Slade: A Stepbrother Romance (12 page)

~
FIFTEEN ~

Iris

“This is…” Slade trailed off, looking
at the abandoned building with all the realty company signs out front. “What is
this?”

I sighed through my nose. I hadn’t
been here in a long time, and the place had really gone to shit over the past
few years. The walls were crumbling, there was graffiti everywhere—it was a
death trap. I couldn’t believe they were still trying to sell it. Better to
burn the place to the ground and start all over with something new. Something
better.

I turned to Slade and offered a wan
smile. “This is where our dad died,” I said.

His face blanched and a touch of
softness lit his eyes. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

I never talked about it. Neither did
Mom. The way it happened was so strange, and in some ways, just… surreal. We
usually just stuck with the story that he’d walked out on us—which he had. But
a couple years later, we got a call from an end-of-life care center. Dad had
cancer. It was bad. And he wanted to make amends.

Funny, people never seemed interested
in doing that unless they were literally at death’s door. My father had been a
jackass who’d wasted his life, and our time and affection, on a whole host of
sins. He was a gambler and a cheat. A liar and an adulterer. Like one might
expect, things had ended very badly between us, and when he’d finally walked
out of our lives, I think we’d all felt a sense of relief on top of the grief
and anger.

But when we got that call, I wasn’t
sure what to feel. What to think. Should we take a page out of his book and
leave him to rot? Should we once again offer up our hearts, our forgiveness, to
someone who never appreciated or deserved it?

Mom eventually made the decision for
us, and we’d piled into the car and taken a trip to see our father for the last
time. I could still remember the smell of him—that cloying scent of death that
hung off his gaunt, skeletal frame. He didn’t look like the fat bastard who
used to let us down all the time. He looked frail and broken, weak and tired,
like he was dead and just didn’t know it yet.

The whole thing sucked, and while it
left its scars on me, I was sure it had left even deeper ones on Kellan. The
center had closed down about six months later, and yet whenever we were
downtown, he’d ask if we could drop by it. Later, when he was old enough to go
himself, he’d hang around and just… think, I guess. Just stand in the same
place his father had been once before. It was really the only tangible memory
my brother had of him.

Good riddance,
as far as I was concerned. But Kellan was different, or at least, he was back
then. He had a big heart, and a lot of room in it for forgiveness. It seemed
like those were exactly the kinds of people who got mixed up in drugs to numb
the pain, and sometimes I wondered, was this where it all started? Was this
where he first got a taste?

“I’ll explain later,” I said to
Slade, quickly scaling the chain link fence surrounding the property. Slade
nodded and came after me. We both knew we had way more important things to do.

The front door to the center was,
predictably, unlocked. We both went through, Slade first—neither of us had any
idea of what to expect in here, and judging by how things had gone back at
Kellan’s drug den, we had to stay on our guard. My brother might not be the
only one here. Abandoned shitholes tended to attract drug addicts, I’d noticed.

Slade guided me around a patch of
collapsed ceiling and squinted up into the hole. Motes of asbestos fluttered
through the air as the building settled. He shook his head. “Well, if he
doesn’t kill himself, that stuff will get him just as well.” When he saw my
look, he winced. “Sorry. I just…”

“I know,” I said. For Slade, being an
asshole was pure reflex, a defense mechanism. He was just as worried as I was.
It was weird—I was starting to take comfort in him being a prick. It let me
know how he was really feeling. “Come on, the room we want is this way.”

We walked down one of the long halls
flanked on either side by doors to what once were patient rooms. My stomach
turned with each door we passed. Even though I’d only been here once, I could
still remember that trip like it was yesterday: the bright, fluorescent lights
buzzing and blinking above our heads; Mom’s pale, grim face, drawn taut around
her lips; the orderlies and nurses meandering through the halls, not a single
one of them in a rush—and why would they be, when your business is waiting for
death?—and finally, the door we’d taken to Dad’s room, where we’d seen the
waxy, jaundiced corpse trying to pass itself off as our father. Standing in
front of it now gave me a chill that bit into my bones.

