time arguing, Nash shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Soon they were driving toward Nash’s condo. “He’d better be home.”

“She loves you,” Ethan said into the silence.

Nash guessed it was too much to hope they’d make the trip in silence. “Yeah.”

“You got lucky.”

“And I’ve spent the last ten years feeling guilty that I did while Dare went to poverty row.” Had his brother really made that choice? And if so
why
?

“Maybe he had his reasons,” Ethan said of Dare. “Just like I had mine.”

Nash gripped his fingers tighter around the steering wheel. “What were yours?” he found himself asking.

If today was a day of revelations, he might as well hear them all.

Ethan pushed the car seat back, stretching out as he spoke, his voice low and raw. “I hated myself and couldn’t see beyond it. I’d been responsible for our parents being on the road that night, for them being killed by a drunk driver. I was eighteen and fucked up and I couldn’t see past my own pain. I ran away like a coward.”

Nash swallowed over the lump in his throat. He’d hated his older brother for as long as he could remember, but not once had he considered that Ethan had hated himself too. He remembered Ethan saying something similar during their first confrontation, after they’d found out about Tess, but Nash couldn’t hear anything over the angry roar in his ears. The same buzz he’d heard every time he thought about Ethan over the years.

He listened now, though, clenching the wheel, torn between still-righteous anger at his sibling and understanding that at eighteen, Ethan hadn’t been capable of making the right decisions.

“I should’ve manned up and stayed.”

For the first time, Nash wanted to say more than his standard
You damn well should have.
“You can’t change the past.” It was all he could manage at the moment.

“No. But I wish I could. And whatever Dare’s reasons, maybe he wishes the same thing.”

Nash barely took in downtown Serendipity as he drove past, his thoughts on Dare and the betrayal that sat like lead in his stomach.

“Even if that’s true, he’s kept the truth from me for years. At least you weren’t here facing me day in and day out. He knows how hard it was for me to accept all that the Rossmans offered”—including and most especially their love—“and all because I thought they deliberately withheld the same from him.”

Ethan remained silent. Obviously even he couldn’t come up with a response to that one.

“I ran away twice,” Nash said, slowing the car down the closer they came to his condo. There were things he needed to say before he dealt with Dare.

Ethan obviously understood because he waited, his dark gaze on him.

“I couldn’t accept so much when he had so little. I wanted to go with him to the Garcias’. To look out for him.”

“Like I should’ve been looking out for both of you,” Ethan said.

This time, Nash didn’t know what to say to
that
. “When the cops brought me back to the Rossmans that last time, I knew I had to come up with a better alternative. I snuck him clothes and food. I thought I was so smart, getting away with it all.”

“You think the Rossmans knew all along?” Ethan asked.

He hadn’t, but now… “Yeah. They couldn’t possibly believe I’d left my jeans in my gym locker or that I didn’t know what happened. Not to mention the food that I took from the kitchen.” Nash felt like an idiot,

“You did right by Dare,” Ethan told him.

Nash laughed aloud. “So right I even asked Richard Kane to keep an eye on Dare and on the Garcia house. He looked me in the eye and promised. I
trusted
him and he was lying to me too.”

He’d finally reached the condo. Dare’s car was parked in the extra spot outside.

“Ready?” Ethan asked.

Nash wished he could say yes, that he was prepared. But he wasn’t. All he wanted was for his brother to tell him the paperwork was wrong, that Florence was making up stories, and Dare, the brother he’d devoted his life to protecting, hadn’t lied and betrayed him.

Since that wasn’t about to happen, he figured yeah, he was ready, because really how much worse could things get? Dare would confirm Florence’s story, come up with an explanation Nash couldn’t begin to fathom or understand, but the end result would still be the same.

Nash didn’t know who his younger brother was. He never had. And that meant the world as he’d known it was gone forever.

Thirteen

Nash used his key and let himself inside his town
house. Ethan, his shadow for the last hour, stuck close behind him. He stepped into his own home, on edge.

