Worth the Wait (McKinney_Walker #1)(33)

The closer he got, the more he saw, and he didn’t see Hannah, whom, on this rare occasion, he’d left in Luke’s care. God forbid he ask Luke to help out for a few hours.

So occupied by the girls, Luke didn’t notice Nick until he was nearly on top of him. “Where’s Hannah?” Nick demanded.

“Huh?”

At seventeen, Luke almost matched him in height and outweighed him by a small margin, but that snotty teenage attitude was getting old, and he grabbed his brother by the shirt. “Where the fuck is your sister?”

“Get off me.” Luke shoved back, cocky, saving face in front of the girls. “Asshole,” he muttered plenty loud for Nick to hear him. “She’s right over there.” Luke pointed to a couple of younger girls, maybe twelve or thirteen, bunched in a giggling huddle on the bleachers. “I left her right there with Morgan’s sister.”

Luke stormed over. “Where’s Hannah?”

“We don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Damn it! You said you’d—”

“Hey!” One of Luke’s female admirers grabbed his arm. “Don’t yell at her.”

Pure panic seized him. With his hands stabbing through his hair, Nick turned in a circle. The game was over, and the crowd moved like a sea in every direction.

“I told her to stay right there,” Luke said, still full of attitude.

“Are you kidding me? She’s barely three years old! You have to watch her, damn it. I told you to watch her!”

“Hey, Nick.” Dallas ran over. “Did you see us? I scored.”

“Sorry. I didn’t. Hannah’s missing.”

Zach jogged over, stopping at his brother’s side, and Nick barely gave him a glance, yet another strike against him. He scoured the bleachers left and right. Bottom to top and—Oh, God. His heart stopped.

There she was, sitting at the very top of the stadium, on the wrong side of a yellow strip of caution tape blowing in the breeze. Caution because the last section of the chain-link safety fence that ran along the back of the bleachers was loose and gaping open. Exactly behind his baby sister as she swung her tiny feet, mouth moving, probably in one of her silly little songs. He took the bleachers two at a time, some three at a time, flying over the seemingly endless rows.

Nick was a foot away when she swung her legs too hard and toppled back. Her golden eyes went wide with fear, and time hung for an eternity. He grabbed her arm and, in one hard jerk, pulled her to him.

She latched on, crying into his neck, scared and probably hurt where he’d maybe jerked her arm out of the socket. He could have cried, too, but instead, he made his way back to his brother—his fuck-up, no-good idiot brother whom he was sick of dealing with.

Fury and grief over his parents’ deaths overwhelmed him, along with the crushing responsibility that had fallen to his shoulders and a burning fear that had his heart still racing.

And as black as death, it all came down on Luke. As the next-oldest brother, he should have been helping Nick instead of making it harder.

Nick shoved him hard in the shoulder. “What the hell is wrong with you? She could have died! Do you realize that? Do you have such little care that you’d rather score a chick than guard your sister’s life?” He went on, the scolding and blame pouring out right there in front of the dispersing crowd, the girls, the twins, and Hannah. He screamed every bit of it. “You’re supposed to be helping me, for God’s sake, not making everything worse. How can you be so selfish?” He jabbed a finger into Luke’s chest. “You’re going to ruin this. You’re going to get Hannah taken away and put in foster care with strangers.”

Luke hadn’t said a word in response. He’d stood there and taken it, then turned and walked across the parking lot, gotten in his truck, and drove away.

He’d left that very night. Used a fake ID to enlist in the Army. They didn’t see him again for six years.

He wondered if their relationship could be salvaged or if it had been too long. He wondered if both he and Luke were too proud to make things right. Could the past be left in the past? Was it possible to dig out of such a deep hole of regret? A common theme with him and relationships.

He sipped his beer and watched Luke at the bar, nodding and grinning at yet another female falling under his trance. Part of his anger with Mia was pride, a large part. He’d ended up failing Hannah in bigger ways than they could have ever imagined. He’d failed Mia, too. He’d given her a reason to leave him. Knowing all that didn’t make it any easier to fix.

Zach stood, taking the darts for his turn. “If I hit this dead center, both of you have to call me Supreme Master for a year.”