Was that what was waiting on the
other side for us now? Only this time, would it be my brother’s body instead of
my father’s?

Slade pushed the door open slowly,
standing beside me with an arm across the threshold. We both peered into the
darkness, past the dust and hanging cords, the moldy ceiling tiles, the
assortment of rusted medical equipment still lying around.

My heart threatened to burst.
“Kellan!”

My baby brother was lying on the
floor on a stained mattress, curled up on his side in the fetal position. His
eyes were closed, his face was pale, and his long, dark hair was a disheveled
mess across his face. I couldn’t see him breathing. I clawed at Slade’s arm,
trying to get by.

“Kellan! Kellan, wake up!
Kellan!”

Slade pushed ahead of me, forcing me
to hang back as he rushed to Kellan’s limp, unresponsive side. He knelt,
pushing two of his fingers into Kellan’s wrist. After a moment, he did the same
to his neck and his shoulders slumped.

“Oh, God, he’s dead,” I sobbed,
kneeling at my brother’s feet. “He’s dead…”

“No,” Slade said, and I recognized
his tone as relief. “He’s not dead. Pulse is weak and thready, and I can’t get
one in his ulnar artery, but his carotid’s working fine. And he’s in the
recovery position.” He pulled away Kellan’s hair—there were flecks of foam and
vomit around his mouth. Slade said, “This is good.”

“Good?!” I was practically shrieking,
every cell inside my body burning up with the need to help my brother, to pull
him into my arms, to chase all those bad dreams and feelings away until he was
all better again. But Slade was in the way, preventing me from even touching
him. “How the hell is any of this good?”

“Because if he’d been on his back,”
Slade said in a cold, clipped tone I knew was the doctor in him speaking, “he
wouldn’t have made it this far. He would have aspirated. But by the time I get
him to a hospital…” He paused, a flicker of something like recognition
illuminating his eyes. He turned to me. “Where
is
the nearest hospital
to here, Iris?”

I was shaking, numb, and nauseous all
at the same time. “Just under a mile,” I whispered.

Slade grabbed Kellan. His muscles
bulged as he lifted my brother—my very large, sturdy, well-built brother—over
his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, his head hanging down so that his hair
drooped like Spanish moss. Although as big as he was, I could see that he’d
lost weight in the last couple of weeks. He used to be bigger. He was becoming
as strung out as the junkies that he’d been hanging around with so often
lately. “Let’s get him in the car. If it’s as close as you say, I can save
him.”

I recoiled. “We’re not going to call
9-1-1?”

“And wait fifteen minutes for an
ambulance to show up to an abandoned building on the wrong side of town, if it
even shows up at all? Kellan will be dead by then. We’ve got to take him to the
hospital ourselves. I can save him, Iris,” Slade said again, looking into my
eyes. “I swear to you, I can save your brother. But we have to go. Now.”

Everything I’d ever heard or read or
been taught told me to call 9-1-1 and wait, that Kellan shouldn’t have been
moved, that the paramedics would keep him breathing on the way to the hospital
and without their help, Kellan might not make it there. But Slade was a
doctor—and if he was to be believed, he was one of the best. In my gut, I knew
he was right. He could save Kellan. He
would.

“I’ll drive,” I said, pulling myself
to my feet and racing out to the curb.

Slade moved deceptively fast, even
with Kellan’s weight bearing down on him. I got the back door open and he let
Kellan down onto the seat, first on his ass, then on his side. Slade got into
the backseat with him to monitor his vitals while I hurried into the driver’s
seat and stepped on the gas.

“Don’t brake. Don’t stop. Not even if
a cop sees you,” Slade told me, and I obeyed. I wasn’t going to fuck around
with rules when my baby brother’s life was at stake. Not today. Not ever.

Goody two-shoes, my ass.

That less-than-a-mile ride was the
longest of my life. Slade directed me to pull into the emergency lane and “let
the ambulances go fuck themselves” so we could drag Kellan’s body straight into
the ER. I tossed my keys to the valet on the way in, and by the time I’d caught
up with Slade, he was already shouting orders.

