31. Elijah

My brother opened the door and looked just as shocked to see me as I was to be there.

I blinked, rubbing my forehead as he stepped forward and grabbed both my elbows. "Eli? What are you doing here? What happened?"

I blinked again. "Christopher?"

He ducked to catch my eye. "Are you hurt?"

"No, no… It's…my client. Luke. Luke's hurt. Missing. He was kidnapped early this morning." I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "I, uh, I messed up."

My voice cracked at the end. Christopher didn't hesitate to hustle me inside the Brooklyn apartment, where I could smell dinner cooking, hear the TV playing cartoons. Then there was Sky, barreling down the hallway and hitting me knee-level with a hug. I'd just managed to scoop up my nephew before I was being pressed into the living room, then down onto the couch. Christopher spoke softly to Skylar, who gave me a sweet smile before running back into the kitchen.

"Where's Shana and the twins?" I asked.

"At book club with her sister," he said. "Sky and I were making macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. When was the last time you've eaten?"

Sky returned with a children's plate shaped like a tiger and loaded up with noodles and sliced pieces of hot dog slathered in Dijon mustard. Like I used to eat as a kid. My chest cracked in half—Christopher had remembered, was being so nice to me when I hadn't returned any of his calls. I hadn't eaten since yesterday and wanted this macaroni and cheese so badly I could weep.

"Thank you," I said gratefully. He passed me a fork and then he and Sky busied themselves in the kitchen for a bit, letting me inhale my food in peace. I fixed myself a second plate, followed by a third. Christopher joined me on the couch with two beers and I wanted to cry again.

"Tell me what happened," he said, settling in next to me. "I haven't seen you this upset since we were kids."

Because I'd stopped letting myself be anything other than in control the day Dad left.

This isn't a life, Elijah. It's half a life.

I scrubbed a hand down my face. "I have this client. Lucas Beaumont. I was his dad's bodyguard for five years, but his dad just died. His dad was getting death threats. Garden variety stuff. But they increased in intensity when Luke took over. I didn't take them seriously enough at the beginning, didn't…didn't take him seriously. Except we…"

You know how handsome you are when you smile at me like that, Elijah?

"You what?" Christopher prodded.

I inhaled, met his gaze. "I'm falling in love with him."

His eyes went wide.

"Which is against every rule in the book, for obvious reasons. And we got stuck last night, in the storm, near Sag Harbor in the Hamptons. Just me and him. And we…"

I shrugged a shoulder and Christopher reared back. "That's probably against the rules too, yeah?"

I nodded. "He was taken this morning. From that location. I wasn't with him, didn't hear anything. And they don't know where he is or who has him."

"Holy shit, Eli," he whispered.

I sniffed. Squeezed the beer bottle too hard.

He rubbed a hand across my back, his face pinched in sympathy. "This is awful."

I nodded again. "I'm gonna lose that promotion I told you about. My boss knows. He knows everything. Believes my behavior to be abhorrent, which it was. At every single step of the way, I knew the right thing to do and I couldn't stop myself." I sniffed again. "He's hurt because of me, and I keep thinking…what if I'm like Dad?"

My brother pulled a face. "Don't say that."

"Isn't this what he did?" I said bitterly. "Act selfishly out of, what…his lust? His ego? His need to be wanted? He used to tell me that he couldn't stop. That he would, that he'd treat Mom right if he could, but it wasn't in his DNA."

Christopher sagged, falling back against the cushions. "First of all, I wasn't saying what you did was awful. I was saying this situation is awful. The guy you love just got kidnapped and you don't know who took him. That is categorically fucked up, and I don't care how many rules you broke. Who cares? This is devastating news."

Hot tears threatened. I swiped at my eyes, fast, before my brother could notice.

"Secondly." He paused to stand up, starting to pace. "Please don't ever say you're like Dad again. I'm serious, it's gross."

I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a palm.

"Eli, cut yourself a little slack. You fell in love with someone you weren't supposed to at what sounds like the worst possible time. It happens. Pretty often, in fact. You're a human being and you met someone you're falling for. In my experience, this stuff doesn't really happen on some agreed-upon timeline."

I jabbed my thumb into the center of my chest. "But I'm the one that fucked up. Big time."

"People do. No one's perfect. Not even you, and I know how much you try."

His words sat uncomfortably in the pit of my stomach. There was a reason why I'd been drawn to this career, beyond the job stability. There were rules to follow, hierarchies in place, strict codes of conduct and very little gray area. We had a singular goal—keep the client safe. Anything else was extraneous.

