Free Never Been Kissed by Molly O'Keefe Page B

hands, the half-empty coffee cup he held. “You can tell me, if you are. You can tell me—”
    “I can’t actually. It’s not my story to tell.”
    “It’s the girl’s?”
    Brody took a sip of his coffee and Sean sighed.
    “Will I be in trouble?” Sean asked.
    “When have I ever let you take the fall for me?”
    “Never,” Sean said, staring down at the town he was so much a part of. “But I can hope.”
    Brody never knew what to say when Sean said that shit.
    “How long are you staying?” Sean blinked up at Brody. The sun was at Brody’s back, and he shifted slightly to the left so Sean could look at him and not be blinded.
    “I don’t know. A few days.”
    “And the girl?”
    “Probably a few more.”
    “Who is she?”
    God, what a loaded question, and of all his options he picked the simplest. “A friend.”
    Sean couldn’t hide his surprise. Because Brody didn’t have friends. Not ones he brought to Bishop.
    “Kind of,” Brody amended, taking another sip of coffee. “That’s good,” he said, about the coffee because he didn’t want to talk about who Ashley was to him.
    “Cora. She’s ruining this whole town for anything average.”
    “You guys still fighting?”
    “The second she stops looking down her nose at me and treats me like a businessperson, the same as her—”
    “So the answer is yes?”
    “Hell yes the answer is yes!” Sean said.
    Brody swore under his breath. This sustained animosity between his brother and Cora was getting old.
    Brody looked down at the open square of his coffee cup, the brown liquid that stained the white plastic. His brother, for all that they never spent time together, knew exactly how Brody liked his coffee. The milk/sugar ratio.
    It was as if Sean was constantly calculating the worth of those little things and hoping they would add up to something—a relationship, a brotherhood, family of some kind.
    I’ve given you all I can,
he thought.
I don’t know what else you want.
    “Give me a name, at least,” Sean asked.
    “Ash.” That had been her name when she was young.
    “All right. Ash. Would you like me to get some food from Cora’s?”
    “I’d hate to put you in the line of fire.”
    “My money is as good as everyone else’s and I want to.”
    “That would be fine. Thank you.”
    For a few moments they sat there, drinking their coffee, looking down on the town. And for those few moments, Brody was happy. Or maybe content. He wasn’t itching his way out of his skin, and that sometimes was happy enough.
    “I better get back,” Brody said, stood, and Sean turned on him with intent, his entire body braced for something. A jump. A punch. Brody wanted to tell him to stop, to leave what had been a relatively nice moment on the roof between two sort-of brothers alone.
    But that wasn’t Sean’s style.
    “We should talk about Dad.”
    “What do we need to talk about?” he asked, planting his feet firmly on the roof.
    “He’s dying, Brody.”
    When his patrol was hit by that IED, the blast had lifted him up in the air and for a split second in shock, before the pain of shrapnel and the skin-burning heat and the debilitating sucker punch to all his internal organs from the pressure, he’d just been weightless. Flying.
    Talking about Ed dying gave him that same split-second
holy shit
feeling in his guts. “Bullshit,” he said, ignoring the very concept. The bottoms of his feet were burning on the tar paper, but he barely felt it.
    “Go see him if you don’t believe me.”
    Brody shook his head. “I won’t be in town long enough.”
    There was pity in Sean’s eyes when he looked at him, and that was the last thing Brody needed.
    “Do you need more money for him?”
    “It’s not money that’s the problem. But—”
    “Then there’s nothing you need me for,” he said, and meant it. “Thanks for the coffee. And the apartment.”
    “Brody—”
    Brody didn’t say anything, he just turned and half walked, half slid down to the