Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption (21 page)

Carter was like royalty. If the Notorious O’Neills had such a thing.

“Tyler in jail.” Carter glanced around the yellow walls and bars as if he could smell them and it wasn’t good. “Again.”

“Hope I didn’t bother you,” Tyler drawled, and Carter’s eyebrows arched. Tyler wanted a fight. He needed to tear things apart, throw things against the wall and obliterate everything in his path.

Luckily, Carter was always good for a fight. Tyler just needed his brother to get him out of this cell so Tyler could pick one with him.

“Not at all. My date was boring.” Carter unbuttoned his blazer and loosened his tie. “I can assume you didn’t assault the man in question?”

“I did not.”

“And the boy?”

“Miguel.”

“Right. You know where he is?”

“Community services,” he said, and handed him Nora Sullivan’s number. Miguel and Louisa should be with Juliette by now, and therefore safe. That was all that mattered.

He tried to convince himself that his heart didn’t matter. The cold stone stare in Juliette’s eyes didn’t matter. The future stretching out grim and wasted—none of it mattered.

If Miguel and Louisa could be with Juliette, then part of the night was a success.

“What happened here, Tyler?”

“The kid is a friend—”

“Not your usual kind.”

Tyler thought of the attempted car theft and the extortion, the way Miguel had lied to get Richard to teach him cards. “He’s exactly the usual kind. He’s just sixteen and he was protecting his sister.”

“It was self-defense?” Carter asked, taking the card. “And there’s proof?”

“The little girl’s face is about all the proof you need. Nora will answer all your questions.”

Carter tilted his head, his icy-blue eyes watching him carefully. “You okay?”

Okay? He was so far from okay he was in a different time zone. A different hemisphere.

“Sure,” he said, sitting on the bench in his cell.

“You know, Ty,” Carter said, wrapping his hand around one of the bars. “You may have the rest of the world fooled, but I’m your brother.”

It was about as close to a speech of brotherly love as Carter ever got.

“Get me out of here, Carter,” he whispered.

“Right,” Carter said, and then left to go show a cop he didn’t know his butt from a hole in the ground.

Tyler dropped his head back against the wall so hard he saw stars. The pain was cleansing. Real. Gave all his rage something to do.

I was a fool to think you’d changed.

Her words wrapped around his brain, squeezing until he couldn’t think of anything else. Anything but the fact that he
had
changed—but too late for it to mean anything.

“There are no charges,” Carter said, coming back into the cell. “We’re free to go.”

“You don’t have to keep cleaning up that guy’s mess,” Carter muttered.

“Dad being found with the gem is going to cause problems for you, isn’t it?” Tyler asked.

Carter’s face was dark. “You have no idea.”

The glass of the greenhouse gleamed silver in places, obsidian in others, and it was so beautiful, suddenly there was nowhere Tyler would rather be than in Margot’s greenhouse.

He opened the back door and crossed the dark courtyard. The grass under his feet, the air around him—everything seemed more alive than he felt.

I’m empty,
he thought.
Half-dead.

The greenhouse door opened with a slight push and inside the smell of earth and flowers was somehow both comforting and suffocating.

I could go,
he thought. It’s what people expected of him. Savannah. Juliette, hell, probably even Priscilla.

He turned on the hose, trickling water into the hanging pots that were beginning to sprout.

Carter stood in the doorway, the moon spreading his long shadow across Tyler’s face and over his hands.

“You’ve been taking care of them?” he asked, handing Tyler a jam-jar glass of Scotch and taking a sip from his own.

“Someone needed to.”

“You always did spend a lot of time in here when you were a kid.”

“It was quiet,” he said.

Carter laughed. “You gonna pretend you weren’t hiding those dirty magazines behind the bags of soil?”

“Nope.” Tyler smiled as he took a sip from his jam glass. “Not going to pretend.”

The silence between them soon turned uncomfortable and it raked over his already raw emotions.

Carter was right—they were brothers, and that should count for something. But they stood here little better than strangers.

“How come you haven’t been back?” Tyler asked, drinking half his Scotch down in one go. The urge to fight was still bubbling through him.

“I was back a month ago.”

“For what? A few hours?”

“You’re hardly one to talk, Tyler.”

“I had Dad on me like a leech, Carter. You think I’m about to bring him back here?” That was only part of the reason. The least of his many. And frankly, the only noble one. “We agreed that we’d try to protect Savannah.”

“Didn’t matter, did it? He still found his way in.”

“Yeah, well, he should be out of the picture for good now.”

Carter chuckled, staring down at his Scotch as if it was tea leaves divining his fortune. “Don’t be so sure,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every time I thought that about Mom…”

“You’ve been in touch with her?” he asked, stunned. Angry. “And you didn’t bother to tell me?”

“It was my business, Tyler.” Carter’s jaw was made out of stone and it made Tyler want to break it. “Not yours.”

“Ah, the O’Neill family motto. It’s no wonder we haven’t all been together in years.”

“That’s not my fault,” Carter said, putting his glass down with a thunk as if he was ready to throw a punch.

Finally,
Tyler thought with glee, cranking off the hose and tossing his own glass down on the table. The fight he’d been waiting for. He’d hate to bust up Margot’s greenhouse, but some things just couldn’t be helped.

“You know what else isn’t my fault?” Carter asked. “You screwing it up with Juliette, again. That’s what you’re really mad about. You don’t care about me or the family, you’re just pissed that you couldn’t keep your shit together and now she’s gone. Again.”

It was a wild low blow. Terrible. It made him regret even mentioning her name on the way back to The Manor, but the truth of what Carter said rippled through him like a shock wave.

There was nothing for him to do but laugh. It was laugh or scream.

