Heart & Soul

by Nicole Williams

  He shifted, clearly uncomfortable. Whether that was from his confession or having to live with bailing on a job before it was done, I knew I had to ease whatever was weighing him down. I’d never been able to just watch one of the brothers suffer. They were older and they were men, but I possessed just as much, if not more, of a protective nature over them.

  I gave a shrug. “But you knew how much I couldn’t wait to see you and that if you didn’t get here soon, I would have saddled up Dark Horse and gone out looking for you. Then I probably would have wound up falling off and getting stampeded by three thousand pissed off mares with beautifully braided hair.” His smile became less Conn’s and more his. I let out the breath I’d been holding. “So really, you weren’t thinking of your own best interest but mine.”

  Chance stepped toward me. “Twisting my words. Making me out to be this great, selfless guy. Bossing me around at the same time you mother me. God, I’ve missed you.”

  He’d just slung his arm around my shoulders and was leading me into the house to finally make it to dinner when a shadow dodged in front of us.

  “Aren’t family reunions just the best thing since having a serious thing for your adopted brother?” Conn’s arms spread across the doorway to block our path, but had Chance wanted to get past him, he would have had no problem doing so.

  But Chance paused beside me, giving Conn a captive audience. Why Chance had suffered Conn as long as he had, I didn’t know. I supposed it was for the same reason I had—when I was sure Conn didn’t have a single redeeming quality and was prepared to wash my hands of him for good, redemption showed up at the last possible second. It had happened so many times I’d started to wonder if that was yet another calculated move in the man’s game of manipulation.

  “Would you please just hurry and drink yourself into a stupor already?” I waved at the tequila bottle still clutched in his hand. It was down to the halfway mark, but putting him into a stupor would take the rest of that half and some of another bottle if he was still the experienced drinker I remembered. “This whole dark act is getting old and boring, Conn. Find another one.”

  With the light of the foyer streaming behind him, I could see him better, but his look was nothing I’d never seen before. Whether it was navy or steel or black, he was always dressed head to toe in something dark. You know, in case the pissed-off-at-the-world expression didn’t get the message across. His dark hair had grown long enough that he could tuck it behind his ears, which he didn’t because he preferred a wild mess falling in chunks across his face and forehead. His eyes matched the whole wild theme, perhaps being the example of what the rest of him should aspire to. He was still a good-looking son of a bitch, and he was more aware of his advantageous genetic disposition than any other man out there.

  I wanted to slap him. I wanted to kiss him.

  Shit!

  I backed into Chance, somehow hoping he’d protect me from Conn . . . or more like protect me from myself. Conn was a black hole, a place I’d never come back from if I let him consume any more of me. I’d known that for a long time, so where the urge to love him came from I didn’t know, but I would have paid in blood and limbs to have it cut away once and for all.

  “We’re heading to dinner. Why don’t you join us?” Chance’s ever-calm voice settled the charged air.

  Conn’s smirk leapt into place. “Tell you what, I’ll come to dinner with you guys when that bastard known as my father chokes on his pureed venison and puts himself out of his and our misery.”

  “Conn,” I hissed, back to wanting to slap him. That should have been a measured improvement over wanting to kiss him, but the less emotion I felt about Conn, the better. No emotion would have been the best.

  “We’ll take that as a no. Okay. I’ll let Mrs. Baker know to save you a plate.” Chance squeezed my shoulders and steered me back toward the door, but all that did was make Conn bolster himself in the doorway even more.

  “Can we get by please?” My blood was boiling.

  “Sure.” Conn butted his shoulder into the doorway and crossed his ankles. “When I’m ready to let you pass.”

  “There’re a few dozen ways to get inside, Conn. You don’t want to let us in this one? No problem. We’ll take the back door or climb through a window. You want to police this door, knock yourself out.” Chance spun me around and was guiding me down the stairs when Conn’s haunting laugh filled the night.

  “You finally moved on, did you, Scout? From the piece-of-shit brother to the one who shits gold, according to dear old dad.”

  Chance’s hands stiffened on my shoulders, but they were still nowhere close to as tight as my hands balling at my sides.

  “There was nothing to move on from,” I said. “Get over yourself.”

  “Oh, please, don’t play it down now. I thought our twenties were all about accepting who we are and who we were and getting all Zen with it and shit.” Conn paused long enough to take another swallow from his bottle. “First it was me you were all hot for, and now you’re moving on to another Armstrong brother. I’m not judging—Chance deserves a turn. He’s the one destined to save the world, after all. He might as well enjoy the spoils of it.”

  Impulse led me toward Conn, but Chance helped stall my impulse until reason had a chance to catch up.

  “Don’t,” he whispered, bracing his hands on my shoulders to keep me from lunging up the stairs at the man smiling at me as though this was the most amusing game he’d ever played. “It’s what he wants. Don’t give it to him.”

  Chance lowered his head until his eyes were level with mine. A second later, I was calm, and another after that, I was heading back down the stairs with Chance. I’d successfully shrugged off Conn’s words.

  “Good-bye, Conn,” was all I said as we walked away.

  “Do you actually mean it this time? Or should I hold my breath for another seven years?”

  I bristled, but I kept walking thanks to Chance steering me away from Conn. “Yeah, you do that. Hold your breath for seven years. Then I won’t have to stay away from three people I care about because one person is a total jackass.”

  “Do you think that if you say that enough times, you’ll actually believe it?” Conn asked. “Because, Scout, come on. If I slipped you the key to my bedroom right this minute, you and I both know you’d be wet and naked between my sheets before Chance could take a swing at me for disrespecting a woman.”

  This time, it was Chance who broke to a stop, creating a cloud of dust around our feet. He turned toward Conn. “You don’t want to be here. You’ve made that clear from the moment you showed up. So why don’t you leave? You’ll be happier, and I think everyone else will be too.”

  “I know everyone else will be,” I mumbled, grabbing Chance’s hand in case he decided to charge Conn. Chance was the least violent person I knew, but nothing about this night had followed the theme of normal.

  “Nah, I’m having too much fun here. I think I’ll stay a while. Besides, I only just got here.” Conn’s last couple words echoed in his bottle.

  “I think you should leave,” Chance said in a level voice.

  “What are you going to do if I don’t, brother? Hog-tie me, throw me in the back of your piece-of-shit truck, and drive me all the way back to California? Maybe kick my ass until you’ve broken a few bones? Or strap a couple cinder blocks to my feet and toss me into Falcon Lake?”

  Conn was an outline in the doorway. From the yard, for the first time in my life, he looked so small and insignificant it seemed I could squish him between my thumb and index finger.

  Chance shook his head. “There’s nothing worse I can do to you, Conn, than what you’ve already done to yourself.”

  For a moment, it was quiet. Just when I started to believe those were the words that would shut Conn up, I was reminded that nothing would ever shut Conn Armstrong up.

  “That was cold, brother,” he called after us. “I thought you were supposed to be the nice one.”

  We had rounde
d the side of the house, out of Conn’s hearing range, when Chance bumped his shoulder to mine. “I am the nice one. If I was more like him, he’d be choking on his front teeth right now.”

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