Page 52 of Guitars and Cages

I gave him a half-assed smile. “It wasn’t over some chick. Damn, you should know me better than that. It was just me—my head was in the wrong place, and I cut so I could feel something besides what I was feeling.”

“That was your problem right there.”

“What?”

“Feeling,” he barked. “You get to feeling, and then you screw up the way you think, and then you do stupid shit like carving the crap outta yourself and ending up in the hospital...”

I narrowed my eyes, studying the way his didn’t meet mine. “Or hooking up with a married chick for longer than a night or two?”

He looked at me then, his eyes wide and startled.

“So how long were you seeing her?”

He blinked. It was one of the few times in my life I’d seen my brother completely off guard. “Since the first time I went down there.”

Now it was my turn to go all wide-eyed, and I’m sure my jaw looked like it had hit the floor. “That was, like, three years ago, man!”

“No shit.”

“But...but...”

This was too much. I mean, here was my brother, the one who taught me damn near everything I knew about hooking up and walking away, and he was claiming to have been in a three-year relationship with a married woman. Oh, holy shit, this was almost surreal.

He pushed some food around on his plate, stabbed some steak and broccoli, and then took his time chewing. “I never meant for it to go on the way it did. I’d fully intended to screw her once, and then be on my way. But, I don’t know, it was odd—we lay there talking afterward, and I… I guess I found that I liked talking to her. A couple nights later I went back again, and again. Her old man was in jail even then, and, well, she was lonely and I was bored. She’d cook for me, we’d spend time together, actually go out and do things, and I... I took care of things around her place so she didn’t have to work; she could spend all her time with me.”

“I take it she and her husband didn’t have any kids.”

“Oh, hell no. There’s no way I’d have spent so much time with her with a kid underfoot. I mean, they’re fine in small doses, but three years, man, the little brats would have driven me crazy.”

I laughed then. Same old Cole, at least in that. He was the one who’d helped me get as far away from Eve as possible when she’d sprung the whole “You’re gonna be a dad” thing on me.

“So, did you love her?” I finally asked.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, turning and looking out the window. All the cockiness and arrogance was gone from his voice now. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, it sucks that I had to leave; I wasn’t ready to leave her yet. You’d think after three years I’d have been more than ready to get the hell out of there, but I don’t know, I already sort of...miss her.”

I shook my head at him, wanting to laugh and yell. “And you were lecturing me on attachments?”

“Hey, look, I just figured to, you know, warn you to be smarter than me. If you don’t get all entangled and attached there’s no fucked-up emotions to deal with.”

“Right...so then, why the hell did you stop taking your own advice?”

“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that a few times over the years, but never came up with a good answer.”

“So she’s why you didn’t wanna stay long when you’d come home. I wondered when you didn’t wanna head to Atlanta with me what the hell was so special about Mexico that you were forever in a rush to get back there. I figured it was the tequila and the whores.”

“It was always the tequila,” he said, laughing.

“Uh-huh, but it was more than the tequila, too, ya bastard. Did you at least manage to slip any of the good stuff past the border patrol?”

“Couple of bottles.”

“Then why the fuck ain’t we drinking them?”

“Because papa bear downstairs warned me against giving you any while you’re taking painkillers. Said he’d have my hide, and, since I like my hide intact, we can wait until you’re all healed.”

“Oh, come on, man, give me a break. I haven’t had a painkiller all day.”

“See, I’m not even home a day and you’re already trying to get me in trouble. Come on, Asher. You can wait, at least for a couple days, okay?”