Forever Yours (The Moreno Brothers 1.5)

“So you don’t even know how many uncles or aunts we have? We have cousins too, Sarah. Lots of them. You don’t know anything about them either?”

“No. Nothing.”

With all this thinking about having a dad and an actual sibling in her life now, Sarah hadn’t even thought beyond that and the fact that she might have cousins. Lots of them?

“Have you met any of them?” she asked curiously.

He shook his head. “No, uh, Omar said he doesn’t keep in touch with them except for the sister he moved in with for a while. But he said he could get me their info and stuff so I can contact them. Only once I found out I had a sister I said first things first. I need to meet Sarah before anyone else.”

That made Sarah smile. He brought his arms up placing his hands behind his head as he sat back giving her an excellent view of his flexed biceps and triceps and a curious view of his tattoos. “So when can I meet with you in person?”

That caught her off guard. Even with the tattoos and numerous scars—as they’d spoken longer she noticed more—he still seemed harmless even sweet in his own awkward way, but she’d been hoping to talk to him a few more times online before making any plans to meet. “Um, I, uh—”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be pushy.” He brought his arms in front of him, leaning on them again. “Omar said you want to take things slow. This has just been so painless and easy I guess I just jumped ahead of myself there. I can wait as long as you need me to.”

“It’s not that.” She stopped, unsure how to say she still hadn’t fully accepted that this was really happening. “Everything’s happened so fast. I just want to do this slowly.”

“I get it,” he said quickly. “It’s cool. I told you I’m not the most patient, but I’ll try to be. I promise. We can just do this until you’re ready. However long that is.”

It was an almost strange feeling hearing him say that. She knew he was talking about meeting as brother and sister, but it felt different. It felt as if maybe they were talking about something else, which was insane, so she shook it off and instead focused on how thankful she was that the chat had gone well—so well she could hardly believe when he mentioned that they’d been chatting for over two hours.

Her eyes were instantly on the corner of her monitor to confirm he wasn’t mistaken. “Oh wow. The time flew.”

“Yeah, it did,” he smiled. “Doesn’t mean we have to hang up unless you want to.”

Strangely, she didn’t. Before she could react to that last comment, he asked her a question that completely threw her. “Growing up, did you tell people your dad was in jail, or did you just say you never knew him?”

Sarah stared at him for a moment, a knot forming at her throat. “I didn’t,” she whispered then cleared her throat. “I didn’t know anything about him until just recently when he came looking for me. My mom kept it all from me. To protect me,” she added quickly. “All she told me growing up was that he’d never wanted anything to do with us. I didn’t really ask much.”

He was quiet for longer than he’d been the whole time they’d been chatting, and then finally he spoke again, changing the subject entirely, and told her about his stepsister. Even though she was a stepsister, he’d still had a sibling of sorts for at least a few years. Unreasonably, that made Sarah jealous. She’d grown up all alone, but at least he’d had a sister he’d grown up with, even if she wasn’t blood. That made her think of the next best thing she had, and she told him about Sydney. Curiously, this interested him quite a bit, and he asked a lot of questions. By the time they finished chatting, it had been nearly four hours, and she’d told him so much that when she hung up she wasn’t sure if she should be happy or worried.

Then it hit her. The entire time she’d been talking to him she completely forgot about her phone. Her mom should’ve been home by then, and she wasn’t. She rushed into her room, trying not to panic that maybe her mom had called to tell her something was wrong and she’d missed the calls because she’d left her phone in her purse in her room.

Pulling it out from where it was buried in her purse, she immediately saw all the missed calls and texts. “Shit,” she muttered, looking through her missed calls log.

She had several from Angel and one from Valerie but none from her mom. She clicked over to her texts and saw she did have one from her mom, so she clicked it immediately.

Running late. Lots of traffic. Stuck on the Cajon Pass. Don’t wait up, hon. I’ll call in a couple of hours.

It’d been sent a little over an hour ago. She frowned, but at the same time, she was relieved. The chat had gone on so long she’d completely forgotten about that dinner she’d planned on making. She went through the rest of her texts quickly. Valerie wanted to talk. Angel was wondering why she wasn’t answering and if everything was okay. She hit speed dial and called Angel, knowing he’d think it odd that she’d been chatting with Leonardo for over four hours. She had no choice but to just tell him the truth. She wasn’t about to start lying about this. And it stood to reason they’d have a lot to catch up on. There was no reason to.

She was still waiting for him to answer when the doorbell rang. She walked out into the front room and heard a phone ringing just outside the door, and then Angel answered. “Hold on,” she said, peeking out the front door window. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, swinging the door open for Angel, who stood on her porch with the phone to his ear.