All That Really Matters by Nicole Deese (new books to read TXT) 📕

right forearm. “I hated meeting with my social worker and the trauma counselor in those early weeks and months. I was so angry, I’d refuse to say a single word for the duration of the visit. That’s when my dad figured out a way to reward me. My cooperation equaled time in his shop, with his dart board. He’d always come with me, of course. But he’d be content to sit in the background, keeping one eye on me and the other on whatever project he had going on his workbench, only speaking to me if I initiated the conversation first.”

“So that’s why the dart board in your house is such a treasure . . . it’s symbolic of the connection between you and your father.”

“Yes.” Silas continued to stare into his palm. “We still have our most important discussions around a game of darts.”

“I love that.”

He dipped his chin and looked to me. “Your turn.”

My breath hitched as he placed the dart inside my open palm with an intimacy that surpassed both our location and our entertainment of choice. Not trusting myself to speak, I rotated toward the board, rehearsing Silas’s instructions in my head several times.

“Don’t overthink it, Molly.” His breath heated the top of my left ear. “There are plenty of darts, plenty of chances for do-overs.”

The now-familiar phrase caused the tension in my chest to relax. Before The Bridge I hadn’t really believed in second chances, and I’d certainly never been the recipient of them. I’d been too caught up in my own goals, in my own overachieving perfectionism to ever allow failure to be an option. I was either on or off, hot or cold, running hard or hardly moving at all. The in-between was too uncomfortable, too unsettling with all its unknowns and possible outcomes. And yet here I was, completely out of my element in nearly every regard: volunteering at a youth home, mentoring young women on topics I likely needed to be mentored in myself, and playing a game of darts with a man I admired most for the way he invested in people who could never repay him.

I let the dart fly, and it hit the triple bar on the middle ring. It wasn’t the bull’s-eye, but it also wasn’t the floor. It was progress. For what might be the first time in my life, I was okay with that.

I beamed back at Silas. “Progress.”

“Yes,” he said, his gaze skimming my face. “Excellent progress. Want to throw another?”

I shook my head. “Actually, I think I’d like to sit for a bit and eat some bad-for-me nachos. You good with that?”

“Sounds like a winning plan to me.”

As we reached the table, I squirted my hands with sanitizer and then reached for his palm to give him some too. He rubbed his hands together as he sat down across from me, our knees bumping under the table and sending a quiet tremble through my body. I pushed the platter of nachos in his direction and set one of the small plates in front of him.

“This is my brother’s favorite meal. He is a nacho connoisseur. Only, if these were his, he’d have every kind of ridiculously hot pepper sprinkled on top.”

“You’re close. You and Miles.” A statement, not a question.

My immediate response wanted to be Absolutely, we’re the closest. We’re twins! That’s how it’s supposed to be. But my actual response was much closer to the truth. “We’re as close as we choose to be. Or, rather . . .” I contemplated my words. “As close as I let us be.”

“How’s that?” Silas pulled a cheesy chip off the tower of nachos.

“Hmm. How do I explain it? It’s like there’s this giant ocean just beyond the safe-for-swimming area where we now tread water, but for so many years he used to beg me to venture farther out, to take a risk with him in the big water so I could learn to love it the way he does. Sometimes I think I’ve said no to his invitations so many times that he doesn’t know how to ask me anymore.” I’d never articulated this thought before now and wasn’t even sure my metaphor made any sense to someone not in my head. I picked at a piece of chip I’d dropped on my napkin.

“So what’s the ocean?”

“Faith. The kind he has, anyway.”

He nodded. “And what kind is that?”

I looked up into Silas’s eyes, besotted by the earnestness I found there. “The kind that requires me to take off my life jacket, but I’m not sure I’m ready to do that yet.” Or if I ever would be.

Silas didn’t try and tell me I was. And he didn’t try and tell me I wasn’t. He simply listened, which, as it turned out, was the exact response I needed from him.

Without an invitation and without permission, I reached across the table and slid my palm up Silas’s forearm, running my fingers over the bumpy length of his scar. “Can I ask what this is from?”

“Carlos.” There wasn’t an ounce of hostility in his voice as he spoke his brother’s name. His tone was resignation more than accusation.

“How?”

This answer took a bit longer for him to articulate. “After he was released from prison the first time, my parents offered to take him in, as a favor to me. They had a basement apartment with a separate entrance. The deal was that he had to stay clean and sober, attend meetings, and hold down a job. That only lasted about two weeks. And then one night my mom called to say Carlos hadn’t come home after work and that she’d noticed a few things missing from the garage. Within twenty-four hours, his parole officer was asking questions my folks couldn’t answer. Nobody could find him for almost three days until I finally tracked him down.”

“Where was he?”

“In an old condemned apartment complex downtown, out-of-his-mind high. I hadn’t thought much past what I’d do after I found him, and I certainly hadn’t anticipated the