Back To The Start Box Set: Five Full-Length Novels

by Aly Martinez

  A few people stopped to congratulate Till on his big win, but eventually, we made it back to the dressing room. My nerves calmed as soon as I saw Quarry sitting on a table in only a pair of boxing trunks. Slate was standing in front of him, taping up his hands.

  “That’s just gross. You have muscles!” I cried out teasingly.

  “You like what you see?” Quarry flexed his arm, showing off a tiny, yet totally defined, bicep.

  “Are you smuggling grapes, Q?” I joked, and his smile grew.

  “I could ask the same question to your bra,” he responded, and my mouth gaped open.

  “Hey!” Till and Slate scolded at the same time.

  “What?” he yelled innocently. “I was kidding. We were just joking around. Tell ’em, Eliza.”

  I was afraid that, if I spoke, the laughter I was desperately trying to suppress would leak out. “Yeah. Joking. Totally.”

  I bit my lip and turned to Till, who had his hands planted on his hips. Because I’d been fully expecting him to be pissed at Quarry, I was surprised to see that his shitty attitude was aimed at me.

  “What’s that look for?”

  His shoulders flexed as he cracked his neck. “I don’t want you talking to him anymore.”

  “And here we go,” Slate mumbled from across the room.

  “Uhh . . . who? Quarry?” I asked in shock.

  “Derrick. I don’t like him, and I sure as shit don’t want you anywhere near him.” He narrowed his eyes at me, taking me aback by this sudden attitude.

  It was unusual for Till to be an ass to me, but it wasn’t exactly an anomaly. I knew exactly how to handle him.

  I very calmly pasted on a patronizing smile. “Well, I didn’t know that, Till. Perhaps it would be easier if you made me a list of who I’m allowed to talk to,” I said condescendingly as I dug into my purse and pulled out a sketchpad. Dramatically, I licked the end of the pencil before poising it over the paper. “Or wait. A leash might be better for full control over who I’m near. I’m sure we could temporarily rig one up with a jump rope or something. Please just let me know what works best for you.” I popped an eyebrow and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Quarry told Slate as they started laughing behind me.

  “Don’t give me that shit, Doodle. I don’t like him. He’s a self-centered, arrogant prick. ”

  “Oh, well, you should have just said that, then. I already have one of those. I don’t need another,” I smarted off.

  “Burn!” Quarry whispered, but neither Till nor I shifted our focus.

  “Seriously?” He crossed his arms to match mine.

  “I don’t know. You tell me. Are you serious with this crap?”

  He sucked in a breath through his nose. It was angry going in, but he held it until he released it on a resigned sigh. “Look. I have never once asked you not to hang out with someone. Never. You make your own decisions about guys, and no matter how big of a douchebag they are, I keep my mouth shut. But I can’t bite my tongue here. I do not like that guy. It makes my skin crawl that you are even on his radar. We’re family, right? Well, family watches out for each other. So, Doodle, I’m asking you. Please. Stay. Away. From Derrick.”

  I held my attitude for a few seconds longer, but it wasn’t because I was still mad. Rather, if I spoke, I knew I’d start crying.

  We’re family.

  There was no way he could truly understand the depths of what those words meant to me. I swallowed hard, trying to force the emotions back, and for once, I actually succeeded.

  “Okay.”

  His head snapped back as if I had slapped him. “Um . . . okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay. If you had started with that explanation instead of being all bossy, this conversation could have been a whole lot shorter. I get it. You don’t like him. I’ll steer clear.”

  Till smiled, and it reflected on my own lips.

  “Besides I’m in a very committed relationship with Justin Timberlake right now.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.” He cupped the back of my neck and pulled me up against his chest.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him as his hand slid up and down my back.

  Till and I both knew we had a strange relationship. It was more than a friendship, but there wasn’t romance or sex. There was definitely love though. Immeasurable amounts of it. I knew that Till had this grand fantasy about me. But what he didn’t realize was all that he gave me in return. He was the only thing I’d ever had that I honestly thought I couldn’t live without. Till Page was my soulmate on every level. I’d accepted that it didn’t have to be sexual between us. Truth be told, I’d have been happy to sit in an empty room for the rest of my life as long as he was sitting beside me.

  But it was moments like those, when his arms were protectively folded around me, and his heart beat a strong rhythm in my ear, that made me want more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Eliza

  “I NEED TILL TO SIGN this paper for school,” Quarry said as I opened the door.

  “Uh, okay? He’s not here.”

  “Really? His truck is here.”

  I glanced out into the parking lot, and sure enough, Till’s truck was parked front and center. “I haven’t seen him at all today, actually.”

  “Well, he wasn’t at the gym this afternoon either. Slate drove us home.”

  “And you checked his room?”

  “No. But I didn’t hear him come in. He must have snuck past.”

  I headed back to my room. “Till?” I yelled at the ceiling. But I didn’t get a response. “Till!” I yelled again.

  “Yeah.”

  I heard his voice, but it wasn’t coming from the ceiling. “Where are you?” I looked around my room.

  “Purgatory,” he slurred then began to laugh.

