“Did you stop letting him charge?”
“Nope.” Before I can respond, he keeps going. “Sometimes that ham sandwich is all he eats all day. How do I cut him off, Dom? He doesn’t ask for much. A drink and a sandwich sometimes. And he pays when he can.”
My heart tugs at the predicament. The hollowness in my stomach—from being hungry and scared and not seeing a clear way out after Mom’s death came a year after Dad’s—is never too far away. “I feel ya. Maybe think it through some between now and the loan going through and get a plan in place.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. This is either going to have to be a long-term, successful thing or a really expensive headache.”
His words spark something in my brain that I’ve been toying with for the past few months. Maybe it’s time to start looking at the HVAC job as a career, that I might be at the point in life where things just are the way they are. Go in all the way because . . . this is it.
I’ve always felt like something was going to change, that if I peddled along, busted my ass, kept going for long enough, eventually there would be a turning point. That things would get easier. That I’d get the stability and straightforward life I’d always craved.
Maybe that’s not true.
Maybe it’s always a struggle. Realization is starting to set in that maybe this life is my life. Whatever hopes I had of rising above my current situation, of starting my own business, of making something out of myself, isn’t really going to happen. Maybe the stars were just stacked against me from the night my inebriated father fucked my mother.
I’ve been considering I need to accept all this and move forward accordingly, being real with myself about what’s what. Before that can work its way into my psyche, my brother groans.
“Ryder is moving around. Shit.”
“So I have that to look forward to,” I say, half-kidding.
“You still want us? Look, Dom, if not it’s no big deal. We’ll figure—”
“Damn it. If I didn’t want you to come, I wouldn’t have offered.”
“You know I appreciate it, right?” he says. The relief is evident, lingering on the last note. “I’ll help out with the rent. With groceries. Whatever you want.”
“We’ll figure it out.” I look across the hall into the dark bathroom. “There’s a bed in the guest room. If you want to bring his kid bed with you, you can fit it in there. Or one of you can take the couch.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it all sorted.” He heaves another breath. “Did you mention it to Cam?”
Her face pops up in my mind and I fall back on my sheets, wishing she was lying a few inches over and waiting on me to end the call and curl up next to her to listen to her lecture me about the cut above my eye. “Yeah, I told her.”
“She okay with it?”
“It’s not her decision.”
“So that’s a no?”
“It’s a ‘I didn’t ask her opinion,’” I tell him. “Why would I? I fuck her sometimes. That’s it.”
“Oh, that’s it, huh?” His laugh makes me cringe. “I think not, little brother.”
“Okay. I fuck her often. Better?”
“Sure. If that makes you happy, I don’t give a shit. But I think it’s a little deeper than that.”
He waits for me to respond, but I don’t. Not immediately. I think about his question and how I can navigate these waters. Was my assessment of my relationship with Camilla accurate? Fuck no. But should it be? Definitely.
It’s my fault I see her so damn much. I can’t help myself. And as much as I’d like it to be just for the sex, even I know it’s not. That’s what fucks me—the non-fucking. That’s where I’m going to get so burned I’m afraid I’ll be unrecognizable.
“You know, it’s okay to actually feel something for someone, Dominic.”
“You’re using my whole name now. Is that some kind of hint that you mean business?”
“That’s my way of telling you to listen to me before you go messing up a lot of shit,” he sighs.
My abs strain as I sit back up, my eye starting to pulse like it’s swelling. “Look at me,” I laugh, “and look at her. I’m sitting here with the taste of blood in my mouth from the cut inside my lip, and she’s lying on some thread-count bullshit I don’t even understand. You don’t think this isn’t already messed up?”