by Selena Kitt
“Something like that.” Tyler’s mouth pressed into a thin line as he looked at me, contemplating.
“Really?” Now I felt awful. “Oh crap. Tyler, I didn’t mean… what is it? You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to. I didn’t know. I was just… apparently, I was just opening my mouth, so I could insert my foot.”
“Nah.” He smiled, kissed me, and rolled to his back with a little sigh, closing his eyes. I looked at him for a moment, wondering if he was going to tell me more, debating on whether or not I should ask. His breathing became deeper, more even, and I thought he’d fallen asleep when he said something else.
“I just don’t get it?” Tyler mumbled. He might be talking, but he wasn’t talking to me, not anymore. “How many damned times has Rob told me to be careful? To never, ever take chances. I just don’t get it…”
“Don’t get what?” I blinked at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes remained closed.
Obviously, Rob knew, whatever this thing was—the reason Tyler was so scared to get any woman pregnant. Tyler was so terrified of the prospect that, until today, he’d never once in his whole life had sex without wearing a condom. That was a pretty serious fear, as far as I was concerned. I mean, I wasn’t a total slut or anything, but I’d made out with enough guys to know that, in the heat of the moment, they kind of forgot about things like protection.
“Then he goes and gets her pregnant…” Tyler gave an incredulous snort, still talking but not opening his eyes. It was like he was having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there—or maybe just talking to himself. He definitely wasn’t addressing me anymore. Maybe jet lag was catching up to him and he was falling asleep, dream-talking. “What the hell, man? I guess I’m the only bad one. He’s Mr. Perfect—like his genes are exempt or something? But we’re the same so… I don’t know…”
“Ty?” I asked, after he’d been quiet for a moment, still trying to digest everything he’d just said. None of it made much sense.
My brother used to walk and talk in his sleep, and he’d said things like that, before. Once he came into my room early in the morning and asked me if I had my “underwater breathing apparatus.” I was still sleeping, and I woke up when he came in. I asked him what the hell he was talking about, but he just went back to his room and got back into bed and went to sleep. He didn’t remember any of it when I asked him about it in the morning. Maybe this was like that.
“Ty, are you awake?” I nudged him a little.
“What?” He grunted, his eyes popping open. He pulled me a little closer, a half-smile playing on his lips. “Damn, did I fall asleep? Sorry, baby.”
“I think so.” I bit my lip, trying to decide if I should tell him what he said, ask him about it. But I couldn’t resist. “Um Ty… what did you mean when you said you and Rob were the same?”
“What?” He ran a hand through his hair, which was beginning to dry. “What did I say?”
“We were talking about Sabrina getting pregnant,” I reminded him. At least, I hoped I was reminding him, that he remembered what he’d told me. “And you said Rob and you were the same. How? What did you mean?”
Tyler half-sat, leaning back against the headboard. I sat up on my elbow, looking at the stunned expression on his face. He looked like a man who’d just woken up to a big shock. My brother sometimes looked like that when someone accidentally woke him up from sleepwalking and sleep-talking. I put my hand on his bare abdomen, feeling the muscles there tense in response to my touch.
“What the hell did I say?” Tyler croaked. “Fuck. Katie. Fuck.”
“Just that… you didn’t want to have kids because…” I swallowed, confused by the look on his face. “Because there was some family… gene thing… but…”
I met his eyes, and I don’t know why it hadn’t dawned on me until that moment. His anger about Sabrina’s pregnancy, his confusion about Rob’s reaction, his own fear of getting a girl pregnant, and now, his reaction to whatever he thought he’d revealed to me while he was pondering out loud and half-asleep.
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone.” Tyler suddenly sounded much younger. He groaned and rolled to his side, pulling a pillow over his head. A muffled, “Fuck!” came out from underneath a pile of white down.