  I traced his voice to the window, but when I lifted it, I didn’t see him anywhere. “Till?” I called again, getting frustrated.

  “Jesus. Stop calling my name.”

  I leaned outside and found him sitting on the ground with his back against the brick exterior of the building. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, and a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag was at his side.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I told you. I’m sitting in purgatory. And they say I’m the one going deaf.”

  “Oh, well, that clears things up,” I said sarcastically. “Quarry was looking for you.”

  “Fuck.” His voice broke as he began frantically scrubbing his face with his hands.

  His reaction instantly worried me.

  “Give me a second. I’m coming out.” I shut the window and ran back to the door, where Quarry was still waiting. “I found him. He’ll be up later.”

  “Can you ask him to sign this? I’m about to go to bed.”

  “Um . . .” I responded, remembering the way Till had slurred his words and the bottle at his side. “Here.” I snatched the pen and paper from his hand. “Does your mom spell her name with ‘ie’ or ‘y’?”

  “‘Ie.’”

  I scribbled “Debbie Page” across the paper and handed it back.

  “Hey, thanks!” He smiled and dashed away.

  I made a mental note to discuss the big, red F on the test I’d just signed later, but for now, I needed to see what the hell was going on with his brother. I snagged one of my many sketchpads off the coffee table and walked around the side of my building.

  “Doodle!” Till yelled in greeting as soon as he saw me.

  I kicked the sole of his boot. “Scoot over, drunky.”

  “You want some?” He lifted the brown bag.

  “Um. Hell yeah!”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” He smiled and passed me what I discovered was beer.

  I immediately poured its warm contents into the grass before handing it back empty.

  “Not cool, Doodle. Not. Cool.”

  “Oh, whatever. You don’t even drink!”

>   “I know, because that shit is expensive, and you just wasted it!”

  I shrugged. “I can live with that. Now, scoot.”

  “Okay, but you don’t belong in purgatory, so you can only stay for a few minutes.”

  “Why exactly is the flowerbed under my window purgatory?” I asked as he lazily moved over a few inches.

  Using a finger, he pointed over his head to my window. “Heaven.” Then he motioned to everything in front of us. “Hell.” And finally, he pointed to the dirt where he was sitting. “Purgatory.”

  I gave him a confused look that made him fall over in laughter. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at me or at his own joke. I’d never seen Till drunk before, but I knew right then I preferred him sober.

  I sat next to him and patted my lap and handed him the sketchpad. “Here. Hold this and lie down.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Look at you going all old school on me. You must be really worried,” he teased, but he didn’t waste any time getting situated so his head rested in my lap.

  It wasn’t the most ideal position, with his legs wedged crookedly between two of the overgrown bushes, but he didn’t complain. He opened the sketchpad and handed me the pencil.

  I began scratching his head with one hand and drawing his eyes with my other. I didn’t say anything for several minutes, and eventually, I felt his shoulders relax as he let out a content sigh.

  “I’m going to assume it didn’t go well at the doctor today,” I said quietly.

  His eyes snapped to mine. “What?”

  “I said, ‘I’m going to assume it didn’t go well at the doctor today’.”

  He slightly shook his head. “I’m still hearing at about seventy percent.”

  I stopped drawing and looked down at him. “That’s good, right? It’s only gone down, like, ten percent in six years. It’s fading slowly. That means you have years before you have any real issues, right?”

  “He couldn’t predict that. He said everyone’s different. Sometimes, it’s slow. Sometimes, it’s rapid.” He didn’t seem too thrilled, but I felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

  Later. We could deal with this later. Many, many years later.

  I went back to drawing in an attempt to downplay my enthusiasm. This should have been good news, but with his lips sealed tight, I couldn’t figure out what exactly was going on with him.

  “So, why were you drinking, then? I thought Slate had a strict no-drinking policy.”

  “That’s only for the kids. I’m twenty-one. He can’t stop me from having a drink if I want one. Besides, are you planning to rat me out?” He reached up and tugged on a piece of hair that had fallen free of my ponytail.

  “Maybe.” I shrugged, filling in his long, black eyelashes on the paper. “Now, tell me what’s really going on.”

  Till avoided my question by glancing down at the paper. “You always make me look like a chick when you draw my eyes.”

  “No, I don’t. And who said those were your eyes?”

  “Okay, then whose eyes are they?”

  “My ugly, old accounting teacher.”

  “Well, he has some seriously sexy eyes, then.”

  “She really does, doesn’t she?” I smirked, and Till burst out laughing.

  He suddenly sat up, causing my sketchpad to fall to the ground. His laughs were silenced as he dragged me onto his lap and buried his head in my neck.

  “Oh, God, Doodle.” The agony in his voice shredded me.

  “Talk to me,” I said louder than necessary since he wasn’t looking at me.

  “The doctor I saw today thinks it’s genetic,” he confessed against my neck. “He wants to test Flint and Quarry.”

  My stomach twisted.

  “What am I supposed to tell them? If they have this too . . . I . . . Fuck! I can’t do this.”

  “Okay. Let’s stop for a second.” I crawled off his lap so I could see him. “What exactly did the doctor say? He thinks it’s genetic, so he doesn’t know for sure?”

