“MISS LEAH, DO you think now that my casts have come off that I’ll be able to run a ten minute mile? Cause my brother can run a ten minute mile!”
Smiling at my beautiful little patient Lydia, I giggle at her enthusiasm. “Slow your roll, Wonder Woman! Your casts just came off yesterday, sweetie. We have some work to do to strengthen your legs before you can take off running. But you know what? If you take your physical therapy seriously and do all of the exercises, I bet someday soon you can beat your brother’s time.”
Lydia’s answering smile lights up my heart. There’s just something about the enthusiasm of a child that feeds my soul and brings me true joy. After the trauma I lived through a few years ago, I honestly never thought I’d feel truly okay again. I was wrong—life has gone on and I am content. I have a wonderful job as a Children’s Physical Therapist, an apartment I love, and I’ve even made a few additional friends in the last few years.
Life isn’t the fairytale I once dreamt of, but it isn’t the horror-story I’d thought it was for the first year or so after the rape. My job means the world to me, and patients like Lydia are a constant reminder of why I chose this career.
After finishing up with Lydia, I wipe all of the equipment in the PT room down and then head to my office to type up my notes for the day. Before I get down to typing, I send off a text message to my best friend, Dominique—otherwise known as Minnie—to check in with her. I got an email from her two days ago telling me she’d finally broken up with her psychotic bitch of a girlfriend, Tally, but she hasn’t written me again, which is unusual. Usually we email, text or talk at least once a day, and I’m nervous breaking up with Tally has really upset her.
I can’t lie—I am ecstatic she broke up with crazy-pants, partly because Tally is a flipping nutcase and partly because Minnie isn’t even gay. She’s still ass over ankles in love with my brother and she always will be, so dating anyone else was nothing but an exercise in futility.
If Dillon and Minnie—otherwise known as those two stubborn assholes—could figure out a way to let the past go, I’d be happier than a pig in slop. It’s been over four years since they broke up, but I’ve never truly given up hope that at some point true love will win and they’ll wind up back together, which is where I know they belong. If that never happens, I know neither of them will ever truly be happy.
After shooting off my text to Dominique, I get down to work. My fingers fly over the keyboard as I enter my data and update the files for each child I worked with over the course of the day. Half an hour later I’m finished working for the day and starving. It’s after six, and I’m trying to decide whether to stop at In ‘n’ Out Burger or Carl’s Jr. for dinner when my cell phone starts ringing. Glancing at the caller ID, I smile when I see that it’s Dillon.
“What’s up, Bro-tato chip?”
“Can you come over on your way home from work? I need to talk to you.”
When you’ve lived the kind of lives that my brother and I have, things that seem simple enough can portend the coming of bad news, so my stomach rumbles with unease. Something about the tone of his voice is ringing alarm bells in my head.
“Uh, yeah. Is everything okay Dill?”
“Everything’s fine,” he says unconvincingly, “ but we need to talk. Get here as soon as you can.”
Pulling the phone back. I stare down at it in stunned surprise as I realize my brother just hung up on me. The rumbling of my stomach becomes a full on bass solo as I grab my purse and haul ass to my car. The only thing I can focus on is getting to Dillon’s as quickly as possible to find out what the hell is going on, so I drive like a bat out of hell to get to him. When I burst through his front door without knocking, I find him pacing the living room. His hair is a mess, his shirt looks like he’s been in a physical altercation and it’s very obvious that he’s freaking out about something.
“What’s wrong? Tell me now,” I demand. “Give it to me straight.”
Running a hand through his hair, he shakes his head. “Nothing’s wrong, but I have some news to share. I wasn’t sure about telling you this now because I can barely wrap my fuckin’ head around it, but if you kept something like this from me I’d be fucking pissed, so it would be hypocritical not to tell you. At least, I think it would be,” he chatters. “Maybe it would be better just to let it go for a while? Maybe only one of us needs to be freaking the fuck out. Yeah. What the fuck am I thinking? Forget it. You just forget this whole thing.”
I can hardly believe what I am seeing and hearing. My brother is a nervous wreck and he’s behaving completely out of character.
“Are you insane? You’re babbling like a lunatic and there’s no way I’m going to forget anything,” I retort. “Whatever this is, it’s got to be big. Tell me right now what the hell is going on!”
My demand seems to snap him out of whatever dialogue he has going on in his head, and he gestures to the couch for me to take a seat. Once we’re on the couch I roll my hand in an on with it gesture.
“You know how I’ve been getting calls for the last couple of years about doing some projects for Hart International?”
I nod silently, my stomach clenching as I wonder if my brother is about to have some kind of negative episode about Dominique. He’s never moved on from her and I know he never will, but he has come a long way since he was drinking himself to death. I want them back together and happy, not separate and miserable.
“I finally had to give in and go for a courtesy meeting,” he explains. “It was getting weird and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep putting it off forever.”
“Let me guess,” I interrupt. “You saw Minnie?”