“Got a twenty-year-old male, drug overdose,
unresponsive with shitty vitals—gonna need some help, here.” Security
approached and Slade sneered. “I’m Dr. Jarvis, I got this, okay? But somebody
needs to get me a gurney and some goddamn nurses,
stat.
”

Kellan was wheezing. His eyes
fluttered for just a moment, long enough for me to see the whites. My breath
caught in my throat. “He’s dying, Slade. His lips are blue…”

“I got this,” he said, heaving Kellan
onto a gurney as soon as one was wheeled through the doors.

I could barely see my brother for all
the people swarmed around him. Slade wasn’t even moving the gurney out of the
ER lobby—he was issuing commands right there. Oxygen. An IV line. And something
called Naloxone.

“We’re losing him,” someone said. And
that’s when the gurney moved.

They were pushing my brother past the
doors and into the hallway beyond. I tried to run after them but the security
guard stopped me, holding me back as I screamed Slade’s name over and over
again.

The last I saw of them before they
turned the corner was Slade kneeling on either side of Kellan on the gurney,
his hands pumping my brother’s chest, beating his heart for him, breathing life
into his lungs. I collapsed to my knees on the lobby floor, reaching out for
Slade and Kellan long after they’d disappeared.

Goddammit, Slade. Save
him.

~
SIXTEEN ~

Slade

“It
was a little touch and go there, at first,” the doctor explained “but I think
that your stepbrother is going to be just fine, Dr. Jarvis. It was lucky you
got him here when you did, or we might have been in a much tougher spot.
Thankfully, we were able to get him a dose of naloxone just in time.”

“Thank
you, doctor,” I said as I breathed a sigh of relief, running a hand through my
hair. Then I offered him a handshake, grateful that together, we’d managed to
save my little brother, even if he did have a long road ahead of him.

Dr.
Kane nodded, returning the gesture with a tight smile on his face. I knew that
look. I’d given it to patients’ families before. It was one that said,
it’s
not over yet, bub.
Junkies—drug addicts—didn’t exactly have sterling
reputations with hospitals. Everyone was betting on a relapse, despite their
hopes to the contrary.

“We
can send a counselor by your brother’s room after he’s feeling a little better
to talk about any rehabilitation opportunities that he’d be interested in,” Dr.
Kane said. “But I have to say, he’s lucky to have family like you to watch his
back.”

If
only I’d acted like it sooner
, I thought, watching as
the doctor turned and continued on his way to attend to other patients.

I
stood out in the hallway of the Intensive Care Unit, watching nurses and
doctors bustle by on their way to see to their very high-risk patients. Kellan
had only just been downgraded from Intensive Care to Progressive Care, where he’d
be receiving a much less rigorous form of medicine, one focused on getting him
back on his feet. But as I stood there in what would normally have been a
familiar setting for me, I felt like an outsider—a stranger in a strange land.

If
I’d never left, then none of this would have ever happened
,
I thought, rubbing my hand over my face to hide the grimace pulling at my lips.
From the moment we’d found Kellan until now, I’d never realized just how scared
I was at the thought of losing my brother—someone I’d abandoned just to get
back at my father, and at a stepmother who’d never done anything but try to
love me.

I
was an idiot.

But
now that I was back home with Iris and Kellan, maybe I could start making
things right again. I’d already resolved to stay in town, especially now that
Iris and I had officially gotten back together, but as I stood in that hallway
I vowed that I’d make helping Kellan my number one priority.

I
owed it to him. I’d put him through so much—the whole family, even. I’d already
let him waste too much of his life mourning over me when I wasn’t even truly
gone. I had responsibilities here now, and I was going to take them seriously.
I was going to make sure I was the big brother Kellan deserved, even if he was
an adult now.

I
steeled my nerves and headed down the hall toward my brother’s room, where I
knew Iris waited. I had no plans to leave my brother’s side until he was clean
and back on his feet. I didn’t care if that meant I’d camp outside his room
until visiting hours kicked in every day. From here on out, family came first.

