So many nights she’d cried herself to sleep, not because she’d been ripped away from her family and trapped in hell, but because she was terrified that James had been too. She’d held her breath every time new workers were brought in to the dorm where she’d met Jace, terrified she’d see her brother among them.
They hugged her back when her breathing hitched and she turned to James once more.
“It was Uncle Rodger, wasn’t it?” James asked, point-blank. Just hearing that sick fuck’s name again made her knees wobble. “Wait, you don’t have to answer that ever and definitely not in front of everyone, if you don’t want to.”
Jace was there on one side and Nolan on the other, to prop her up before she could fall.
James waved them toward the couches and the rest of the crowd, who’d gone dead silent while they had their reunion. Laurel wanted to rip free of the helping hands surrounding her waist, but she was so damn tired. Not only because it was the wee hours of morning and had been a hell of a day, but because the weight of everything she’d lived through came crashing down on her along with the memories they dredged up.
For once, she felt like it might be okay to rest for a moment. Surrounded by people who were supposedly decent human beings, her entire being relaxed…just a little.
Laurel murmured her thanks when Jace and Nolan ushered her to a soft, clean sofa that probably cost more than a year of rent on her and Jace’s shabby apartment. She sank onto it and immediately thought it wouldn’t be any hardship if she had to sleep on it, like Jace had so recently threatened to do with their three-legged, pokey-springed knock-off of this cloud in the shape of a seat.
Bookended by them, she felt strong enough to have the difficult conversation she knew was coming. James drew an ottoman over and perched on it, his husband and wife taking a seat nearby. He leaned in, his hands held out to her. She gladly accepted them, happy to be connected to him in the simplest of ways.
“Yeah. It was him. And I was terrified—every fucking minute—that I was going to turn around and find you there too. That he’d do to you what he’d done to me and then sell you off when you’d gotten too old for his liking or decided to start fighting back.” Laurel hated to cry. Hadn’t done it in a long fucking time before that night, but if she wasn’t careful she was going to break down in front of all these outsiders and her brother, who was an odd mix of familiar and unknown.
“Kuttar bachcha,” the man sitting beside Sola grumbled. Laurel might not know whatever language he was cursing in, but she had no doubt that what he’d said wasn’t meant for polite company. That was okay, she hadn’t been delicate in a long damn time.
If that man was the Aarav who Nolan had been teasing Sola about in the car, Laurel figured Nolan was going to be a hundred bucks richer before too long. Sola raised her brow at him. Laurel thought maybe she might be realizing the guy wasn’t as cold and unflappable as she had imagined.
“Laurel, I’m so sorry.” James’s lower lip wobbled a bit like it had those times he’d fallen off his bike and she’d put Band-Aids on his scratches. “You have to believe me. The cops told us you’d run away. That you’d come back if you wanted to. I didn’t know, didn’t even guess, until it was far too late. You took such good care of me, protected me, I had no idea how bad things were. I never would have stopped looking for you.”
She squeezed his hands and looked dead in his eyes. “You were a kid, James. None of this is your fault.”
“It was never yours either,” Nolan said quietly, startling Laurel.
She almost argued, until she saw Jace’s stern glare daring her to when he’d often said the same. Hearing it and believing it were two different things. She was working on it, but she wasn’t quite there yet.
Instead, she shared something that none of them could argue with. “I never would have chosen to leave you behind. Not knowing what that monster was capable of and because…you were really the only true family I ever had. Mama, too, of course. But she was never around. You and me, though…we were always together. I would never have let that go without a fight.”
Tears tracked down James’s face. His husband and wife leaned in to console him even as Jace edged closer to her. She was surprised to see Nolan doing the same and even more shocked that his physical closeness, penning her in between him and Jace, didn’t disturb her. She didn’t usually like people infringing on her personal space.
Somehow, though, being sandwiched between these two particular men made her feel safe and protected during one of the most vulnerable moments of her life.
“I feel like such a shit. I was mad at you for a while, because you’d tossed me aside and abandoned me. I thought you must not have loved me like I thought. And all that time you were… I can’t even think about it.” He sobbed for them both.
“If it had to be one of us, I’m glad it was me.” She wasn’t lying either. James was softer than her. He might have given up, been broken like she’d nearly been so many times. She would gladly do it again to know that he’d been safe and happy and untouched.
“I love you, Laurel.” James hugged her again. “Even when I was stupid and angry, that never stopped. I’m so glad to have you back.”
“I love you too.” It had been a lifetime since she’d uttered those words, never as an adult. Jace stiffened a bit beside her. She glanced over at him, wondering about the pained expression that flashed across his face before she returned her focus to James.
Had she hurt Jace by hiding the truth? By being too scared to admit that she cared for him too—as more than a friend or roommate or fellow survivor?
She’d have to fix that later.
For now, it unwound something deep inside her that her brother accepted her, without judgment, even having some idea of what she’d been forced to do. Maybe she was worthy of more than she thought.
“I hope that we can get to know each other again.” Laurel stroked James’s hair like she had those nights when he couldn’t sleep and their mom worked the late shift, cleaning office buildings to make ends meet. “And Mom?”
She held her breath.
James shook his head once. “She had a heart attack in her sleep when I was seventeen. I know she wasn’t around much, but it was because she thought providing was the best way to take care of us, and I think even though she didn’t always know how to show it, she loved us very much. I’m pretty sure she suspected what her brother had done. After the police told us you weren’t likely coming back and they were closing the case, we moved out to the suburbs where I met Neil and the rest of my crew. But she was never really the same again. As far as I know she never talked to that bastard again, and I think her heart was always broken after that. She went steadily downhill, fading away until one day she was just gone.”
“So long ago,” Laurel whispered, the loss fresh to her even if it was ancient history to James.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“All this time I was afraid to search for you. I tried the old phone number once, a million years ago, and was so relieved when the recording said it had been disconnected. Didn’t know what I would say, if I looked you two up. Draven told me no one gave a damn since no one ever came looking for me. It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not when you’re in that environment. Everything is one giant mind fuck. Besides, he threatened to kill us if we ever talked about where we’d been after he let us out.”