There were very few ways in which you could make a mistake—and yet I'd somehow smashed through all of them. I'd lied to my supervisors. Knowingly placed my client in excessively dangerous situations. Shoved my client up against a wall mere minutes after an attempted attack and kissed him senseless.

Christopher sat down next to me again. "Do you know what I remember most about you when we were growing up? You were always my protector. You took care of me and Mom, even when it seemed hard. You were my own personal superhero."

He reached forward and squeezed my knee.

"But look around. We're doing fine. Better than fine. Mom has her RV and all those dogs she rescued. She called me from the Grand Canyon this week, actually. She's still having a blast."

Another uncomfortable twist in my gut. She'd called me too, left cheerful voicemails about watching the sunrise from her campsite.

"Shana and I are doing great. The twins are healthy. Sky's happy. Is money tight? Sure. Does Mom's health worry me sometimes? Absolutely. But that kind of stuff is just normal, Eli. That's life." He caught my gaze and held it. "You don't have to save us. After Dad left, we saved ourselves. You included."

The great knot that had resided permanently in my chest for as long as I could remember started to loosen ever so slightly.

I released a long breath. "I don't want you to struggle the way we did growing up."

"We aren't struggling," he said easily. "My kids eat every day and they never have to worry. Shana and I don't have to work the night shift. We're home at night, to spend time with them. Most importantly, Dad isn't here, making everything worse. Isn't it nice to realize we don't have to tiptoe around him anymore? Don't have to listen to his bullshit or keep his secrets?"

The knot tugged open a little more.

"Sometimes I…" I cleared my throat. "Sometimes I forget. I act like he's still hovering nearby, watching. Criticizing."

"He's not," Christopher said softly. "But whenever you feel that way, you could come over here and talk to me about it."

I stared at the floor.

"Dad abandoned us, but honestly good riddance. We're better off without him. I don't want you to do that too."

My gaze snapped back to his. "I'd never do that."

"Except"—he reached forward and poked me in the arm—"you never come around, never return our calls, never text us back. I know your job is intense and demanding, but I think you're afraid to let go. You can be a responsible person, you can protect your family, and still have fun. Still be happy. We love you, Eli. Not out of some sense of obligation but because it's you. And I wanna have more fun with you."

My eyebrows flew up as the tight spot over my heart kept shifting and loosening. "You do?"

He laughed. "Hell yeah, I do."

I sent him a tentative smile, a gesture that had felt impossible from the moment I realized Luke was gone. "Luke told me I needed more whimsy in my life."

He clinked his beer against mine. "Luke's right."

Skylar came running back into the room and clambered onto my lap, displaying a coloring book about giraffes and a small pack of crayons. I dropped my nose onto the crown of his head and felt those tears again, threatening to spill over. A wave of emotion washed over me—grief, love, so much regret. Christopher was right, as painful as it was to admit it. It was easier to hold my family at arm's length and exhaust myself with work as an excuse. Loving people was messy by nature. Emotions were messy by nature, and at some point after my dad left, I'd locked them all away to focus on being a caregiver for my brother.

I took the blue crayon Sky offered to me and started coloring in a cloud. "The promotion is off the table. My boss thinks there's only a slim chance I can stay in this industry, but only if I stay away from Luke's kidnapping case and keep my head down."

Christopher finished the rest of his beer. "What does your gut say?"

My hand paused. I glanced up at my brother. "That every second counts. That Luke's out there somewhere. Scared or hurt or cold…and hoping I'll find him. But if I do that, it's over. The career I've trained my whole life for."

He shrugged one shoulder. "Good thing you're thirty-seven and not a hundred then. Plenty of time for a restart."

I remembered what Luke looked like that first day we were together, playfully tossing me a wink before falling backward off that bridge and into nothing but thin air.

What would it be like to go after the things I wanted like that?

Sky's fingers slipped, sending a large orange streak across an illustration of baby giraffes. "Uh-oh, didn't mean to do that," he said softly. He turned the page and started fresh. "When we mess up, we just try again. That's what Dad says."

I trained my attention on Christopher. "Your dad's very wise."

He raised his glass my way. "Guess who I learned it from first though."

My heart squeezed in my chest. A moment later, the front door opened and I heard the cheerful sounds of Shana and her sister, then the happy squeals of my two-year-old nephews.

"Eli's surprised us with a visit," Christopher called into the kitchen. All four of them popped into the room, happily surprised and immediately telling me a story about their book club. Then relating another story that had me laughing, and then somehow I'd had a second beer and the twins had fallen asleep on the floor and Sky still quietly colored on my lap.

Christopher sent me a warm smile through the chaos. "Welcome home, Elijah. We missed you."