He flushes as his eyes dart around the room. “Well, yeah, I did. But that’s not what’s going on here. Let me explain.”
Nodding my head, I gesture again for him to speed it up and continue.
“Anyway, I saw Minnie right when I first got there. She was waiting for me when I got off the elevator and she told me she just found out she’s not biologically Michael Hart’s child. I thought it was weird, her telling me that and I’m sure you do too, but you’ll see why in a minute. After I talked to her, I went in for my meeting.”
He says nothing for a few seconds and I tap my foot impatiently.
“Earth to Dill,” I say impatiently. “Continue.”
He looks at me like he’s surprised to realize he stopped talking. “Yeah,” he says, “right. Sorry about that. Anyway, I expected to be seeing Spencer Cross, but the meeting had been moved to Dante Hart’s office. I met with Dante, Damien and Spencer. I know you recognize all of the names because it isn’t as if Minnie never spoke about her family.”
I nod to indicate I do.
“I sat down with the guys to talk about business,” he continues, “and instead they laid out some serious fucking shit. It turns out that Dante and Damien’s father, Michael Hart, had two children with Spencer’s mother, Marceline Cross. There’s really no reason to draw it out so I’m just going to tell you—we’re the two kids. Apparently I was the back-up baby in case something were to happen to Dante, and you and I were given up for adoption right after you were born.”
My jaw is on the floor somewhere in a third world country. It dropped open so far and so hard I swear I think I just heard the hardwood floor splinter beneath me. The details of our adoption have always been a complete mystery to us because our adoptions had been closed. Since we were adopted when Dillon was just over a year old and I was a newborn, we’d always assumed our birth parents must have died or been drug addicts, but now… now, I know what they were was even worse than that, the lowest of the low.
The man who raped me is named Michael, which means it’s been hard for me to even hear the name ever since. Now I’m finding out that my biological father shared not only my rapist’s name, but his penchant for sexual deviancy as well. Michael Hart molested Dominique when she was younger, and the house she and her family grew up in was a nightmare. To think that Dillon and I were saved from it only to have my best friend grow up there is making my skin crawl.
I can tell that Dillon is waiting for me to say something, and eventually I shout the only thing that I can think of. “We’re related to that fucking child molester?”
My emotions are all over the place, and I burst into tears as I think about what Minnie endured living with those people. Springing across the couch, Dillon pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly as he rocks back and forth.
“I know, I felt the same way,” he admits. “But we can’t think like that, Lee. Instead of focusing on him, think about how we have three brothers. Long before we knew this, we knew Minnie and we’ve always known that she thinks her brothers and Spencer hung the moon for her. I never, ever, heard her say one bad word about any of them. Meeting them, I could see exactly what she was talking about. They’re exactly like she described, to a T. Whether we get to know them or not is up to you, but the option is there.”
I nod my head against his chest as I struggle to wrap my mind around everything. He’s right; I need to focus on my three new brothers, not the man who almost destroyed them all.
Sniffing, I pull back and look up at Dillon in confusion as something dawns on me. “Why do you smell like Minnie?”
“I… I don’t… what?” Shaking his head, he looks away and his eyes dart around the room. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insists.
He’s lying to me and I know it. I can smell her perfume on his shirt, the light scent that belongs to her, and I know for damn sure my brother would never let anyone else who smells even a little bit like her get close enough to him to have left a trace of perfume. No, my brother steers clear of any woman who reminds him of Dominique Hart in any way, shape, or form. He hugged her at some point today, I’m sure of it.
Stiffening, I stare up at him as I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hands. “Why are you lying to me?”
He swallows nervously as his eyes look anywhere in the room but at me. This is his busted face, but I don’t get what he feels caught in. Suddenly it hits me like a ton of bricks; he didn’t just hug her. He had sex with her!
“You totally had sex with her, you freak! Oh my God! You had sex with Minnie, you had sex with Minnie!”
He blushes to the roots of his hair as he covers his eyes with his hand and shakes his head. “Oh my God, Lee…stop! I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing…this might have been a one-time thing.”
Sometimes I want to box my brother’s ears because he is such a stubborn ass that it makes me nuts.
“Really? A one-time thing…with Minnie,” I say dryly. “You can sell crazy somewhere else, asshole. You’ve been in love with her for years and I highly doubt doing the mattress mambo one afternoon cured you of it. If anything, you’re probably in deeper than ever.”
He looks uncomfortable as he rubs the back of his neck. “Ugh. You’re killing me right now. Can we just focus on the fact we have three new brothers? What do you want to do about this? Should I set up a meeting, or do you need time to think about it?”
It’s a no-brainer for me. If I didn’t know how much Dominique loved her family, I might be hesitant to meet these three men, but Dillon is right. Because of her we know, for sure, they are stand-up guys. Plus…it’s going to mean Dillon and Dominique will be seeing a lot more of each other. This could be the answer to my prayers.
“I’m in. Set up a meeting.”