32. Keke

Chapter 32

Keke

M y hand drifts unconsciously to my stomach, still flat. Not yet physically betraying the secret I’d revealed to the world. I hadn’t meant to let it slip like that in front of everyone. That was the last thing I wanted, especially with everything I was already dealing with. But it’s out there, nothing I can do about it now.

In PR, you do your best not to become the story, yet in a moment of anger, jealousy, and confusion, I did exactly that.

My job should be my safety net, my way of staying grounded. When I'm managing someone else’s problems, I don't have to think about my own. I can pretend, even just for a little while, that I'm not afraid of commitment or any of the other complicated things that seem to haunt me.

With a sigh, I finally turn off the engine and get out. Dread and determination walk beside me as I approach my brother’s front door. Michael had known Luke was going to propose, and he’d kept it from me. In fact, he’d orchestrated part of it, getting us that reservation with zero notice.

I’ve always kept Michael and my family from meeting the guys I was dating. I have a habit of picking guys I know won't work out so I never bother. Handsome on the outside, but the good qualities usually end there. That's why Michael was so confused after my ex attacked his restaurant and told him to call me and I’d explain. What a nightmare that day was.

At least he’d been nice to look at. All of my ex’s were. That was my only requirement. I’d often comforted myself by thinking I was just superficial and shallow but that was a cozy lie.

The door swings open before I can knock. Michael stands there, arms crossed, his expression unreadable, looking every bit the giant Viking he pretends to be. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.

“Come on in,” he steps aside.

I take a deep breath, bracing myself as I step into his living room, my eyes flicking over the surroundings. His home is posh, with open, airy rooms decorated with expensive art. As much as we’re alike, our priorities are very different. Michael cares about impressing people with extravagance, whereas I worry about not being perfect all the time.

“So,” he starts, crossing his arms again as he leans against the wall, watching me. “Are you finally ready to tell me what’s going on, or am I supposed to keep guessing?”

I force a smile. “Guessing is fun. You’ve always been good at it.”

He doesn’t return the smile. His face is serious, and there’s disappointment in his eyes, or maybe it’s more concern. Either way, my heart sinks.

“Keke, you don’t have to put up a front with me. Just tell me.”

I take a shaky breath, feeling the weight of everything pressing down on me. “I’m pregnant.”

He nods slowly. “I know.”

“I know you know, but I feel like I needed to say it to you myself.” I look down, unable to meet his gaze. “How much do you hate me right now?”

“Is that really what you think of me?” he asks, a hint of hurt in his voice. “Keke, I’m your brother. I’m not here to judge you. Sure, it’s not how I pictured you starting a family, but if this is what you want, if this is what makes you happy, then I’m here for you. I just want you to be okay.”

A tear slips down my cheek and I quickly wipe it away. “I just thought… I figured you’d be mad.”

He shakes his head, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I was, at first. Not about the pregnancy, but about how this is going to affect everything for you. When I ran into Luke at the arena… well, let’s just say I have a better understanding now.”

I know what Whitney told me, but I want his version of things. “How did all of that go down?”

“Well, at first, I threw him against the wall?—”

“You did?”

He smirks. “Yeah. I thought he hurt you, that he’d ruined your career. I was pissed off.”

“People don’t usually walk away on their own when you get pissed yet he did. So, what happened?”

“He just let me attack him. He wasn’t fighting back. He looked like he’d already been put through the wringer. He told me everything and I listened.” Michael shakes his head as his hard expression fades. “That man’s in love if I have ever seen one, and if you can’t see that then you’re not looking close enough.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Michael,” I whisper, my voice choked on my sobs. “I’m scared, and I don’t know how to handle any of this. I just wanted to focus on work, keep things simple, but now… everything’s so messy.”

“Life is messy, Keke. You can’t control everything, no matter how hard you try, nor do you have to. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet. I still don’t know how I feel.”

“Well, maybe it’s time you started figuring it out. Because if you don’t deal with this now, it’s only going to get harder. You’ve got a whole new life ahead of you. Might as well go into it with your head on straight.”

I let out a shaky laugh. “You sound like a motivational speaker in training.”

