Heartbreaker (Unbreakable #1)(34)

“Probably.” His breath parted the hair on the back of my neck.

I jumped, knocking back into him, startled that he’d moved so close without me realizing it.

On a hard swallow, I stepped away from him. For some reason, I suddenly needed distance between us. Even though just hours ago I’d nearly jumped his bones in a diner, then later in his truck. The rooftop had changed that. And being in his home only magnified the enormous pause-button on my libido.

The rest of his living room confused me. A metal rod had been propped between the far side of the mantle and the outer wall of the house. On the makeshift closet rod, flannel shirts hung from hangers beside a winter jacket. T-shirts were slung over the back of a green upholstered chair; its cushion held three pairs of folded jeans.

To my right, a faded striped couch had been mostly covered with a pale blue sheet. A flattened bed pillow with a matching pillowcase rested on one end. The other end had a brown, yellow, and orange crocheted afghan bunched into a ball.

Blinking, I spun around, practically bumping into Darren again.

I spotted more clothes thrown over every piece of furniture. Shoes had been lined up by the baseboard. Textbooks were stacked on the end of a tall sofa table that had been pushed against a wall; its other end held the light I’d switched on earlier. A wooden chair, the same style as in the kitchen, had been tucked under it.

I stared a beat longer at the makeshift study desk, glanced at the clothes, then the sheet-covered couch. “You live down here?”

“Yeah.” He gave a hard nod, then walked into the dark kitchen. “Want something to drink?”

“In the living room? But…why? Isn’t there a bedroom for you?”

He didn’t respond. When I twisted to face him, he stood half-turned in front of the open refrigerator, its inner light shining on his face. He raised a brow, then nodded toward the top shelf which was loaded with bottles of beer and cans of soda.

“I’ll have a beer.” The earlier two from dinner had worn off. And the event on the roof, plus all the new information, had amped me up.

“It was easier to move down here.” He popped open both beers and let the lids skitter across the counter before they stopped at a wall of stacked mail. “When my mom…”

His voice cracked at the mention of her. Then his face screwed up in frustration as he handed me my beer.

I put a gentle hand on his forearm. “How long has it been?”

“Just over two years.”

I took a fortifying few swallows. But then I put the bottle on the counter, suddenly deciding I needed to remain sober. We were venturing into unfamiliar territory for me: depression, surviving a loved one’s suicide—dealing with that unimaginable loss.

My heart ached for him. For both of them. When he said nothing further, I stayed safe and stated the obvious. “You haven’t talked about it much.”

“Not at all.” He gripped his beer with a tight fist around its neck, then chugged a good half of the bottle before coming up for air.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

“No.” His eyes searched mine. “For the first time, I do. After it happened, I buried myself in everything I had to do to keep Logan and me afloat: made sure I was able to be her legal guardian, lightened my school load…took on more than one job to cover bills.”

“That’s amazing, Darren.”

“I love my sister. Had no choice. No way was she going into foster care.”

“And that explains this” —I gestured to his living-room-turned-bedroom— “how?”

The corner of his mouth tilted up just a little. “When she…”

He exhaled a sharp breath, took a few more swallows of beer. “After it happened, Logan was a mess. She refused to give Mom up. The house only has two bedrooms: Mom’s and ours. One day, about a week later, I came back from work to find Logan had moved out of our shared room and into Mom’s. She’d dragged all of her clothes into there and locked herself in.”

“Oh, wow.” I couldn’t imagine all of the memories that had to be in their mom’s room. Her clothes. Her personal treasures. Her bed.

“Plus my stereo system and all my music,” he grumbled.

“What?” I huffed out a laugh. “The music?” I listened as the evidence still blared loudly. “Alternative?”

He nodded. “Some jazz. Lotta blues and heavier rock too. She plays it nonstop. Mostly the depressing stuff. But…it seems to be her way of coping. So I let her be.”

My thoughts drifted back to the rooftop, of his sister and her struggle. “Logan also suffers from depression?”

“Yeah. Runs in the family, I guess. We had a couple of nasty fights, with her a sobbing wreck halfway through. Then she would shut down completely—just stare at the wall. Whenever it got that bad, I couldn’t get through to her. After practically begging her, I finally convinced her to see a doctor.”

“Did it help?”

“Not really. The doc saw her for all of ten minutes. Gave her a prescription. The drugs only messed her up more. Then we went to a shrink the doc recommended: an easygoing middle-aged woman. But Logan seems okay with her.”

“So she’s a little better now?”

“Not sure how much better she is,” he muttered. “She keeps ending up on that f*cking roof.”