Page 21 of The Spare
He’d traveled for work before. Why didn’t he visit more? He saw Henry and Xander maybe three or four times during that period. Never me. Didn’t he miss us?Me?
“I didn’t mean to imply that you would be a nuisance or anything. I don’t know anyone there except Penelope, so a familiar face would be nice.” I suddenly felt nervous and started pacing again. My fingers pulled at a loose thread on the blanket. “I’m just sick of being treated like a child.”
He didn’t say anything. He took a sip of the whiskey from his glass, looking directly ahead at the sunset.
After a few silent minutes, he stood, turned around to lean his waist against the railing, and looked at me. His gunmetal eyes were soft, making me feel all the worse for my outburst. “For what it's worth, everyone already knows you're incredibly capable.”
He walked to the door.
“You don’t need to prove anything to them,” he said, gesturing to me to come back inside. “Except maybe that you can go one game night without any injuries.”
I smiled, basking in the warmth of knowing I was privy tothisMarcus. It was because of his love for Henry and Xander, but the result was the same. I walked past him through the threshold and took his glass from him.
“This will probably help.” I took a sip and continued to the salon for a rousing game night.
CHAPTER11
Marcus
Thanksgiving weekend at the Amari’s almost always included a fight. Yesterday, it was Sloan. Today, it was Xander. The arguments hardly ever came to blows. But sometimes they did. Today was one of those days.
It all started as an innocent game of touch football. It was a tradition in the family for as long as we had been attending Thanksgiving weekends. Xander threw a pass to Henry, which an overly competitive Sloan fairly intercepted. She ran it back for a touchdown. She did an adorable touchdown dance and jumped to hug me after—we were teammates, after all.
Something about that play pissed Xander off. Whether there was an actual infraction, we won’t ever know. What we did know, with absolute certainty, was what happened next.
Xander bolted over to me, and with one hard shove, it began. Once the fighting started, Sloan directed everyone else to go inside and have lunch. They left us to duke it out until we worked through whatever was wrong.
It was a tried-and-true procedure by that point. There were probably only a few years on record where nobody fought and nothing was broken.
Xander managed to land a few punches, something he had never done, and I tried my best not to hit him back. After a few minutes, his anger dissipated. We sat on the ground feeling foolish, mud and dirt smeared across our clothes.
“What was that about?” I finally asked after a few minutes of silence. I was pretty sure I knew.
“I felt like hitting you,” he said flatly. He sat on the ground with his knees bent, elbows resting on them.
“Fair enough; anything else?”
“You leave for two years, we never talk, you’re back, and the only person you choose not to spend any time with is me?” He didn’t look at me and maintained a hard stare at the ground. I was still shell-shocked that he threw a punch. Xander was never the type to resort to physical violence. His approach to everything was far too amiable.
“It's not just the time you were gone,” he continued in a huff. “Why is it that Henry and Sloan have seen you more in the last few weeks than I have?”
He was jealousofSloan, not over her. That didn’t seem to add up. Nevertheless, that's how he felt.
“I’m sorry.” We always had a good relationship; the last few years fucked that up.
“That’s all you have to say?”
We sat in silence for another few minutes.
“Xander,” I said, then paused. I had spent my entire life looking out for him, and in the span of two years, I undid all the good. “I shouldn’t have shut you out. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
He took a deep breath and looked at me, and a nervous smile emerged. “I think I fucked up your eye.” Xander stood up and dusted the dirt off his pants. He didn’t accept my apology, but it was close enough.
“Yeah.” He offered his hand to help me up. I couldn’t open my right eye too well.
“Sorry, bro.”
We came into the entryway just as Sloan left the dining room and stopped. Her eyes went wide when she saw us. She inhaled sharply and rushed over.