“Ty, it’s okay.” A growing suspicion was creeping up on me, but I almost didn’t even want to vocalize it. What had he really meant, when he said he and Rob were the same? I slipped a hand over his shoulder, thick with muscles, bunched up hard. “Baby, it’s okay. I don’t care, whatever it is. We don’t ever have to have kids. Or if we want to, someday, we can adopt. This is… it’s silly. Please. Look at me.”
“I lied to you.” Ty’s voice was still muffled. Then he threw off the pillow and it went sailing halfway across the room to land in the middle of the plush carpet. He sat up, the covers pooling in his lap, to look down at me where I was still stretched out on the bed.
“It’s okay,” I said again, wishing I’d never opened this can of worms. I was feeling a little nauseous now that they were all out and squirming around. “Really, just…”
“We’re brothers,” Tyler confessed.
It hung there between us in the silence.
We’re brothers.
I knew instantly it was true.
They looked nothing alike—Rob was dark-haired, Tyler dirty-blond—and yet, there were certain things that just gave it away if you knew. Their eyes. Their gait. Their laugh. That smirk. So similar. It could easily be explained, given they’d been roommates and bandmates for years, but…
“And Sarah…” Tyler wasn’t looking at me. He was looking down at the comforter. But he wasn’t done with his confession. “Is our sister.”
And then all the puzzle pieces fell into place.
Tyler had finally told me, during one of our Skype sessions while he was on tour in Europe, that he was a foster child, which is something that wasn’t public knowledge. That there were siblings out there he’d been separated from. But that was all I knew about his family, all he’d been willing to share.
I stared at him, not knowing what to say.
“You can’t tell him I told you.” Tyler’s eyes finally lifted to meet mine, and there was so much pain there, I could barely breathe. “Don’t tell Rob. Please, don’t tell Sabrina. Don’t tell anyone that you know. No one can know.”
“Okay,” I agreed softly, reaching for him. I was stunned by his news, but the look in his eyes was so desperate and full of pain, my own reaction took a backseat. “Come here. Just… come here.”
Tyler let me pull him close. He wrapped his arms around my middle, resting his cheek against my navel. His hair was still damp, and I stroked it, trying to ease his pain. I could imagine how much energy it took to keep a secret like that—and I thought I knew why he was keeping it, too. Trouble had an image to maintain, after all. Two brothers who had been separated in foster care and later found each other and became famous as part of the same band would certainly make excellent tabloid fodder. And Sarah… their sister!
They were probably trying to protect her, I thought. To give her as normal a life as possible, out of the spotlight, without having the added pressure of being a sibling to two rock stars. Or maybe there was something else. Their addictive personalities obviously ran in the family. Sarah’s drug of choice had been alcohol, Rob’s cocaine. They’d both shrugged those monkeys off and had been clean for years. But Tyler’s drug of choice—heroin, which had also become mine, by proxy—had been more of a gorilla than a monkey. He’d had a much harder time kicking the habit.
And his mother… hadn’t Tyler mentioned that his mother was a junkie? That was how he’d ended up in foster care—how all of them had ended up in foster care. I couldn’t even imagine.
Granted, I wasn’t the best sister in the world, and my older brother annoyed me more than most people, but I couldn’t imagine being separated from him. To be forced to live with some other family—a bunch of other families, according to Tyler�
��and not see him again until we were grown?
What did that do to a person?
“Is it the addiction?” I asked softly, trying to smooth the lines from Tyler’s scrunched forehead with my fingers.
It made the most sense—something that was passed on genetically, that might affect future generations. Considering their mother had been a junkie, and all three of the kids had substance abuse issues, I supposed it was a real fear.
“Is that what you don’t want to pass on?”
He gave a little laugh. “I wish.”
My breath caught. That wasn’t it, then? What could it possibly be?
“I’m sorry, Katie.” He gave a sigh, sounding like the weight of the world was pressing down on him. “I shouldn’t ever have dragged you into this mess. It’s so fucked up. I’m so fucked up.”
“No, you’re not,” I protested, pressing my fingers to his lips to keep him from saying any more. “I’m not mad you didn’t tell me. I get it.”
