Sweet Hope

A beep came through my cell, telling me that he was on his way with his men. I told him where it was and that I’d be out. More than that, I trusted him to make the placement of it in the gallery.

Vin assured me everything would be fine and Ally would never know of it until opening night. It was my surprise for her.

My soul’s gift to hers.

Moving into my studio, I smirked at the still messed up linen on bed. Every morning I’d usually wake up and make my bed before anything—years of being in prison giving me habits too hard to shake. But after last night, after making love to Ally last night, her telling me she loved me over and over in my ear as we came together… I couldn’t bring myself to change a thing.

Seeing the Camino keys on the workstation, I walked over, picked them up, as well as my smokes and made my way out to my car. Nerves were shredding my stomach. The thought of telling Austin and Lev all about my sculptures; more than that, about my opening tomorrow night had me almost puking.

What the hell would they think? Me. A sculptor with his own show in a real fucking museum.

A new wave of something new hit me as I imagined their happy reaction… relief, excitement… want. Fuck, that was it; I wanted them to be proud of me. I wanted them to finally see me as more than just their older brother who’d only ever shown skill in pushing coke.

As I weaved through the streets of Seattle, I thought back to when Ally told me she’d be leaving to do her next commission after my show. The thought of not having her next to me every single day made every part of me fucking ache. I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to stay here in Seattle with me.

I had to figure out a way of making it happen. I couldn’t let her leave. We’d come too fucking far.

As I drew closer to Austin’s house, the nerves returned making my hands shake. I laughed that I was shaking. I was a damn pussy.

In minutes I’d parked up the Camino and walked through the front door… then immediately stopped dead at seeing Levi and Austin sat on the stairs, with my bag full of clothes sitting at their feet.

Both of my brothers had their heads down, but when they heard the door open, Austin looked up, a stony expression on his face.

“What’s all this?” I asked, feeling the temperature in the room drop about fifty degrees.

Austin got to his feet and walked over to stand at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed over his chest.

When his eyes met mine, I could see how much pain he was in. I almost moved forward to wrap my arm around his shoulders to ask him what was wrong, but the shitty way he was looking at me kept me rooted to the floor.

Austin lifted his foot, and rested it on top of my bag. “Went to the fish market this morning, Axe, the one you said you were working at.”

The blood drained from my face.

“Yeah, Axe. The market where the managers had no fucking idea who I was talking about.”

Austin looked down at Levi. Levi kept his head down, his hands gripping his hair.

I opened my mouth to explain, but—

“I couldn’t believe it, Axe, so I went to every market I could find. None of them knew you. None of them. One of them remembered seeing someone of your description. He said he thought he’d seen you hanging around, but you sure as hell weren’t working.”

Austin clawed at his dark hair, his eyes shining. Meeting my eyes again, he said, “I thought there had to be some mistake. There had to be, because my brother had changed. He’d got out of prison five years early and was doing real good. He was a different guy than the one who used to be Heighter tight.” He pulled in a ragged breath and his face flushed red with his pain.

I stepped forward. “I—”

“Then I get home, fucking talking myself out of what I prayed wasn’t true, and I go into your room, hoping you’d be there to explain all this shit. You weren’t, as always. So I started going through your stuff, looking for some reason why you’d lied to me. Lied to all of us for fucking months!”

Austin reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out the second bag of coke I’d bought after his game. I must have left it in my jeans.

My stomach fell, and I instantly knew what they were thinking.

“You’re dealing again, Axe? After everything?” Austin’s face contorted in a mix of both anger and pain. He threw the bag of coke at my feet.

I struggled to breathe as I stared at it. As I looked up, Austin was staring at me, all anger gone, just crushing disappointment on his face. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t get my head around how I’d come here today to tell them about my show. Instead my kid brothers were asking me to explain why I wasn’t at the market, why I had this coke, and of course they immediately thought the worst.