“Okay.” I signal to Royal to wrap it up with the bartender and pat Rick’s hand. “I think it might be time to call it a night.”
Carter is a quiet presence beside me, and I’m thankful for it, though I wish he wasn’t seeing this.
“Hey, Papa Smurf.” Royal easily lifts Rick to his feet. “Look at you. Would you mind if I take a video for the rest of the family? You haven’t been this toasty since we all turned sixteen.”
“Hard year.” Rick’s chuckle is watery, and he still looks too sad. Luckily, their room is an elevator away.
Royal looks at me in question and I shake my head. “What time are you two heading out?”
“Early.”
I push the button to call their ride. Rick sways and reaches for my shirt. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“You made sure of it,” I tell him firmly. “And I have friends taking care of me now, so you don’t have to worry. I’m not alone.”
“I’ll still worry.” He cups the back of my head and presses our foreheads together. “I think we did it wrong, Jimmy. You were young but we should have told you about—”
“Rick, I’m happy.” You’re breaking my heart. “I promise, you didn’t do anything wrong. Not for any of us. And Royal is here now. You go with him and he’ll get you to your room, okay?”
I’m hoping he understands that we’re not alone so he doesn’t say something he’ll regret in the morning.
The doors open and I kiss his forehead, handing our silent foster father over to my worried brother. “He’s fine,” I tell him softly. “He’s thinking about my parents.”
I’m still staring at the elevator when Carter takes my hand. “Are you going to tell me a story on the way home, JD?”
I look down at our entwined fingers and nod.
“Then let’s go.”
“What happened with Rick?” Carter asks after we’ve been on the road for several minutes and I still haven’t said a word. “Talk to me.”
I look away from the oncoming headlights to study his profile. “I’m sorry about that. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Rick drink. When he does, he can get sentimental, though he doesn’t usually lecture us on lifestyle choices.”
Randomly, I’m thinking I wish I’d had a chance to clean my apartment before he’d seen it today.
“What did he mean about your father? What happened to him?”
I take a steadying breath. “He committed suicide.”
“Shit.” Carter bites off another curse and I watch his strained expression as he searches for a place to pull off and park. As soon as he shuts off the truck and unbuckles his seatbelt, he turns to take my hand. “Do you want to wait to talk about this until we get home?”
I don’t want to talk about it at all, and the attention is making me uncomfortable. “You didn’t need to pull over, Carter. It’s okay. My biological parents are strangers. I only know their names and what they looked like because Matilda made a photo album. But that’s all they are to me. Gary and Lauren Green. High school friends of the people who raised me.”
When I say that I feel like a bad person. “According to Matilda my mother was sweet and always smiling. And after I was born, every thought she had was about my future.”
Carter’s fingers tighten on mine. “And your father?”
“Gary was another story. He’d struggled with depression all his life. I know he loved my mother and his friends, but Rick said there were times he’d disappear or withdraw. Only for a few weeks and then he’d be back as if it never happened. Then his brother died, followed two years later by his wife getting sick. Five days after she was gone, and two weeks before my fourth birthday, he bought a gun.”
“Jesus,” Carter breathes, leaning his head against the seat beside him.
I’ve never said it out loud before. “In the note he left, he actually mentioned Kurt Cobain. After losing his wife, his brother and his hero, he said, there was nothing left to live for. No one left to live for. I only know about that because Rick still has it in a box in the back of his closet, and once I saw him crying over it.”
Carter looks so wrecked I feel bad for telling him. “Not as upbeat as my last story. Sorry about that. The afternoon sort of went to hell, didn’t it?”
“I’m glad you told me.” He cups my face in his hands, his thumbs caressing my cheeks. “I mean it, JD. Thank you.”
I lean into his touch instinctively. “My brothers don’t know. Not the details anyway.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to tell them.” I reach up and grip his wrists, needing to touch him. “They all had rough lives before they came to live with us. They deserved a fresh start in a good home.”