“Dare!” Nash shouted.

“In here.”

Nash headed toward the sound of his brother’s voice and strode into the den only to find Dare waiting for him, suitcase packed. He was still dressed in his uniform, obviously having just gotten off duty.

“Faith called,” Dare said, before Nash could ask how he’d been prepared.

Nash glanced over his shoulder and glared at Ethan, who merely shrugged. Nash turned his attention back to his younger brother.

“So, you aren’t going to tell me it’s all one big mistake?” he asked, pointing to the packed bag, a sure-fire indicator Dare didn’t think he’d be welcome here much longer.

Unlike his brother, Nash hadn’t thought things through to its conclusion, and that Dare would move out over an argument turned Nash’s stomach. For so long it had been Nash and Dare against the world, and he stared at his sibling now, willing him to make today’s revelations go away.

Instead, Dare shook his head. “I wish I could.” With his eyes so serious, Nash caught a glimpse of their mother. He hadn’t thought of her in a while, rarely let himself revisit the years they’d been a family.

Fuck,
Nash thought. Hating the jumble of emotions inside him, Nash got into Dare’s face.
“Why?”

Nobody in the room needed him to elaborate.

Dare jerked away and headed for the window, staring out, his back to Nash and Ethan. He was silent so long, Nash wondered if he’d ever answer.

“I couldn’t live with them,” Dare said at last. “I couldn’t look the Rossmans in the eye day in and day out, knowing what I’d done.” He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his pants and turned around. “Or should I say what I didn’t do.”

Nash set his jaw. He was finished with people talking in circles, not getting to the point. “Explain,” he gritted out.

“The day the Rossmans’ kid died at that party? I cut school. I was
there
.”

Nash did the math in his head. Stuart Rossman died about eight months before his own parents. The Rossmans were still grieving when they’d taken Nash in, having read about his situation in the paper and heard about him from Richard.

“You were all of what—fifteen?” Ethan asked, shock in his voice. “What the hell were you doing at an upperclassman party?”

“Following in the steps of my big brother,” Dare shot back. He cocked his head to the side, meeting Ethan’s stunned expression. “Cutting class, hanging out with older kids, and starting to drink. Because you did it. And because it was cool.”

“I had no idea,” Ethan muttered. Shoulders down, Ethan lowered himself into Nash’s favorite leather club chair.

“Me neither,” Nash agreed.

Dare shrugged. “It’s not like you signed on to be my parents. And at that point Mom and Dad weren’t paying all that much attention to me either.” He clenched and unclenched his fists, his tension obvious.

“What happened?” Ethan asked, sounding calmer while Nash’s stomach still cramped badly.

Dare propped a shoulder against the wall. At this point, Nash figured he needed the support.

“The party was on the rich side of town. Everyone was out on the back porch of Brian McKnight’s house. His parents were away on vacation. Somehow the party ended up an ugly mix of haves and have-nots. Public and private school. Add alcohol and you know the rest. There was a fight. McKnight threw the first punch at Stuart Rossman.”

“Where was I that day?” Ethan asked.

“You went to school.” Dare laughed, the irony in that one statement clear. “You had a test, then got out early, and took some girl over to the lake to make out. I remember because if you were going, no way would I have had the guts to show up.”

Dare shook his head at the memory and Nash supposed there wasn’t anything about that day his brother had forgotten. Silence descended on them, neither of the brothers speaking for a long while, each lost in their own thoughts.

“Might as well finish the story,” Ethan said finally.

Dare cleared his throat. “Stuart was drunk enough that one hit took him down and his head cracked against the patio.” Dare winced as if hearing the sound. “Blood was everywhere,” he said, his eyes dark and unfocused.

Nausea filled Nash and he wondered how a fifteen-year-old had borne the burden of what he’d seen.

Back then, Nash had been a typical teenager, consumed with his own problems, not his younger brother’s. He would’ve barely noticed if Dare’s behavior changed. He hadn’t been anyone’s keeper. Not until his parents’ deaths and Ethan’s disappearance, when Nash stepped up, determined to be the man his older brother couldn’t or wouldn’t be.

