“I’ll quadruple the dose. I promise you, Stefan. It will work.” The world was slipping slowly away. Cocooned in warmth and darkness, I didn’t mind.
“You want me to trust you on it?” Right before I heard Stefan shut the shower door, I heard him murmur, “When you think why I should, Misha, you let me know.”
He’d trusted me time and time again, but I’d lied time and time again—calling it anything but lying to fool myself. When was too much? When did that last straw come along? It was lucky that I had time to sleep on it, because right then I didn’t have a good answer for his question or mine.
The only one I had, the only true rebuttal, neither of us would want to hear.
Days ago I’d been thinking I wouldn’t lie to my brother, but I had been, more or less, for three years. Call them lies or omissions or secrets—all the things we said we wouldn’t do—but at the end of the day we never failed to. Sometimes they were a convenience or a habit or at times the only kindness you could give someone. Stefan should know that.
He had a secret too and it colored every part of his life.
And mine.
I woke up to the smell of eggs, bacon, coffee, and pancakes. I savored the moment: soft bed, sheets that weren’t comparable to one-ply toilet paper, and no pain. My ribs were whole and healed.
“Room service. I know that has to be high on your list of the most incredible things invented in the history of time,” Stefan said.
“You can’t eat a pyramid.” I opened my eyes and sat up. Through the curtains, I could see the sun rising. “I slept that long?”
“Hit by a truck and a building. That sort of thing deserves a few extra hours. Give yourself a break.” He was already at the table, munching on bacon. “And if you want any food, you’d better hurry. I’ve had too much fast food lately.”
I climbed out of bed, dressed, and took a seat to rapidly fill my plate. He wasn’t serious, but food was just below sex in life’s great pleasures. I wasn’t taking any chances. “I thought about what I said last night.” He started, pouring more coffee. The scrapes and tiny cuts on his face were going to make shaving a bitch this morning. “And I was an asshole. Your badass mobster big brother got his delicate feelings hurt and I projected.”
He covered the smile, faint but there, with his cup of coffee. After he swallowed, he added, “See? I listen to all your psycho-techno babble. My eyes glaze over, yeah, but I listen.” He picked up a triangle of toast before dropping it, interest gone. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Misha. It’s that after all this time, you don’t trust me. Buying planes, recruiting drug dealers, the pipe bomb thing—Jesus, the pipe bombs—the healing and, damn, that’s the least of all the rest you told us. You didn’t tell me any of it.”
I leaned back in the chair and pushed away my plate before I took a single bite. It took one painful topic to kill both our appetites. “I didn’t keep it to myself because I don’t trust you. Well, except for the pipe bombs. You never would’ve gone for that. It was because I want to be normal, Stefan. I want to be like my big brother. Isn’t that what all younger brothers want? When they’re little, they tag along. When they’re grown, they want to be half the man their brother is.”
I ran fingers through my bed hair and made it worse by ruthlessly scrubbing my scalp. “Keeping you up to date every day on my progress at becoming more different and less human wasn’t my idea of a good time. I’m not like everyone else. I’m not like you, but I wanted to pretend I was. I wanted you to, hell, forget that I’m not. I want to forget I’m not.”
“So we’re both idiots.” He pushed my plate back in front of me. “No, you’re not like me. You’re better. A better person, a better goddamn everything. Now, eat your breakfast. And if you open your mouth to say you aren’t everything I know you are, I’ll stuff a bagel in it. Plain. Without cream cheese.” Healthy food—the ultimate threat.
“We are idiots, aren’t we?” I took a bite of the blackberry pancakes covered in syrup and butter. “In the future, if I do sort of accidentally keep some things to myself, will you know it has nothing to do with trust? That it’s not you; it’s me.”
““It’s not you; it’s me.’ Jesus. You’re something else.” The grin was quick. “We’re not breaking up, Misha. And, yeah, I’ll know. Eat.”
Now that my secrets were out, it was time to work on Stefan’s. I had another bite of my pancakes before moving on to the bacon as I sidled into the subject slowly. I’d made bombs. Stefan’s secret was one I was going to have to defuse.