Free Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) by Shiloh Walker Page B

wore as a shield—he could psychoanalyze it to pieces. Those psychology courses he’d taken in college came up damn handy at times. If he flipped this all around and looked at it dispassionately, he knew it all made sense.
    There were times he couldn’t even stand to have a woman touch him. Not in any way that resembled intimacy. Aliesha’s death, her funeral—the very
loss
of her, and then those dark, lost hours the night of the funeral, they were tangled up in a miasma of guilt he couldn’t get free of.
    He still didn’t have those hours back. Whatever shit had been given him, it had been damn effective at turning his mind into a blank slate. He had the vaguest echoes of memory, but that was it.
    The only bits and pieces he could call up from that night were the memory of whiskey—as evidenced by the fact that the smell of it still turned his stomach—and the echo of a woman laughing, and then shouts, followed by fury and pain. The fury and pain made sense, in a way. He’d ended up battered and bruised, so he’d sure as hell ended up in a fight with somebody.
    And that was probably the last time he’d really let himself feel
anything
that didn’t involve his son or his family. He’d shut himself down, locked himself up.
    He’d done exactly what Aliesha had asked him not to do.
    He’d stopped living.
    Slowly, he tugged the ring off. It would come off for good this time, too. Something that might have been panic swam up, trying to grab him and pull him back down. He’d fought itbefore, fought the edges of panic even as he fought the depression that had eventually driven him into a shrink’s office.
    If it hadn’t been for Clayton, he wouldn’t have gone.
    If he hadn’t gone, he never would have realized just how utterly fucked up he was.
    And because he knew how utterly fucked up he was, he made himself close his fist around that ring, made himself put it down.
    The phone’s harsh ringtone shattered the silence.
    Trey jerked, sweat beading on the back of his neck, his upper lip, slicking the palms of his hands. His phone sat on the bureau, and the picture of his twin, his nose pressed to Clayton’s, both of them mock snarling, lit up the screen.
    He grabbed the phone like a drowning man. “Yeah.”
    There was a faint pause.
    “You’re a fucking mess, Trey,” Travis said, his voice rough, heavy with sleep.
    “Suck my dick,” he said, all but collapsing on the edge of the bed.
    Somehow Travis had picked up on the chaos Trey was feeling, and it had been enough to wake his twin up. Trey didn’t bother feeling guilty. They’d been like this all their lives and more than once, he’d been the one to call his brother—or at least try—knowing something was up.
    “Shit, man. If you’re this worked up that I can’t sleep, you might as well talk,” Travis said, his voice a little clearer. “’Sup?”
    “Nothing. Everything.” He stared at his ring, because this was the one thing he couldn’t, wouldn’t share. “Look, my head, it’s just . . .”
    “I already told you that you’re a mess. I got that part. Now tell me what’s going on.”
    Abruptly, like everything had morphed into a boulder teetering on the edge of a cliff, Trey could feel himself on the verge of giving in. Letting it all out, like a poison.
    “Shit. I
am
a mess. You remember that . . .” He stopped in mid-sentence, uncertain where to even go from here.
I saw her again. Ressa. I want her. Except I can’t. And I mean I really, really can’t—
    Travis’s sigh carried across the line and then his twin said,“Are you dreaming about Aliesha again? About the wreck? Trey, you know there was nothing you could have done.”
    Squeezing his eyes shut, he sat there for a moment. “No,” he said, forcing the word out through gritted teeth. Then he opened his eyes, stood, and started to pace. “It wasn’t the wreck. It wasn’t her. It’s . . .”
    “Is it that night? Call the shrink.” Travis paused, the words