Quinn sniffed and swiped at her eyes. “But I didn’t—Becca doesn’t know—”
“Well, she will soon. If I get my way in here, you and your younger brother are going to stay with me until your mother can get into a treatment program.”
“But—but—”
“But nothing, Quinn.” Her voice was gentle, but stern. “I’ve always told you that my door is open to you. We’ve never had any secrets between us. I wish you’d told me what you were going through.”
“I’m sorry.” Fresh tears welled. “It got—it got out of control so fast—”
“I know. I know. Come on, let’s go inside and see if we can work something out.”
Quinn nodded and wiped at her eyes again, scared to let herself feel something like hope.
But when Mrs. Chandler pushed at the door to the office, Quinn said, “Wait. If Becca didn’t tell you, then how did you know?”
“Your friend called me this morning. He said he got my number from Michael Merrick. He wanted to help you, but he wasn’t sure how. He sounded pretty upset about what was going on, but he didn’t want something bad to happen to you.”
Quinn’s heart was pounding. “My friend? Who?”
“Nice young man. Said he knows Becca, too. Tyler Morgan.”
By Wednesday night, Nick and Gabriel had settled into an uneasy truce.
Well, Nick had settled into one. He lived in the house and went through the motions of living with four other guys, but where his twin was concerned, he went out of his way to avoid him. He caught a ride to school from Michael or Hunter. He went to the studio at night to watch Adam and Quinn dance.
He studied in his room with the door closed.
At first, Gabriel had dogged him, begging for a chance to apologize. Nick had ignored that.
Then, true to form, Gabriel had turned antagonistic, mocking his silence. That was even easier to ignore.
But tonight, Adam had class and Quinn had texted that she was busy, so Nick was home. He’d been ready for more hassling from his twin, but Gabriel was the one staying out late.
Nick wondered if his twin was avoiding him, now, if he’d made it so uncomfortable that Gabriel didn’t even want to be in the same house with him.
Good.
Actually, tonight, Nick was glad for his twin’s absence. He found Michael sitting in a dim kitchen, hunched over his laptop.
A stack of invoices sat next to him.
Nick stopped short. “I can do that.”
“I know you can,” said Michael. “So can I.” He looked at Nick, then nodded at the pile of papers in his hands. “What do you have? Something for school?”
“Sort of.” Nick hesitated. “I need to tell you something. Ask you something. Whatever.”
Michael uncapped a bottle of water and took a sip. “Shoot.”
Nick pulled a chair free and eased into it. “My physics teacher said he needs a decision about that semester of math and science at Maryland this spring.” The words were rushing out, and he couldn’t figure out Michael’s expression, so he kept talking. “It’s college credit, and they only accept a few students from each high school, but it’s also a lot of work. I don’t want to take time away from the business, because I know spring is our busiest season.”
His brother frowned. “Are you asking me if you can do it, or trying to get me to tell you not to?”
Nick took a breath. “I have no idea.”
Michael closed the laptop and pushed it to the side. He leaned in against the table. “Forget the business. What do you want to do?
“I can’t forget the business, Michael. It’s—it’s not like it’s your side job or something. I’m not going to cut back on my hours if that means the family needs to live on ramen noodles for the entire year.” He rolled his eyes. “We might not even make it to spring anyway, so I don’t know why I’m even considering this.”
“The same could be true of anyone on earth, Nick. When the Guides come, they come. We keep doing what we’ve always done. Not revealing our true abilities. ”
Nick didn’t say anything to that. There was a warning there.
Michael studied him for a long minute. “Stay here. I want to show you something.”
He wasn’t gone long. When he returned, he had a beat-up white Teflon envelope stuffed with papers. He tossed it on the table in front of Nick.
Nick glanced at it, then back up at Michael.
“Go ahead. Open it.”
Nick slid the contents out of the envelope. The papers were wrinkly and a little worn. On top was a college letter addressed to Michael. From five years ago.
Welcoming him to LSU.
Nick read the next line and snapped his head up. “They offered you a baseball scholarship.”
Michael shrugged. “I had two offers, actually. Money from a lot of other places, too. The letters are all in there.”
“But why didn’t you . . . why . . .” He didn’t even know how to finish that sentence.
He knew why.
He met Michael’s eyes. “Does anyone else know?”
“Nope.”
“I won’t tell.”
“It’s not a secret, Nick.” Michael paused. “Mom and Dad knew. I’m surprised they didn’t have banners made. You’d have thought I won the lottery or something. But when they died, there wasn’t any question of what I needed to do.”
Nick’s throat felt tight. He couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes.
Michael put a hand on his arm. “Stop. Look, I didn’t show you this to make you feel bad, Nick. I could never have gone off to school and left you guys. This isn’t a guilt trip.”
Nick nodded. But he felt the guilt all the same.