“Everyone in the house panicked,” Dare continued. “Either you were friends of McKnight’s and stayed to clean up and get rid of the alcohol and evidence or you were from downtown and ran.”

“Nobody called the cops,” Ethan said. It was a statement, not a question.

Dare shook his head. “The newspaper said a bunch of his
friends
tossed him into their car and dumped him outside the hospital before speeding off.”

“Some friends,” Nash muttered.

“And nobody knew you were there? No one reported your name to the cops?” Ethan spoke again.

“It was one of those ‘someone heard there’s a party, so let’s crash’ situations. Nobody knew anyone’s name. The private school kids came from neighboring towns. We didn’t know them and they didn’t know us.”

Ethan leaned back in his seat, eyeing his sibling. “You ran, came home, and never talked about it again?”

He continued to lead the conversation, being the adult, the leader of the family at last.

“Pretty much.”

Dare glanced down, his shame so obvious, Nash wondered how he’d missed it for years.

“I buried it deep. I told myself I was going to be the happy kid nobody could ever tie to the tragedy.”

The lighter brother, Nash had always thought. What a crock, he realized now. But Dare’s reasons made sense. Dare’s coping mechanism, pretending to be the happiest brother, had been a bizarre, opposite reaction to a dark, ugly situation.

And nobody had realized.

Nobody had noticed.

“And then our parents died and the Rossmans wanted to take us in.” The sound of his own voice caught Nash by surprise.

Dare let out a long, harsh breath. “I couldn’t go. I couldn’t live with them knowing that I hadn’t done anything to help Stuart. But I thought that once they knew what had happened, they wouldn’t want me anyway. So I told Richard Kane the truth and he told them.” He blinked hard. “And damned if they didn’t offer to take me anyway,” he said, his amazement still obvious after all this time.

Nash already knew how generous Florence and Samuel were. He was now just understanding how big their hearts were.

But one question still remained. Haunted him. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Nash asked Dare.

Because of everything he’d learned today, that reality wounded him most. It was, he thought, the thing he might never get past. That his baby brother hadn’t trusted him and had kept him in the dark for years.

Regret flashed across Dare’s face along with something deeper and much darker. “That day changed me. I was only fifteen but I felt ages older.”

Suddenly Nash remembered how sometimes he’d catch that same dark look on his brother’s face and wonder… Only to look again, but all traces would be gone, replaced by Dare’s normal, easygoing manner.

And now he understood what he’d been seeing, if only for a split second.

“Look, I knew that telling you would screw up any chance you had with a decent family, a good life. As it was, you ran away from that house twice. If you knew what I’d been through, there’s no way you would have stayed.”

“So you decided to hide the truth. Just like Florence and Samuel decided to hide the truth.” His voice rose. “Everyone thought they knew what was best for me, but nobody once thought to ask me what I thought. What I wanted.”

Anger, the same anger fueling him all day, came raging back, full force, no longer dulled by the pain Dare had experienced but made sharper by his own sense of helplessness over having his choices taken away from him.

“Everyone did what they thought was right. I did what I thought was right,” Dare insisted.

“You had no right.” Nash poked his brother in the chest hard.

Ethan rose and placed himself between them. “We all did what we felt was best at the time.”

“This is rich. News flash! You all did what was best for
yourselves.
Goddamn selfish bastards,” he shouted at them. Blood rushed in his ears, his heartbeat pounded harder in his chest. “Get the hell out. Both of you.” Nash pointed to the front door.

Ethan and Dare shared a glance.

Then they nodded and walked out.

Kelly headed home and waited, hoping to hear from
Nash. Morning turned to early afternoon and then to evening without a word. From Ethan, Kelly already knew the highlights of the day and she understood Nash probably needed time alone to deal with all he’d learned.

By eight that night, she gave in and dialed his number, but her call went straight to voice mail. Unable to stand the waiting and worrying, she drove over to his house. His car was in the driveway.

