Free Fatal Hearts by Norah Wilson Page B

going to help you?”
    He met her gaze. “Absolutely. One way or another, it’ll help. If it doesn’t lead me to understand more clearly what happened, maybe it can lead me to accept it.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I could use someone to talk to about Josh. I can’t say his name around my parents without one or the other of them breaking down. And everyone else . . . they just don’t know what to say.”
    He saw her acquiescence in the slight relaxation of her shoulders.
    “Okay,” she said. “Just tell me what I can do.”
    “You can start by hanging around with me, just like you would with Josh.”
    Her eyebrows shot up. “Just like that, huh? We’re going to be insta-buddies and we’re going to text each other five times a day?”
    He grimaced. “Okay, maybe not that part.”
    “Good. Because I don’t think I could stand that.” Her voice sounded thick. “I mean, you look so much like him . . .”
    “I get it,” he said flatly. “I’m not Josh. Believe me—I know that very well. I don’t think there’s any danger of either of us forgetting it.”
    “That’s not what I meant to—”
    “But it’s the truth. I’m a fan of truth, Hayden. In that respect, at least, I’m a lot like my brother.”
    She gazed up at him. “But not all truths, I guess. Josh told me you weren’t interested in knowing your birth parents.”
    She’d said something very like that to him when they’d talked at the restaurant, but he’d completely ignored her statement. This time, her words slid into him like a surgeon’s scalpel.
    In his defense, he could have told her what he’d told Josh—that this investigation could land the people who’d been their real parents in questionable legal waters. But it would have been a false defense. The truth of it was he just didn’t care to know.
    Their birth parents had given them up, and that’s all there was to it.
    Oh, it’d taken him a while to reach that conclusion. Frank and Ella McBride had been solid parents, but, knowing they were adopted, he and Josh had often speculated about their “real” mother. In their young minds, she was glamorous and beautiful, and had shed glamorous, beautiful tears about having to give them up. In their imaginations, there was always a compelling reason. Josh’s favorite had been that she was a superhero and hadn’t been able to take care of them herself because she was busy saving the world. Boyd preferred to think that she’d been knocked on the head and developed amnesia—or, even better, that she’d been magically enchanted and made to forget about them—but eventually the amnesia would clear, or the magic spell would be broken, and she would remember and come find them.
    For Boyd, those childish fantasies had given way to the certain knowledge that their mother just hadn’t wanted them. But for Josh, the dream had never really died. Not that he still believed their mother was a superhero or a secret agent or a fairy princess, but his conviction that their mother would want to meet them never faltered. It had irked Boyd that Josh continued to search into his adulthood, after it became painfully clear that their mother didn’t want to reconnect. There were plenty of places she could have registered if she’d wanted to be found.
    He smiled. “There’s that magic word— interested . If I’m not interested, if I don’t care about learning a particular truth, there’s no point in the pursuit of it, is there? Unless, of course, it means discovering what really happened to Josh.”
    “You’re right, and I’m sorry.” She sighed. “Look, can we park this conversation until tomorrow? I’m exhausted, and if I don’t get my sleep, the ER will be hell in the morning.”
    Damn, she did look exhausted. “Of course.”
    She hit the remote to unlock her car, and he reached for the door handle and opened it for her. She slid into the seat.
    “When can we get together again?”
    “You really want to walk in Josh’s