  “He’s pretty positive. He said he couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t fit into any one category of sensorineural hearing loss, so he’s assuming it was some combination that was passed down.”

  “All right. What did he say were the chances of Flint and Q having it? They haven’t shown any symptoms, have they? I mean, you were already at eighty percent by the time you were thirteen, right? Surely, we would have noticed something, at least in Flint. What type of test would he want to run on them? And when does he want to do it? The sooner the better, right?” If I just kept talking, I felt like I could sort it out. But the more questions I asked, the more it seemed to piss Till off.

  “I don’t know!” He jumped to his feet and drunkenly stumbled.

  “Well, let’s figure it out.”

  “Goddammit, I don’t know how to figure this out!” he shouted, startling me.

  “Hey! Don’t yell at me! I’m just trying to help.” I pushed to my feet and brushed the dirt off the back of my pants.

  “Well, you’re not. You’re making me feel stupid for not asking all that shit.” He shoved a hand through his hair.

  “I’m trying to figure out a way to fix this!”

  “You can’t fix this! No one can. They are either going deaf or they aren’t!”

  “Calm down and let’s—”

  “No. This is a fucking nightmare. I’m going to bed. I can’t do this.” He stormed off, tripping over the edge of the flowerbed.

  “Not a bad idea. Sleep that shit off,” I barked as he staggered away.

  “You ruined purgatory!” he yelled over his shoulder, and I rolled my eyes at his dramatics.

  Drunk Till was an ass.

  I walked back to my apartment, and I heard his feet clomping up the steps. I knew he wouldn’t want the boys to see him drunk, and as much as I wanted to stay pissed and not care, I still did. I went straight to my bedroom and dragged off my shoes. And after crawling into bed, I listened for Till to make his way to his room.

  Several minutes later, when I still hadn’t heard his door shut, I began to worry.

  “Till?” I called to the ceiling.

  “Yeah,” he replied, lifting my window open.

  “Shit!” I cried. “What is wrong with you? Why are you never where you are supposed to be tonight?” I shouted at him as I tried to slow my pulse.

  He folded his bulky body inside. As much I wanted to hold on to my anger, with his next words, Till Page robbed me of my God-given right as a woman to be mad at a stupid man.

  “Maybe I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

  “Maybe you’re drunk,” I snarked in order to hide the way my heart skipped.

  Throwing back the covers, I issued an unspoken invitation for him to join me. It wasn’t unusual for Till to hang out in bed with me. We would lie there late at night and talk about random shit. We didn’t exactly cuddle anymore, but he always found ways to touch me.

  “I’m sorry.” He kicked his shoes off the end of the bed, making it quite obvious that he was planning to stay for a while. “It’s just . . . I’m in over my head, Doodle.” He paused to cross his arms behind his head. “I want to give those boys so much more than we had growing up, but I just don’t have it to give.” He turned to look at me, and his eyes sparkled with desperation. “I want to be there for them, but in order to pay the rent and buy the shit they need for school, I have to work damn near twenty-four-seven. Then there’s the commitment at the gym. I love the way I feel inside that ring, but I guess I could give it up. We eat two meals a day there though. If we quit doing that, I’d have to pull more grocery money from the already negative bank account.

  “Then Quarry’s just starting to fit in at the gym, and he’s really showing talent. I’m not sure what would happen if I stopped showing up to train him every night. He’s still not sold on the work ethic Slate instills. Although, it’s been a month since he tried to skip school, so I guess that’s progress. And Flint . . .” He went silent. I had almost convinced
myself that he had fallen asleep when he boomed, “Christ, that kid is smart! I can’t pay for it, Doodle. All the after-school stuff he wants to do. And I mean the good stuff that parents pray their kids will be interested in. He’s a beast in the ring but equally as talented out of it. They’ve never had it easy, and now, they have to be tested to see if they are ultimately going to struggle for the rest of their lives. It’s just not fucking fair.”

  “Okay. First off, they already have more than we did by you caring enough to be freaking out about this right now.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Yes, you are. And that’s a good thing. We didn’t get that from our parents. I had you and you had me. That’s the way it’s always been. Well, now, Flint and Quarry have you, but guess what, they have me too. I can’t do much to help in the financial department, but I can pitch in with getting them to and from the gym to allow you some more time in the mornings or afternoons. Maybe you could pick up a few extra hours at the shop to help loosen things up.”

  He stared at me as I spoke, and I could see the weight lifting from his shoulders with every word. Yeah, I loved Till, and I had grown to love Flint and Quarry too, but my offer to help was completely selfish. He wasn’t alone in this. Because if he were, that would mean that I was alone too. I needed the Page boys far more than they needed me.

  Till did things a little differently that night. He started with the best.

  “I don’t deserve you.” He rolled over and pulled me into a hug. “You and those boys are all I have,” he whispered into my hair, and I melted against him.

  Then he pulled a better.

  “You know I love you, right? I don’t say it enough, but I do.”

  My response was muffled against his chest. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Good. Just checking.” He laughed and tickled my sides.

  I squirmed back to my side of the bed.

  “So, what do I do if they test positive? What if my worthless parents passed this shit down to all of us?”