“Maybe I missed my calling.”

We sit there for a while in comfortable silence. It had been a long time since I’d felt this close to him. “Tell me something,” I say after a few moments. “Do you think I made a mistake?”

“You mean with the pregnancy?”

“With Luke, in general. I walked away because I thought he was just going through a phase, that he’d change his mind or get bored of me. But now, I’m not so sure. Maybe I was just scared and stubborn.”

“Maybe you were. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late. If you truly care about him, then it’s worth taking a chance.”

“How does anyone manage to do this the right way?”

“There is no right or wrong way, Keke. Just text him, and?—”

“No, that’s not what I meant. Pregnancy. Picking a life partner. All that stuff.”

He thinks for a moment. “It’s all part of life, kiddo, and I’m still working on that myself. You need to talk to him, though.”

“Talking to him will only confuse me more.”

“Okay. So, talk to me. Talk to me until you have it figured out. How are you doing, really?”

I snort out a laugh at myself, and then another, and another. Soon, I’m laughing and crying at the same time. Michael smiles, bewildered. “I have no fucking idea how I’m doing.”

He chuckles then leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I think I said something similar to you after my first week of rehab.”

His sudden change of topic nearly knocks the wind out of me. We hadn’t talked about it in a long time. I swallow hard, unsure of where he was going with this. “That was a hell of a time in our lives.”

“It was.” He draws a long breath, and I don’t know if he’s going to change the topic or if he wants to talk about it. His lips form a hard line before he speaks again, eyes full of regret. “I made a lot of mistakes back then. A lot of stupid choices, wrong choices. I was angry. I’ve always been angry. Always fighting, always looking for a fight?—”

“That wasn’t your fault,” I cut in. “Our dad was an asshole to you, and Mom wasn’t much better.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t let me off the hook. You remember what Dr. Schneider said.”

The old woman’s voice haunts my mind as I echo her words, “Accountability is what makes a family.”

He nods. “Exactly. Not blood, not DNA, not last names. Accountability. That was always my problem. If I’d been taught to keep my anger in check, I wouldn’t have turned to every drug under the sun to do it for me. If our parents had done their jobs when I was little, it wouldn’t have been so easy to start dealing smack. That might’ve been true when I was younger, but once I became an adult, I became responsible for my own choices.”

I hadn’t seen him this raw in a long time. Maybe the prospect of impending unclehood is making him reflect.

Michael sits back and sighs. “I knew better than to drive as high as I was. I knew better yet I did it anyway. When I woke up after the accident, I knew how lucky I was to be alive but even more so, I was lucky I hadn’t taken out anyone. But most of all, I was lucky to have a little sister who talked me out of killing myself and going into rehab instead.”

I gulp, trying not to cry at the memories. Even with everything in disarray, it pales in comparison to getting that phone call and seeing our mother crumble to the floor in anguish. He was in a coma, and his brain was swelling. For three days, we didn’t know if he’d live, and if he did, whether or not he’d still be the Michael we knew.

Unfortunately, his dealer friends started coming around after he woke up. We tried to get the hospital to prevent them from coming in, but Michael was a legal adult so it was his decision. Mom and I were there as often as we could be to keep them away. For a while, anyway. But eventually, it became too hard on her, and she bailed. I told her she either got both of us or neither of us.

She chose neither.

She didn’t want to hear anything about him, about me, or anything familial. Told me to stop updating her, that she no longer had children. I was sixteen when I lost my mom to her inability to love us as we were.

I stayed with him after school every day, but on a random half-day, I’d get to the hospital early. On one of those random days, he had a friend with him who ran deliveries, and they were ready to shoot up into oblivion. I grabbed his friend by the neck and shoved that asshole out of the room, but when I came back, the needle was already in Michael’s arm.

It was the second worst day of my life, after the day we found out about his accident. By the time that day rolled around, he still had his muscles, but he had no speed or strength in them after a month of nothing but IV’s and inactivity. That made it easier for me to yank the needle out of his arm fast enough before he could stop me.

Right then and there, I knew what I had to do.

It wasn’t pretty.