She rang the bell and knocked, but he didn’t answer, so she turned the doorknob.

Unlocked.

Drawing a deep breath, she let herself inside. And found Nash in the den. He was wearing unbuttoned jeans and a wrinkled shirt, and he lounged in a chair, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the table beside him, a full glass in his hand.

“Is it too much to hope that bottle was half empty before you got started?” Kelly asked.

He turned, startled. His glassy eyes widened in surprise as he looked at her. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” she asked, striding up to him and taking the bottle away.

He treated her to a grin. “Worried about me?” he asked.

“Should I be?”

“No.” He rose from his seat and stood, steadier than she would have thought he’d be. “I can take care of myself.”

She propped her hands on her hips. “I never said you couldn’t.”

“Nobody else thinks I can.” He stared into the amber-colored liquid in his glass.

She understood the sentiment behind his words. She even got why he’d turned to alcohol. But his pity party was over. Kelly snatched the glass out of his hands before he could indulge further and walked out of the room.

“Hey! Where are you going with that?” he called out.

“To make you some coffee.” At least she hoped he had coffee here because he obviously needed it. She placed the bottle and the glass into the sink.

Before she could turn, Nash surrounded her from behind. He bracketed his body against hers and wrapped his arms around her waist. He was big and overpowering and so male that heat enveloped her. Arousal rushed through her, thrumming in her veins. The erection pressing insistently against her back told her he wanted her too.

But the hint of alcohol on his breath reminded her that he was in pain. He needed more than sex to make him feel better, and she needed to tell him as much.

Before she could speak, he buried his face between her neck and shoulders, his warm mouth nibbling at her sensitive skin until she shivered.

“Nash,” she said, trying to remain the rational one.

“Mmm.” He nipped at her shoulder and her nipples peaked beneath her shirt.

“You need to talk about what happened.”

He let out a low growl of disagreement. “What I need is not to think.”

Without warning, he spun her around, her back to the counter, his hips aligned with hers, and his hard length pulsing against his jeans, pressing into her stomach. Delicious waves rushed over her and she swallowed hard.

She braced her hands on his shoulders, intending to push him away. Insist that they talk.

“You’re not going to deny me the chance to feel better, are you?” he asked gruffly, only partially teasing, she knew.

She looked into his wounded eyes and at that moment, she knew. Faith had been right. Kelly loved Nash.

She loved him.

Her throat filled and she fought back a tidal wave of emotion. “No, I’m not going to deny you,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and sealing her lips against his.

With a groan, he thrust his fingers into her hair and kissed her like he was starving and couldn’t get enough. Like he needed her for far more reasons than to just feel better. And because she loved him, really loved him, she gave him everything he needed. Of course what he needed was exactly what she wanted too.

Next thing she knew, he broke the kiss. “Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered.

She jumped up and he lifted her so she could lock her legs around his waist. Then he headed for the dark bedroom. He deposited her on the mattress and stared down at her, his gaze consuming her.

“The clothes have to go,” he said.

Kelly agreed. She lifted her shirt up and over her head, conscious that she’d changed into sweats and a T-shirt earlier. No bra.

His eyes darkened to a stormy haze and every nerve in her body tightened with need.

Next she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her sweats and pulled them down, making sure to take her panties along with them.

Finally she lay naked, legs dangling off the bed, her arms over her head. “Happy now?” she asked.

A muscle worked in his jaw. “Getting there,” he said, as he stripped off his shirt followed by the rest of his clothes. “Are
you
happy now?” he asked.

Unable to take her eyes off him, naked and erect, all she could manage was a nod.

“You told me earlier I was going to need you.” Nash placed his hands on her legs. “You were right.”

Palms hot, he branded her with his touch and liquid heat trickled between her thighs. It was all she could do not to twist and moan and beg him to stop talking, to fill her and never stop. But his needs came first tonight and she bit down on the inside of her cheek, determined to lie silently and let him take as long as he wanted. Even if her body was coiled tight with need.