Okay, I was a little mad. Not mad, exactly, but maybe a little hurt. I wondered how many people knew. Probably only the people closest to the band. Did the rest of band know? If they were really trying to keep it secret—and clearly, they’d managed it this long—they would tell as few people as possible.
Then I wondered if Sabrina knew. Had Rob told her? Did I dare ask? But I’d promised Tyler I wouldn’t tell anyone, didn’t I?
“No, you don’t,” Tyler insisted. “You have no fucking idea. And neither does Sabrina. Rob shouldn’t have ever divorced Catherine. As fucked up as that was, man, at least she knew…”
“Knew what?”
“What she was getting into.”
“Ty…” I blinked at him, then shook my head. How bad could it be, whatever it was? Things made more sense, now that I knew Rob, Tyler and Sarah were related—but in a way, they made even less sense. “What are you talking about? I feel like you’re talking in riddles.”
“I can’t tell you.” Tyler’s voice was hoarse, pained.
“But you already did,” I said. “I get it—Rob and Sarah were put in foster care, like you. And you obviously found each other, but you don’t want anyone to know because…”
My voice trailed off, and I saw it in his eyes. He’d let that secret slip, but that wasn’t the only thing he was keeping from me. And whatever else there was to tell, I knew, he wasn’t going to be so forthcoming.
“I’m sorry, Katie.” He swallowed. “I just can’t… tell you… everything…”
“Can’t or won’t?” I whispered, feeling my chin quiver. He didn’t say anything. Just stared up at the ceiling. “Ty?”
He put an arm over his eyes, turning his head away, and that caused me more pain than I could even say. I didn’t know if he couldn’t, or just wouldn’t, but the fact that he would hide something from me now, after everything we’d been through together, just crushed me.
I couldn’t let him see me cry.
“Katie!”
He called after me, but I was already in the bathroom, locking the door behind me. Still naked, I sat on the closed toilet lid and shivered. The room was still warm from our shower, but I felt cold all over. I stared at the closed bathroom door, too stunned to move.
Part of me wanted to run back out there, put my arms around Ty, and tell him that it didn’t matter. The secrets, whatever they were, wouldn’t come between us. Because I loved him, more than anything or anyone, and whatever pain he was in—and I knew he was, had known all along, just how broken he was inside, even if I didn’t know why—we could bear it together.
Another part of me wanted to fix it. Wanted to demand answers, so I could find solutions. Whatever he was keeping from me, if it was a secret even bigger than the one he was keeping about his siblings, had to be eating him up inside. It was rotting in there, festering, and nothing would help until we cleaned out the wound.
I sat there, fighting with these two parts of myself, a third part of me wishing, hoping, waiting for him to knock on the door, to come after me. Maybe then we could talk, we could bridge this sudden distance between us.
But there was nothing. So, I did nothing.
I just put my face in my hands and cried as silently as I could manage.
Chapter Three
When I couldn’t stand it anymore and peeked out the bathroom door, he was gone. My heart sank. On the one hand, I could have kicked myself for pushing him. On the other, he had been keeping secrets all this time, not telling me things, and we both knew how damaging that was to both relationships and recovery.
But now that I knew—Rob and Tyler were brothers, and Sarah was their little sister—things made so much more sense. Sarah’s presence in their life had been explained to me, by Tyler, by Rob, by Sarah herself, but none of it had really clicked until I knew they were actually related.
Because even while I understood how close you could get to someone in recovery, the idea that über rock star Rob Burns would invite a young woman like Sarah to live in his house, with no ulterior motives, still seemed out of the realm of believability for me.
I’d gone along with it a little more when Sarah told me she was a lesbian, but still.