The sound crawled up from his gut, scraped through his throat.

“What’s so funny?” Carter asked, advancing around the center table, his eyes alight.

“I feel bad for you, Carter. I do.”

“Really? You feel bad for me? The man who left a third date that was no doubt going to end in sex to drive you home from jail?
Again?
”

“You should get arrested once, Carter. It would do you good. Make you stop caring so goddamned much what people think of you. What are you hiding behind that perfect coat, that perfect hair?”

The punch came out of nowhere, catching him right across the jaw and snapping his head back.

Tyler charged Carter, grabbing him by the shirt and pushing him out the door into the night. They tripped and Carter spilled backward, Tyler following and landing hard on his brother.

“It’s hard being an O’Neill, isn’t it?” Tyler asked, pressing Carter’s face into the dirt. “But it’s gotta be harder pretending you’re not one.”

Carter got a knee up under Tyler’s ribcage and he rolled backward. Carter might look prissy, but the guy was strong. Luckily, Tyler fought dirty, but soon it didn’t matter.

There was so much Tyler was fighting against. Juliette. Jasper. His own stupid decision making. His brother. Every year he’d spent away from his sister. It all coalesced and imploded. His rage ate itself until suddenly there was nothing left to fight.

It was just him and every mistake he’d ever made.

The anger bottomed out. He let go of Carter and he flopped backward onto the grass. Carter did the same, breathing hard, his pristine shirt stained with blood and grass.

That made Tyler a little happy.

“We should have come back more,” Carter panted. “For Savannah.”

“I’m staying,” Tyler said between breaths. Despite what had happened with Juliette, despite and maybe because of what everyone expected of him, Tyler was going to stick around.

Finally be the man he wanted to be.

“For how long?” Carter asked, and immediately put up his hand. “It’s just a question. Don’t get pissy.”

“I’m not putting a limit on it, Carter. I want a home and this one feels good.”

“It’s not for Juliette, is it?”

Tyler shook his head, staring up at the stars while his lip started to swell. “I ruined it.”

Carter smiled. “She kept you in that jail cell for hours with no charges. That is one pissed off woman, but I understand love can make fools of women. She may decide you’re not so bad after all.”

“There are only so many times a man can break a woman’s heart before she gets wise.”

Saying the words made the pain more bleak, cemented what he knew to be true. It didn’t matter whether he stayed—Juliette was done with him.

So staying was for him. All for him. And it was still the right call.

At least he had that, a small island to cling to.

“Mom’s going to come back, you know,” Carter said, and there was something in his tone that made Tyler turn to look at him. Something resigned. And scared. “Now that the diamond has been found, she won’t give up until she gets the ruby.”

“It’s not here,” Tyler said, wondering what was between Carter and their mother. “We looked. We looked everywhere. The diamond was in literally the last place we searched.”

“Mom knows where it is.”

“How?”

“From what I’ve been able to put together, Mom dropped them here after the original heist and I think Margot found them.”

“You having Mom followed or something?”

“It’s my business, Tyler.”

“Fine, Carter. But if Margot had a fortune in gems, why in the world is this house falling down? Why hasn’t she—”

“Everyone has secrets, Tyler. Everyone.”

“I don’t,” Tyler said, lying back down on the cold grass, staring up at the cold stars. “Not anymore.”

Louisa lay next to her brother, the two of them sleeping back to back, their knees pulled to their chests. Like twins in vitro.

They’d spent a week in a small group home while Juliette’s foster-parent application was approved, and the counselor there said Miguel and Louisa had slept that way every night.

She pulled the door shut and pressed her forehead against the frame until the wood bit into her scalp.

There was a war going on inside of her. A constant battle between joy and grief.

The kids were here and they were safe. And against all odds, they seemed to be doing okay with the transition. Miguel was apologetic all the time, and Louisa was slowly returning to her old self, as long as Miguel was around.

She’d taken the week off to help the kids adjust. She had some adjusting to do herself.

Her father had turned into a surprise ally. He’d helped her put together the furniture, and last night he’d cooked chili and then stuck around to play Rummikub with the kids.

It had been one of the more surreal moments of her life.

They didn’t talk about Tyler. They didn’t talk about much, to be honest, but the quiet between them was comfortable.

It was as close to peaceful as she got these days, since she was fighting off a constant urge to call Tyler. To see him. To handcuff him to something and strip away every single layer of the man until there was nothing but the truth of him left. If there was any.

It was a bloody fight, and she didn’t know how much longer she could hold out.

She walked away from the kids’ room and into her dark living room. A family picture on her mantel caught the light from her kitchen and her parents’ faces, before Mom’s cancer, smiled up at her.

You really don’t understand how someone can be torn in their loyalties?
she asked herself.

She tried to forget Tyler’s face as she’d left him in that cell, walking away with her father. It must have killed him.

“Juliette?” Miguel whispered from behind her. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, turning with a smile for the boy. “What are you doing up?”

Miguel wrapped the bottom of his T-shirt around his arm, a nervous habit of his she’d noticed. “I want to go to work for Tyler after school.”

“Has he talked to you?” she asked, far too eagerly.

“No, but I was supposed to start last Monday and…well, I didn’t.”

“Right.” She licked her lips. “You want to go out to the build site tomorrow?”

He nodded. “I sort of promised, you know?”

She wanted to hug him, to pull the boy to her and tell him how proud she was of him. Of how, from the moment she’d met him, defiant and pissed, being brought into the station in handcuffs from that fight with his father in the grocery store, she’d felt that he would change her life.

And that she’d hoped she could change his.

“Okay then,” she said, knowing it was too soon, that her relationship with Miguel was fragile and too much pressure might destroy it somehow. “We’ll go see Tyler tomorrow.”