I
stepped through the open door, closing it behind me as I turned toward Kellan’s
bed. Iris was sitting beside him, just like she’d been when I’d left, except
the look on her face was one of panic and frustration.

“You!”
I heard a familiar voice shout from the other side of the room. I turned my
head, only to find my father standing there, his eyes narrowed in the most
venomous glare I’d ever been given by anyone in my life. And I’m no stranger to
venomous glares. Beside him was my stepmother, who looked only slightly less
perturbed. But could I blame her, after what she’d heard?

“What
in the
hell
do you think you’re doing back here?” my father said, the
vein in his forehead bulging. “Don’t you think that you’ve done enough to this
family?”

“I
didn’t do any of this!” I snapped, clenching my fists. Dad got to me like no
one else did. Already, I could feel my face filling with color, the heat on the
back of my neck flaring. I tried to take a breath, tried to calm myself down
and come at my father like a rational, grown man, but he wasn’t giving me a
reprieve. He started at me, held back only by Evelyn’s grip on his arm.

“You’re
responsible for
all
of it!” he screamed at me, pointing at Kellan. My
younger brother just sat there, probably still reeling from the slurry of
medications he’d been put on to fight the effects of the overdose of opiates
he’d endured. Hopefully, it would also help to wean him off the stuff. “None of
this would have happened if you had kept it in your pants—and away from your
own sister!”

“Oh,
so we’re just throwing that around now, I see,” I said, trying to keep my voice
calm. Kellan didn’t need this shit. “And Iris is my
step
sister. She’s
not related to me. We’re not exactly blood. So don’t act like this is some big,
soap opera-style scandal. We didn’t even meet until we were adults!”

“It’s
wrong, Slade,” my father said, jowls trembling as he vehemently shook his head.
“And you know it. Which is exactly why you did what you did to her. I can’t
believe I have to explain this to my own son!”

“Gabe,”
Evelyn said, looking up at my father. Her voice was soft and soothing, but
firm, too. Lightly, she wound her fingers tighter around his wrist. “You need
to calm down. Kellan’s still recovering.”

But
Dad wasn’t letting up. He lowered his voice, but the arguing continued until
both of us were doing nothing but talking over one another. Gradually, it
stopped being about who was right and instead devolved into who could scream
the loudest and the longest. Iris had her face in her hands and Evelyn looked
like she was about to slap the both of us. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I
just couldn’t seem to keep my anger under control whenever my father was
involved.

“
Enough
!”
Iris shouted, cutting in between the two of us, practically nose to nose with
one another. My father and I were both red-faced and practically steaming with
anger. I felt her fingers entwine with mine as she forced my father back away
from me. “You need to stop—
both of you!”

“I
can’t forgive him, Iris,” my father said, waving his hand angrily between us.
“Don’t you remember what he did to you? He forced you to—”

“No!”
Iris cried, stopping him mid-sentence. “Slade
never
forced me to do
anything that I didn’t already want to do.”

“But—”
my father tried to interject, but every time, Iris cut him off.

“I
wanted
him! Don’t you understand?” she said, squeezing my hand tightly.
“I was in love with him. He was everything I ever dreamed of. And I
still
want him, Dad.”

My
father’s jaw sagged. He stared down at me and Iris’ hands. “I don’t understand
this,” he said, his voice beginning to falter.

“Slade
may have done a lot of stupid things and made a lot of
dumb
mistakes,” Iris
continued, shooting a tepid glare my way, “but he
never
forced me to
have sex with him. I was an adult when we got together, an adult who was more
than willing to do the things we did. Maybe it ended badly, but that doesn’t
make it assault. It just makes Slade prone to being an asshole, which I’m
beginning to see runs in the family.

“So
next time you feel like telling anyone that Slade is a rapist—like you told
Kellan—you’d better think twice.
You
are just as responsible for what
happened with Kellan as Slade is, and it’s time you started owning up to it.”