Now, though. Now it made so much sense. She really was their little sister, and Rob had united his siblings under one roof. My God, how far they’d all come. And how far they had left to go…
Because Tyler was still struggling with his recovery. And he was still being forced to keep secrets. They all were. And I couldn’t understand why. What I did know was that, whatever it was Tyler felt he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me, was eating him up inside. I wanted to go to him and demand that he tell me. Not for my sake, but for his.
But I knew better. If I did that, he would just clam up even more.
He’d been home all of an hour and we were already fighting.
Well, not fighting exactly… but we weren’t in bed together making love, which is what we should definitely be doing. Catching up, laughing, kissing, getting as close as we possibly could after being apart for so long. That’s what I wanted, what I’d hoped for. We’d come together so easily, like we’d never even been apart, and then…
I heard something outside and threw on a long t-shirt before going over to the sliding door to investigate. Down below, Sarah and Tyler were in the swimming pool. I leaned on the railing of the balcony, watching them horsing around for a moment, feeling a little sad and out of place. What was I doing here? Did I even belong here?
Tyler had said something that had shocked me. Not the thing about his siblings—that had been surprising, but somehow it had made everything else make sense. No, the thing he’d said about Rob staying married to Catherine. Because she knew…
What did she know?
Some deep, dark secret about their past? Something Tyler wasn’t willing to tell me? Something even Sabrina didn’t know? Or was it just that Catherine knew about their connection, about the fact that the three of them were siblings who had been taken from their drug-addicted mother and split up for years in foster care?
I was still pondering this question when Sarah spotted me and waved.
“Katie! Are you done with your nap? Want to come for a swim?”
I waved back, offering her what I hoped looked like a genuine smile.
“I thought you were napping,” I called back.
“Tyler dragged me into the pool.” She laughed.
“Lies!” Tyler protested, splashing his sister. Watching them together now, I could see it, could feel it. They had a closeness I shared with my own brother, something intangible but undeniable. It was the bond of blood.
“Come on, Katie,” Sarah insisted. “I miss you.”
“Yeah, come on, Katie,” Tyler agreed, tipping back to float, face-up in the water, his gaze meeting mine. There was a softness there, a longing, which went straight to my core. “We miss you.”
I couldn’t say no to him. I just couldn’t.
“I’ll be right down.”
I went back insi
de and shut the door behind me, slipping into my red bikini in the bathroom. I took a look at myself in the mirror, brushing my hair, which was now almost dry and would get wet again after I went swimming. I’d have to take yet another shower, I realized, before dinner.
Thinking about a shower made me remember Tyler surprising me, coming home a day early, just because he couldn’t stay away another minute. And what had I done? I’d started an argument about some hypothetical situation, had pushed him into a corner, made him confess something he clearly hadn’t been ready to reveal.
While I was hurt that he hadn’t told me, I also knew he must have a good reason. Whatever secrets he was keeping, I knew he wasn’t doing it because he didn’t love me. If anything, the opposite was true. And I knew, too, he would tell me, in time. In his own time. I’d just have to be patient.
Which wasn’t, I had to admit, my strong suit.
But Tyler was down there, and he’d asked for me. It hadn’t just been Sarah asking me to come down and swim. Tyler wanted me, too.
Still wanted me.
That’s all I really needed to know. The only thing, in the end, which was important. I wasn’t willing to risk us, what we had together. The last time I’d had to remain strong—when I refused Tyler’s too-soon proposal of marriage and invitation to go with him on the European tour, after we’d both gone through separate rehabs—had nearly killed me.
I couldn’t do it again.
My therapist’s voice kept going through my head. Make better choices. Smart choices, Katie. Smart choices. What was the smart choice here? Should I wait for Tyler to come to me, to tell me the truth? Should I demand the truth? Should I refuse to let it go? Should I just wait and hope it would all work out?
I had no idea what the smart choice was here.
You’re overthinking this. Who are you—Sabrina? That voice in my head made me smile. A little bit of the old pre-addiction, pre-rehab Katie shining through. The girl who’d jumped at the chance to get on a tour bus with her favorite rock band. That girl was still in there, a part of me.