I took the syringe, aimed the needle at my vein, and asked him where it was supposed to go. I’d never seen him more scared but that was what it had come to. He was all I had left in the world. I told him either I started his hobby and we went out together, or he went to rehab. To my knowledge, he never used again.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You did everything, Keke. You saved my life.”

“No, I?—”

“Stop it. You know you did.” He looks away. “I know I said what I said about this job being your last chance as far as jobs went, and what I said about Whitney… but the truth is, Keke, if you need anything, I’ve got you. Luke isn’t your only option here.”

“What are you saying?”

He locks eyes with me. “You and the baby can live here. Or, if you decide not to keep it, you can still live here. You don’t have to work, you don’t have to?—”

“That’s crazy.”

He laughs. “Look, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and like I said, I owe you my life. If you don’t want to stay with Luke, or if you just want to date him for a while to figure things out, you don’t have to stay at his place. You’re more than welcome here.”

I break into sobs again, unable to control myself. He comes over and rubs my back to calm me down while I lose my shit for a while. It feels weird to even think about moving out of Luke’s place. It’d be like leaving my home. As scared as I am about everything, Luke is now a part of me in a way I can’t explain.

Once I calm down, Michael brings me a bottle of water and a box of tissues. “Does this mean you’re moving in?”

I shake my head. “The offer is appreciated, but I still have my old place. I wouldn’t want to encroach on your wild bachelor life.”

He smirks at that. “Yeah, real wild. I’ve read a book a day for the past year. I have abs again. I take a cooking class three times a week. My social life consists of weekly poker with my friends.”

“You say that like I should understand what you mean by it, but honestly, my brain isn’t working. Spell it out for me.”

“Wild is not how I’d describe my bachelor life. You wouldn’t be encroaching on anything—there’s nothing to encroach on. You’d be mercifully giving me someone to hang out with.”

“So, all this generosity is a little self-serving?” I tease.

“I prefer to think of it as a win-win.”

I laugh. “Either way, like I said, I appreciate the offer, but no. Do you remember what it was like when we were kids? Fighting all the time?”

“Pretty sure I remember it better than you do.”

“Yeah, because you’re old and all.”

He nudges my shin with his foot. “Hey, there’s only a ten-year difference between us.”

I grin at him. “AARP call you yet?”

“You’re lucky you’re pregnant, or I’d kick your ass for that one.”

The rest of the evening passes in a blur of long-dead sibling rivalry and reminiscing. We don’t have much in our past to look back on fondly, but what we do have is each other. He understands why I didn’t talk to Dad after he left Mom, and neither of us spoke to them anymore.

As things wind down, he asks, “Do you know if you want to keep it?”

I do but saying it aloud feels like a commitment I’m not ready for. “Still deciding. Any thoughts on the matter?”

“Just one.”

“What’s that?”

“You will make a great mom, whenever you decide to be one.”

A knot forms in my throat. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because you were a better mom to me than my own when I needed one the most.”

I start crying again, but this time, I manage to choke out, “Pregnancy hormones. They make me emotional.”

“Or, maybe you’re going through an emotional time and it’s okay to feel things, Keke.”

“Pfft. No wonder you’re single.”

He laughs again. “Thanks for that.”

“I mean it. Emotions are bullshit. And same goes for how you let me walk blindly into a public proposal.”

“Seriously? I thought that’s what every girl wants. A public declaration of love and devotion. You loved it when that kid did his big prom proposal for you.”

“That’s why you encouraged Luke to do the public proposal? Because of a prom proposal in high school?”

The line on his forehead deepens. “Well… yeah.”

“I was happy about that because Danny Chang had insisted we date in secret, so when he did that, it was a declaration of our relationship. I didn’t need that with Luke.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Keke. Wait. That twerp was making you date him in secret?”

“Yeah.”

“I should look him up and kick his ass.”

I snort. “You do whatever makes you feel better, as far as I’m concerned. Last I heard, he was running an identity theft ring, so go for it.”

“Will do.”

As I leave his house, I feel a new sense of clarity, a new determination to take control of my life. I may not have all the answers, but maybe I don’t need to.