Twin Ties 1: My Brother's Lover (11 page)

Alek was half-asleep himself when Luka whispered to him, “How about we barter? Detailed information for sexual favors?”

“No!”

Luka huffed, and gave up. He was clearly not winning that battle.

Fifteen minutes later at Mike’s Garage, a delivery van pulled up. The table in the garage’s back room was laid out with the free food and coffee, which the boss signed for. No one had any idea who sent it, except for Evan who couldn’t stop smiling no matter how hard he tried, but Evan wasn’t saying a word. All day long he smiled, sometimes chuckling softly to himself, even when Jason accidentally spilled engine grease on Evan’s boots. All in all, it was a very good day; one of Evan’s best, actually, just from knowing someone cared and was thinking about him.

But all of that changed when Brennan appeared, seething, crying, and furious. Visibly enraged, he stormed into the garage, searching out Evan and shoving him violently backward when he found him.

“
How could you
?! How could you do that, you
selfish
fucking asshole?! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Evan tried to grab him, and talk him down. “Bren. Brennan, listen to me. Let’s go outside, okay? We can talk about this—”

A sharp, precise left hook connected with Evan’s jaw. Pain flared up, hot and blinding, through Evan’s skull as he almost toppled over. Some of the guys came to his aid, but he waved them off.

“It’s fine. He’s my brother. And I had it coming.” He took Brennan’s arm as Brennan shrunk in on himself, the anger draining away, replaced quickly by heartache. “C’mon. I’m due for a break anyway. Let’s take a little walk.”

One hour earlier

Brennan found Jimmy’s place easily, shortly after lunch. Jimmy was in his mid-thirties from the looks of him, with dark, tousled, short hair and twinkling green eyes. He was an inch or two shorter than Brennan and just as lean. His smile was warm and welcoming, and he ushered Brennan inside, seeming very glad to meet him just as Evan promised. At first they talked about Brennan, his life growing up with Maggie in Louisiana and his journey up to Pennsylvania once she’d succumbed to a particularly malicious, terminal case of breast cancer. Jimmy assured Brennan he would always be there to talk if Brennan was so inclined, explaining how he used to be a preacher until he decided he could do more good working in social services with people truly in need.

Purged of his somewhat sad story and feeling lighter for having told it, Brennan told Jimmy what Evan had said to him, relaying the cryptic message.

Jimmy hummed, rolling the news over in his head. His easy, pleasant smile faded, his expression becoming troubled. Through the window beside where they sat, a flock of brown speckled birds swooped and dove in the field, searching for something unknowable in the tall grass.

“He should have told you himself,” Jimmy muttered. “It’s only right. But maybe it’s too much for him. Laying it all out plainly is something he’s never been able to do. Hey, at least he wanted you to know the truth. It’s something.”

“I don’t understand,” Brennan confessed, totally lost.

Flattening a hand on the tabletop, Jimmy held Brennan’s gaze and said, “I know you’re in the process of getting to know Evan right now, but I don’t think he’s going to make a whole lot of sense to you until you realize where he’s coming from. I don’t even understand him sometimes, though the revelation of your existence certainly cleared up a lot.”

With a sigh, Jimmy confided, “My theory—which could be total crap, by the way—is that Evan, in his heart, always knew you were out there. He knew on a soul-deep level that he was missing you, his other half, and his mother. He was... incomplete... and the saddest kid I’ve ever met. He was picked on in school, teased for being quiet and awkward, and because of things like his glasses, his appearance. Then, as he got older, he was teased for being gay. There was never any proof of him being gay, of course, it was just kids being kids, labeling someone who maybe looked too long at other guys and wasn’t as into talking about girls as much as the other boys were.

“Evan came home with black eyes and bruises and a bloody mouth all the time. Charlie tried to teach him self-defense, but being able to fight back didn’t really affect the source of the problem.”

Jimmy bowed his head, bracing it on a hand that covered his eyes.

“What?” Brennan murmured.

“This is really hard to say,” Jimmy admitted. “Makes me understand why Evan wanted me to tell you for him. “He seemed to be having an easier time of it. There weren’t any warning signs. That’s the scariest part. Charlie felt confident enough to go on a long cross-country freight run, leaving Evan alone for a few days during spring break. He was only fourteen. I went out for a walk to clear my head and to pray. I found him, lying in the grass with pill bottles—empty ones—scattered around on the ground and a bottle of cheap, strong gin right by his hand. He was... gray... and I called 9-1-1. I tried to carry him back here to my place to wake him up.”

Jaw clenched, Jimmy glanced away.

Brennan stared at him, not really breathing, his heart beating at a frantic pace, everything in him focused on what Jimmy was saying, the words themselves not really processing yet. When Jimmy started talking again it was with the saddest, most pained vestige of a smile Brennan had ever seen. Jimmy’s voice wavered as he said, “Evan wasn’t breathing when I set him down on the ground outside, right over there by the door. He was gone.

“He’d ground up the pills into a powder, they told me, and mixed it with the liquor. It entered his system fast and he went into shock. Then his heart stopped.”

