“I was worried you were dead."

Will laughed in his own reserved way. “Sorry I haven’t called in so long, but you know how it is.”

I didn't though. Hearing the sound of his voice kind of made me a little bit mad since it'd been months from the last time I'd heard from him. Months! It wasn't like I emailed him daily, or asked for him to call me weekly, but the length of multiple months crossed the line—and it pissed me off.

“How you been? How’s work? Austin okay?” my little brother asked quickly.

My stomach churned in frustration. So he'd read my emails and just decided not to write me back?

I had to hold back the shuddering sigh that had built up in my chest at the realization and calm down. "Pretty good. You got my emails I guess?”

Will paused before making a grumbling noise in his throat. “I read them before I called. I figured I’d get all caught up so we wouldn’t waste time."

Maybe I was just being too sensitive but his comment about wasting time scratched at me. Like writing me an email or talking to me for five minutes longer once every other month was a hassle. Like what Sonny was doing—taking time off from work and traveling around the country—wasn't a waste in its own way. I bit back the smart ass comment that floated into my vocal chords and tried to appreciate the fact that I had him on the phone finally.

“Are you still staying with Sonny?”

I needed to quit being a baby. “I was, but he had to take a little vacation so I'm staying with a friend until he comes back," I explained to him vaguely, suddenly not in the mood to really share with him more than I needed to. What was the point? Why had I been fighting Will growing up and moving on with his life, so much?

Will knew even less about the Widows than I did. Growing up, it was as if he'd just cut our dad out of his memory and life. Existing without him, while I'd been the one stuck with the memories and the wishes.

"Huh. I have leave coming up in a couple of months, are you gonna stay there?"

Where the hell else would I go? "I'll be here."

The awkward silence that followed left me feeling weird. Since when had talking to Will been a strain? Was this what Sonny and I sounded like when we talked on the phone? No way. Speaking of Sonny... "Hey, umm..." I really didn't want to tell him. A part of me genuinely didn't think he'd care but that was the difference between us again. Will liked Sonny enough but then again, did he even like me now? I didn't want to answer that.

The point was, he deserved to know so that it wouldn't the same situation I found myself in with Sonny. "Dad had another kid." Shit. That wasn't exactly the way I wanted to blurt it out.

The disheartened, uninterested "Oh," confirmed that my brother didn't give a crap. “That's... cool."

Yeah, he didn't care. At all.

When he immediately started talking again, I knew I'd messed up. I'd pushed too far. He'd done the same thing when we were younger and I thought he wanted to talk about Mom. Will would bring up something else or suddenly remember that he needed to do something. "I need to go, Ris, but I promise I’ll call or email you as soon as I know when I’m going back to the States, and we’ll figure it out, all right?” he mumbled out the sentence so quickly it made him sound desperate.

Maybe I wasn't the only chicken in the family.  “Deal. Love you.”

“Love you too. Be safe and we’ll talk soon,” Will said right before disconnecting the line.

I sighed and pocketed my phone, immediately sensing Dex’s hulking presence behind me for the first time. His lips were a hard slash, eyes deceptively distant on me before he spoke. “Your brother?"

"Yeah."

There was so much about our phone conversation that bothered me. It wasn't that I wanted or needed to have a long conversation with my brother, but it'd been so long since the last time we'd spoken, getting rushed through a five minute conversation didn’t seem fair.

Dex narrowed his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

He rolled his eyes. "What is it? Looks like somebody just told you Santa wasn’t real."

Oh lord. The man who got pissed off about his property taxes going up wanted to make a statement by comparing us? Please. I snorted. "Nothing," I insisted.

"Somethin's botherin' you. Tell me."

Dex wasn't going to drop it so I groaned. "I haven't talked to him in months. I've emailed him at least a dozen times and he never responds." I rubbed a hand over my forehead. "I mean, I know he's not a kid. He's a grown man, he doesn't need me anymore. I guess I'm just being a girl and getting butt-hurt that he has a life without me."

His nose wrinkled but he didn't comment on my rant.

I took in a deep breath and shrugged, forcing a smile onto my face. "Anyway, let me know when you want to leave, okay?"

~ * ~ *

If I thought for a second that I'd have the ability to think about something other than my conversations with my brothers and whatever was going on with Dex, I'd have been terribly wrong.

I'd be in the middle of logging the number of hour sessions that one of the artists had done for the week and suddenly, I'd think of the action hero Dex had in his spare bedroom. Or I'd be sitting in the front, uploading pictures onto the shop's website when I'd hear Blake on the phone with his son and I'd start imagining what the little boy in Colorado looked like.

My whole day went like that after the two hours I'd spent in the pool and the aerobics class at the YMCA I took.

Dex, Dex, Sonny, Dex, Will, Brother, Dex, Dex.

And then some more Dex.

My gut told me that I was insane. That constantly thinking about him wasn't normal. Then again, what was normal about Dex?

Nothing.

The only good thing I could come up with was that he'd been giving me a decent amount of distance. That wasn't to say every time he walked past me or stood by the receptionist desk that he wouldn't send a heated look my way or put his hand somewhere on my body when he was close enough. Whether it was the back of my neck, my hip, or the small of my back, his hand was always there in some way or another.

I didn't do a single thing to move away from him.

My brain said “No!” Yet everything else in me screamed “Yes!” obnoxiously.

Yeah, I was a friggin' mess. A mess that had no hope of getting sorted out properly. There was no point in me even trying to fight it or figure it out.

I sighed and got up feeling defeated, to see if Slim and Blue needed anything. I'd been putting off eating something for at least an hour but my stomach had started grumbling so much I figured it was time to quit procrastinating. "I'm going next door before they close, you guys want anything?"

They both shook their heads. Slim had been messing around on his tablet and the last time I'd seen Blue, she was working on a tattoo for her next customer. Even at seven at night, it was way too hot. Definitely too warm for the sweater I'd pulled on before riding to Pins on the back of Dex's bike.

I ordered a Mediterranean wrap from the deli and tried my best not to think about what Sonny had told me. Another brother. Well, shit. A little one at that. I didn't even want to consider what other kind of mess my dad was in that he'd be hiding. What had started as a headache didn't need to become a nightmare.

Especially not if whoever he owed money to decided to come after someone who didn't have Sonny to watch out for them. Someone like my new little brother.

God.

I was so entrenched in the idea of actually having another sibling that I didn't see the silhouette of a man leaning against the stonewashed wall until his heavy black boot hit the top of my thighs.