“You’re a smart kid, and you work your ass off.” Michael squeezed his arm. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted you to throw away an opportunity. They would have been proud of you, too.”
Nick made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Would they have been proud of all of it?”
“Yeah, Nick.” No hesitation. “They would have been proud of everything you are.”
Nick swiped at his eyes and looked back at Michael’s letters.
“Do you regret it?”“Regret? No. Do I think about what ifs?” He shrugged again, then smiled a little ruefully. “Yes. Every spring when I watch Chris play.”
“What are you going to do with the business, though? If Gabriel and Hunter are going to take the EMT course, and—”
“Nick, it’s fine. I’ll hire some people.”
He dropped the words so simply that Nick felt like an idiot for not even thinking about it. “You’ll—wait. What? You can do that?”
Michael leaned back in his chair. “Sure. I’d probably like it. I could do a job with someone who won’t give me a load of crap at the dinner table or sneak out of the house.”
Nick studied him. “You sound like you’ve been thinking about that for a while.”
Michael paused, and now he looked a little hesitant. “At dinner, Hannah’s father had some thoughts about how I could expand the business . . . maybe do more with it . . . I don’t know.
It’s something to think about. Maybe this college course is a sign.” He grimaced. “And honestly, Nick, you’ll need all the help you can get. You know we don’t have a lot of money for college.”
“Well,” said Nick, “maybe I can help with that.” He shoved his original stack of letters across the table.
Michael read the first. Then the second.
He didn’t even get to the third.
He was too busy pulling Nick out of his chair to hug him.
CHAPTER 35
Nick sat in the darkened auditorium, watching auditions, feeling the music as it rolled through the theater. Adam and Quinn had been sitting with him, offering running com-mentary on every dancer to take the stage. He’d nodded along and pretended to understand half the stuff they gossiped about, but now they were due on stage themselves, and they’d left him out here to watch.
He could feel their nerves from here.
Nick tried to feed positive energy into the air.
A hand grabbed the seat-back next to him, then someone swung into the seat beside him.
Nick almost did a double take. Gabriel.
It was enough to shock him out of silence. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Shh. People are performing.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” Nick’s chest felt tight with rage.
“This is important. This isn’t a joke, Gabriel.”
“No kidding. Would you calm down?”
“Get out. Now.” His breath was shaking and the air had dropped a few degrees. That his brother would use this—that Gabriel would show up here—this was—this was—
Nick swallowed and tried to keep it together. “If you mess with him—if you screw this up—I swear to god—”
“I’m not messing with him. And I know it’s important.”
Gabriel turned away from the stage and met Nick’s eyes. “I came here to support my brother’s boyfriend. That okay with you?”
Silence hung between them for the longest moment.
It poked the tiniest hole in Nick’s anger. He quickly plugged it up. “I’m not falling for this.”
Gabriel sighed. “All right. Don’t, then.” He got up, shifted into the aisle, and started walking toward the exit.
No, he moved down a few rows, easing into a new seat.
Nick sat there and watched him. He could feel his twin’s disappointment, his anguish. He felt it himself.
Damn you, Gabriel.
He finally sighed and moved down a few rows to sit beside his twin brother.
Gabriel offered a wicked smile. “I knew this would get you.”
“I hate you.”
The smile vanished. “No. You don’t.”
“I do. A little.” Nick faced forward and rubbed at the back of his neck. A girl in pointe shoes was twirling across the stage.
“You really hurt me. A lot—a lot more than I thought was possible.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Nick didn’t say anything. He didn’t know if he wanted this apology.
“I wish I could take it back,” Gabriel said. “You have no idea—”
“Don’t. Don’t do this here.”
Gabriel shut up as if Nick had smacked him. They watched the next routine in tense silence.
Then Gabriel leaned in. “I read your text messages.”
“You what?”
Half a dozen people turned around and hushed him.
Nick clenched his fists and glared at Gabriel. “What are you talking about? When?”
“When you left the phone in the car. At first I just plugged it in to make sure it wasn’t busted. But when it powered up, I saw it was on the text chat with Adam, so—”
“So you read them? ”
Gabriel met his eyes and didn’t recoil from his anger. “Those things I said—I didn’t mean them. I didn’t know, Nicky.” He winced. “Nick. I didn’t know. I never meant to hurt you.”
Nick didn’t say anything to that. Was this enough? It didn’t feel like enough.
He turned his head and asked the question that had reverberated through his head since the instant he’d felt his twin’s fist slam into his face. “How could you, Gabriel?” His whispered voice almost broke. “How could you do what you did?”
“I didn’t know what was wrong,” Gabriel said, his words rushed, as if he worried Nick would cut him off again. “I didn’t know your secret. And then—then this complete stranger was apologizing to me, and I knew you were so upset. It was—that night, it was all wrong. I was keyed up from the fight with Tyler.