What's Broken Between Us by Alexis Bass Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m looking at him, he stares at my feet. “I’m here to confrontation—to confront . . . I have a bone to pick with you. . . .” He licks his lips, and now his smile says that he’s embarrassed. “It’s not good.”
    “What could be worse than you stalking me at a party and lurking outside my room?”
    He lets out a shallow laugh. “I actually followed Graham.”
    “Still sketchy.”
    “We have an important matter to discuss. It’d be nice if you’d take it seriously.”
    “Well, Henry, then it’s a good thing you’ve chosen right now, when you need the wall to hold yourself up, to approach me about this very serious and important issue.”
    He shakes his head, laughing lightly like I’m the one who’s had too much to drink and isn’t making any sense. To his credit, he lifts himself off the wall and doesn’t fall over. “I know that they’re talking, Amanda. I know . You were supposed to tell me.”
    “I had no idea they were talking.” I had no idea Sutton was here , I once told an angry Henry, who showed up at my front door at midnight looking for his sister after she’d missed a dinnerwith their grandmother and failed to return his many messages. This time he doesn’t believe me.
    “Okay, sure.”
    “Why would I—” But I stop myself. His eyes have that faraway haze to them, and he’s got that drunken confidence, complete with tunnel vision and selective hearing that makes people doubly confrontational and blind in their determination. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”
    “No, no, we can’t.” He steps forward so he’s got one hand on the door and his back to the hall—his half-baked attempt at blocking me in.
    “How do you even know it was Jonathan she was speaking to?”
    “She had this . . .” Every ounce of resolve deflates from Henry’s face. His eyes turn glassy and they shift to the side. “This look on her face.”
    I know exactly what he’s talking about. Sutton with Jonathan was Sutton unmasked. She turned giddy and indulgent, and her face revealed how she marveled at my brother. Like the cat that swallowed the canary. Normally, Sutton wore a scowl better than anyone, except she couldn’t muster one for the life of her if Jonathan was around. Her usual expression—cranky, intimidating, unpredictable, like she might bite your head off if you said the wrong thing or looked at her the wrong way, and she had the reputation to back these assumptions—cracked and softened. Sometimes, next to him, she looked like she was holding in too much happiness for one person. I thought that maybeexplained the motive behind her evil eye—she had a lot to lose.
    “You’re wrong,” I say, even though it’s pointless to get into it with him when he’s like this. “Jonathan told me he wasn’t participating in telecommunications.”
    Henry shoots me a glare, like he can tell I’ve use Jonathan’s exact words again.
    “They’re lying to us, to everyone,” he says. “Just like the good old days.”
    Except in the good old days there was at least Grace keeping them honest, calling them out on their lies. Henry pinches his eyes closed, as though it takes a great effort. The hallway is probably spinning. Or he’s thinking about Grace, too.
    Maybe Jonathan did lie to me. Maybe he talked to Sutton. Maybe he told her everything he should have said before he left. Maybe he’s the only one who can understand how much she misses Grace, and their twisted relationship can survive this grief just like it’s managed to endure everything else: Sutton’s temper, Jonathan’s wandering eye. Has Henry ever considered that it might be okay—good, even—for them to talk?
    “I guess, if they are talking, who are we to stop them?”
    “You don’t understand,” he says, raking his hands through his hair.
    “It might not be the worst thing in the world, you know?” I let my tone counter his. Optimism all around. Drunk people are quick to turn angry, but quick to buy into idealism