“Just spit it out,” Leandra sighs. “Luna and I have business to talk about.”
“Okay. Well, you know Tor’s the older brother, by only a couple of minutes, mind you. And we look similar, but we’re different. So different. I’m the joker, and everyone is always telling me to be serious. And by telling, I mean more like begging, and by begging, I mean threatening…”
“Tay, come on,” Leandra huffs. “I said you could have five minutes.”
“I haven’t exceeded five minutes! Would you hold your asses? I mean horses.”
Leandra scowls, and Taylen wrinkles his nose at his sister. They both turn back to me. It’s a little unnerving, getting the Cromwell staredown. And this is times two.
Taylen continues, despite his obvious desire to hold things up for his sister just to be an annoying big brother in any way he can. “I wanted to say that Toren is the exact opposite. You know that I’m sure. You had the bad luck—oomph!” He grunts as Leandra steps hard on his toes. “You dated him, so you know. All jokes aside, he’s always been too serious. After our dad left, he thought of himself as the man of the house, and he wanted to take care of everyone. Me, our mom, Leandra.”
“That’s true,” Leandra says, nodding at her brother’s statement. “Toren was like the dad I never had. And he’s always, always been too serious. He handles us all as his family, but he hardly ever has any jokes or humor of his own. He’s not the oldest in the family, but you’d think he was by the way he acts. He always tried to get us all to see reason, and he was the mediator when we needed it. I always just thought he was quiet, but then I realized he has this internal thing that needs looking at.”
“You mean his brain,” Taylen fills in dryly. “Something happened to him when my dad left. He’s been trying his whole life to fill a role he should never have had to fill. No one asked him to do it, to take care of all of us, but he did. He never got a chance to be a kid, and he grew up way too fast.”
Leandra nods emphatically. Her platinum ponytail is tied high, and it swings around like a whip at the back of her head. “He deserves to have someone care about him.”
“But he won’t let anyone do that for him. He pushed you away on purpose. I don’t know if he thinks he’s not good enough, too tough, or if he’s scared, or whatever it is, but we both know our brother is lonely. At Ash’s house, it was the first time I’ve seen him truly come out of his Toren shell. The Toren shell is very impenetrable. It’s made of iron, sharp scales, bulletproof stuff, and maybe titanium too. But Milo is going to change him, and he’s going to make Toren a better person. Now Toren is a dad for real. Maybe he can learn that being wise and mature doesn’t always mean being so strict with himself, and he can learn how to have fun.”
“Yeah, we’d really like to thank you for…for…I don’t know. Everything,” Leandra says. She swipes at her eyes, and now I have a big burning lump stuck in my throat too.
“We’d like to thank you for giving birth. For your ovaries and your womb and…ouch! Dang it, Leandra! Stop stomping on my toes!”
Leandra shakes her head. “Men,” she sighs. “What he wants to say is thank you for giving my brother a second chance, a chance to be a dad. You didn’t have to.”
“You could have told him to go fly a kite straight up his ass end.”
“Taylen!”
“What?”
I rest my hands on the counter where I’m standing because I don’t know what to do with them, and maybe I need the support. My eyes are stinging rather potently now.
“At Ash’s house, I told you that my brother was lonely. Well, he was. The thing is, even with us and with Ash and Kirian, I think he’s always been lonely. None of us could ever reach him. He needed something to jolt him awake. He might be thirty-four, but it was the first time I saw my brother truly happy. It was the first time I saw him act like a kid. I can promise you that no matter what happens this time, he’s not going to run away. He’ll always be there for Milo. If you…if you ever want him to be there for you too, as a friend, as Milo’s mom, or as more, he will be. I just know it.”
“We made this pact…ouch! LEANDRA!”
Leandra shoots her brother a murderous look. “We’re not supposed to talk about it with outsiders,” she hisses.
“She’s not an outsider! She’s part of the family.”