Brennan hunched forward, trembling slightly, his forehead resting against his folded hands. Everything else ceased to exist but Jimmy’s voice and flashes of images provided by Brennan’s imagination. That familiar sense of loss, of losing something or someone without being able to stop it or hold them there was so intense, it jarred him to the core.

“I did CPR on him until the paramedics got here. They’d been close by at the time. It was lucky. One more minute and he wouldn’t have come back. They shocked his heart. He started to throw up once his heart was beating again and at the same time tried to suck in some air. He almost suffocated on his own vomit.”

Jimmy shook his head as if to clear it. “He came back though, that’s all that matters. The coma lasted about a month. When he finally woke up from it, that was a good day. That was a miracle. But Evan wouldn’t talk about any of it. He wouldn’t admit to trying to kill himself and he wouldn’t even acknowledge it had happened. I mean, he wasn’t really talking much at all, but especially about that. So Charlie checked him in to a psychiatric hospital about an hour away from here for evaluation and so that he could be kept on suicide watch. That lasted a couple of months.”

Brennan moaned softly, denying it, all of it.

Continuing, Jimmy said, “One day, Charlie changed his mind, out of the blue. He took Evan out of there, brought him home, and gave that boy every single thing he could ever want. Anything. He was just doing everything he could, trying to give Evan reasons to live. He bought him that car. He paid for the surgery on his eyes so he wouldn’t need the glasses anymore—for his self-esteem, you know. He homeschooled Evan as long as he could to get him out of that school and taught him to hunt, taught him to work on cars. That’s Evan. He’s still too sad, too quiet, and in too much pain. But he’s great at his job. He’s a loyal friend—to a fault. Every other weekend he works with me down at the homeless shelter and everyone there is always so happy to see him.”

Jimmy took a deep breath and laid a hand on Brennan’s arm. There were copious, silent tears streaming from Brennan’s eyes. “The resemblance between you is haunting. I am so grateful for you being in Evan’s life now. It truly is God’s will that you have each other for comfort and strength. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him, in my opinion, rediscovering you. And
please
, try to forgive him, Brennan.”

Brennan looked up, eyes ablaze. He sucked in a rough breath and, trembling, stood up. “I have to go. I have to, um... Where’s Mike’s?”

“Down the road. Three blocks to the south, towards town,” Jimmy told him.

“Thanks,” Brennan whispered, and then he was running—out the door, down the winding driveway.

“That year, when I was fourteen, was the worst year of my
life
,” Brennan spat at Evan.

They were standing together outside, behind Mike’s Garage. Evan was sucking hard on a cigarette, staring off into space.

“I had these panic attacks for no reason,” Brennan continued wildly. “I’d feel really suddenly, really strongly, like something was wrong,
really
wrong and I didn’t understand it. Mom started to drink out of the blue. She drank all the time and was fired from her job. She left me at her friend’s house for a few weeks right when I was feeling the worst and I was so goddamn
mad
at her for that. My stomach hurt and I felt groggy and upset and like I was going crazy. And it was
all your fault
, wasn’t it?! That’s why I felt so sick, why Mom was out of her fucking mind. Charlie must’ve told her what you did. She must’ve visited you in the hospital.”

“No,” Evan muttered, shaking his head, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. “She couldn’t have.”

“Why? You were unconscious! You wouldn’t know.”

“Neither would you,” Evan retorted doubtfully. “You didn’t even know I existed.”

“Maybe part of me did. They say twins have a weird connection to each other sometimes. Maybe that was why I was so freaked out,” Brennan accused.

Evan chewed his lip and held Brennan’s hurt, cutting glare for a fleeting moment. “Look, I’ve gotta get back to work. Can we talk about this later?”

Brennan didn’t say anything and didn’t blink. He folded his arms more tightly over his chest and dug in his heels.

“If you’re waiting for an apology, you ain’t gettin’ one,” Evan told him. He took one last drag from the cigarette before dropping it and crushing it out.

When Brennan still didn’t respond, Evan sighed, walked past him and headed back to the garage. It was a long time before Brennan was able to move. Scared, lost and lonely, he walked away and didn’t bother looking back.

Evan got home around five o’clock that evening. Brennan was in his bedroom. Walking past his doorway, not looking in, Evan went to the darkened living room and sat on the couch. Folding his hands between his knees, he took a deep breath and let the eerie stillness relax him. He heard soft, padding footsteps approach and didn’t look up as Brennan hovered a few feet away.

“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Evan said when Brennan simply stared at him. He could see that much with his peripheral vision and not much else.

“Why did you let me find out that way?” Brennan asked. His throat sounded like it’d been scraped raw from crying. There was so much hurt there that Evan winced as some of the pain sifted through the air between them, seeping in through the pores in his skin. “That was a really shitty thing to do.”

Evan turned his face away. Restlessly, he rubbed a hand over the back of his skull, hunched forward, then sat up stock-straight. “I don’t talk about it. I don’t talk about it and I’m not gonna talk about it. We were gonna talk about Mom. We....”