Page 106 of Don't Leave Me Behind
“You sure you want to know?” Toby leans forward, looking around Adler to get his eyes on Mercer.
“You guys remember Aspen?” Leni asks. I even remember the name. Mercer and Ethan wouldn’t stop texting about how much of an asshole the guy was. They did not like him at all. The few sneers let me know they do remember him. “I was living with him.” Leni taps my arm, silently asking me to help her sit up, so I do. I gently lift her, so she’s sitting tall. “He asked me to move out, gave me until January third to be out of the apartment.”
“Fucking prick,” Adler mumbles. Ethan taps the table with his index finger before cracking it with his thumb.
“I didn’t know you were living with him.” Mercer’s brow furrows.
“Well, I was.”
Mercer looks at me briefly, but I shake my head. I didn’t know. I only knew what they told me about Leni back then.
“So we ran off a few boyfriends.” Ethan crosses his arms over his chest. “That hardly makes us the villains you make us out to be.”
“No, I know. I pushed you guys away. I know I played a part in that, but you guys always took it too far.”
“What else?” Pa asks, when it’s clear the boys are going to sit there and sulk, instead of actually listening to what she has to say.
“Someone called Patty’s and got me fired,” she complains. Her voice is hard, edged with annoyance.
“Yeah, not gonna apologize for that one,” Brooks finally joins in the conversation. A hint of humor in his eyes. “It’s funny you think we’d let you work at a strip club, Leni.”
“I was bartending, Brooks. I had thirty dollars in my account, and my rent was due the week after you got me fired. My last check didn’t cover it.”
Brooks flinches. Pepper gives him a disapproving glare over Tessa’s head.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, Leni. I didn’t know.” Brooks holds eye contact with her.
“Thanks,” Leni whispers, leaning herself back into me, shoulders caving a little under the strain of holding herself up. “That’s the point, though. You guys never bothered to ask what else was going on in my life. You saw something that I did as wrong and tried to fix it.”
“So what?” Mercer chimes back in. “We’re supposed to turn off twenty-seven years of being big brothers?”
“No.” Leni rolls her eyes, turning at the waist to look at him. “You can stop telling me what to do, though. Stop assuming you know what’s best for me and stop blaming Clay when you’re really mad at yourselves.”
Ethan scoffs, but Mercer looks down at his empty plate. “It’s our job to protect you.”
“And you did,” she says. “For eighteen years, you guys were always there for me, you took care of me. Showed me how to take care of myself. I’m practically middle-aged now, leave me the fuck alone. Who cares if I make mistakes along the way? That’s what you’re supposed to be here for. To pick me up when those mistakes happen. Not preemptively stopping me from living life.”
Brooks sighs, scooping Tessa out of her highchair when she starts to fuss. “She’s right.”
“I disagree.” Ethan uses his thumb to toy with the class ring he wears on his right ring finger. “I still think Clay is partially, if not fully, responsible for what happened ten years ago, and three weeks ago. He shouldn’t have let you drive like that. Should have called one of us and told us to go look for you.”
“Clay wasn’t the only reason I left.” Leni squeezes my arm when she feels my muscles stiffen.
“You didn’t have to leave,” Mercer mutters, toying with the fork on his plate. Avoiding looking at her.
“Mercer,” Marcy starts, her voice low, warning. “What did you do?”
He sighs, long and deep, before looking to Ma, avoiding everyone else’s gaze. “I requested the call logs for the incident.”
Ethan’s eyebrow shoots into his hairline. “That’s how you found out? I thought you talked to her about it.”
“Not exactly,” he mutters.
Adler whistles, a long, low note.
“Damn, that’s brutal, bro.” Toby looks from Mercer to Leni, and then back to Mercer when Leni quirks an eyebrow at him.
“I might have blackmailed her into talking about it then.”