My
father stared at her, mouth moving, but no sounds emerging from his throat. I
could practically see the gears turning in his head as he looked from her to
Evelyn, who’d gone to Kellan’s bedside and was holding his hand. She gave him
no quarter, only stroking Kellan’s hair and whispering softly to him as the
rest of us raged on. Slowly, the color in my father’s face began to die away,
leaving the faintest touch of pink where there had been a deep, shiny beet-red
moments before. I knew that look—the way his gaze softened. He’d just realized
what was actually important here. He knew Iris was right.

“I
was wrong for what I did,” I told him, unable to stand the thick, stifling silence
that hung in the air. “I was angry that you’d found someone—someone to take Mom’s
place.” I shifted uncomfortably as I stole a glance at Evelyn, who regarded me
with a wary gaze. “It all felt like it was happening too fast, and I didn’t
stop to think about how lost you must have felt without someone there the way Mom
always was. I wasn’t being fair to you, and I left because in the end, I wanted
to hurt you more than anyone else.”

My
father straightened, like he was physically taken aback by my confession. That
wasn’t so surprising. I’d spent the past several years acting like a spoiled
child. I don’t think he imagined this day would ever come.

“It…
means a lot,” he said slowly, blowing a gust of air through his nose, “to hear
you say that.” I knew he didn’t like having to lay down his pride in order to
make things right. Iris had a point—maybe this kind of hubris did run in our
family. “And I might not be happy with this,” he added, indicating Iris and me,
“but maybe I can learn to accept it… in time.”

It’s
something, I thought, squeezing Iris’ hand. Warmth and comforted settled
through me as she squeezed back.

“But
I’m warning you, Slade,” my father continued, making my guts coil with
apprehension again, “this doesn’t erase the past. What you did to our
family—how you almost ripped your stepmother and I apart—I haven’t forgotten
that. Perhaps you aren’t deserving of the kind of hell I’ve spent years wanting
to rain down on you, but I’m not ready to forgive and forget just yet. This is
a process—one you can only complete if you don’t run away again. If you don’t
screw up again.”

“I’m
not going anywhere,” I said, trying to swallow the defensive anger rising in my
gorge. Dad was right, as much as I hated to admit it. I couldn’t just expect
everything to end up all roses and sunshine now, just because I’d come back.
Showing up was important, yeah, but I had a lot of bad behavior to make up for
as well. I have to prove I can change. Not just to them, but myself as well.

Still,
I wished he’d let me have this moment instead of rubbing it in my face. But I
guess I had a lot to make up for than he was willing to completely ignore right
now. Still, his reaction is better than anything I had expected.

“I
will admit, though,” my father went on, “that Iris is right. The two of you
were adults, and not really related… I was angrier at you for how I found out
about it more than I was about what had happened, but by that time, you were
gone, and I… I didn’t know how to cope.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I
suppose that in the end, I’m happy you’re back. Tentatively happy, anyway.”

I
gave my father a faint smile and held out a hand to shake his. I knew that the
waters between us were still rough, and my situation with Iris would be awkward
for a long while, but we would have all the time in the world to work on it. I
wasn’t going anywhere.

My
father paused a moment, as if considering whether to bridge the gap between us
physically, as if wondering whether shaking my hand might mean he forgave me
more than he really has yet. But then he finally gave a curt nod and reached
out to accept my grip. No hug followed, but I wasn’t expecting one. Not yet.
Miles to go before I sleep.

 “Kellan?”
I heard my stepmother say, her tone giddy, urgent. “Did you say something,
honey?”

We
all turned to look at him as he lay in bed, his eyes fluttering open and
scanning the room. Iris’ eyes lit up like the Fourth of July and she bit her
lip as he shifting slightly and cleared his throat. He looked like hell warmed
over, but as he opened his eyes fully, he managed to reply with a faint nod.

“Yeah,”
he said. His voice was still hoarse, but now there was a grin that accompanied
it, however feeble it was. “Stop yelling. This is a hospital, for crying out
loud. People are trying to rest.”

I
shook my head as my stepmother smiled and Iris teared up. My father gave a
stiff nod in Kellan’s direction and I approached his bedside, forcing a smile
of my own.