Brothers Forever

12. I Will Haunt You

To my dismay, she moved back a step as I sat up.

“Sterling, are you okay?” Bren asked me softly as she tucked a stray stand of her blonde hair behind her ear.

“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked with a slight frown.

She remained silent for a moment and looked at her hands, as if she was building up the courage to say something. She brought her head up and looked me in the eye as she said, “You cut school immediately after we talked. I may be a blonde, but I’m not stupid. I can put two and two together. Does this have anything to do with me liking Grey?”

She was giving me a chance to tell her exactly what it was about, but what was the point? I knew how she felt about me and I knew how she felt about my brother. I would only cause her even more problems than I already had. I couldn’t do that to her.

“No, I kinda figured you did, to be honest. I just wanted some time to myself and I knew it would be my only chance with me being grounded and all,” I replied without a hint of hesitation. Then I swiftly changed the subject as a new thought occurred to me. “What are you doing here anyhow? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

"Oh, well that makes sense,” Bren said and then laughed. “Sterling, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you slept right through the end of school. I came here because your mom was freaking out.”

I froze. “What time is it?”

She pulled out her phone and glanced at the screen. “4:12.”

"My mom is so gonna kill me,” I groaned as I pulled a hand through my blond hair.

"I think she’s more worried than mad right now,” Bren tried to assure me.

I stood up and made my way towards the exit, but I felt a small hand grip my wrist and pull me back. I turned to look at Bren with a befuddled expression on my face.

“We’re friends now, right Sterling?” she asked, not letting go of my wrist.

“Yeah, of course we are. Why?”

“I just want you to know that I’m here for you if you ever want to talk about something, like you were there for me today. I truly appreciated that,” Brennan told me solemnly, her blue eyes never leaving my own.

She knew I had been lying before. Bren was one of the few people that could see through my lies, but even she could only tell sometimes.

 “Fine,” I muttered, because I couldn’t resist against the puppy dog look she was giving me any longer. “But let’s talk about it as we walk. It’s a bit of a trek back to my truck.”

She smiled a bit, and we headed towards the door. I started to climb down first, and I looked up to see her still standing at the top.

“Bren, you can start coming down now.”

She just continued looking past me at the ground with wide eyes and shook her head. Then it dawned on me; Brennan was scared of heights. How could I forget something like that? The one time I had brought her here before, I barely got her up into the tree house, let alone back out of it. I began climbing back up the ladder until I was face to face with her.

“Come on, Bren. I won’t let anything happen to you,” I told her in a soothing voice as I held out my hand.

She just shook her head again and stuttered in a soft voice, “I c-can’t. It’s t-too high.”                   

“You’ll be fine. Trust me, okay?”

Bren turned her eyes to mine and held them steady for a moment before clutching my hand.