Page 11 of Misguided

I’m pretty sure it’s the look I wore when Mom passed. I’m also pretty sure it’s how I’d look if Mel were taken away from me again, too.

“Don’t worry about me,” Mel answers, her hands tightening on my hips. “Spend that call wisely on the one who’ll need the reassurance. I know you, and I know you can look out for yourself. She doesn’t.”

The woman Mel talks about sits awkwardly astride King’s bike, her legs stiff and her eyes wide. Newbie.

King eases the throttle open, winding his bike through the narrow gap left between the van and the barn door. I lean the bike upright, taking both my weight and Mel’s, and kick the stand in.

I don’t miss the way her chest expands against my back as she watches her brother shrink in the distance. I also don’t miss the subtle pinch of her fingers as her hands clench a little tighter around my hips, sliding together until she rests her hands against the V of my stomach.

She’s sad, understandably so, but what I recognize most is the stoic silence of a person who wants to deny it all. Silence not only in her words but in the most telling language of all, her body, as she settles in to the position she holds for the next hour until we pull off the highway for gas.

A club princess with probably the most revealing story to tell. And yet, as the gas flows into my tank, she holds my gaze and says nothing at all.

She doesn’t need to say any more.

I get it.