Meanwhile, Bruce leaned back with a sigh. “It’s okay,” he said out loud. “I don’t have a kid.”
“Yet,” Nero said.
“Never. Dad saw to that when I was sixteen.”
Josh whipped around. “Bullshit.”
Bruce shrugged, but his eyes were bright with emotion as he looked at Josh. “Remember when Dad caught me making out with Mary Beth Davis? Well, he had me at a doctor the very next day. He said he didn’t want to chance me having another you.” The hatred inherent in that statement made everyone flinch, Josh most of all. But Bruce didn’t stop. “He never said you were a werewolf. I have no idea how he knew what you were. Are. But he chopped my nuts rather than risk me making another one of you. His words, not mine.”
Josh stood there, his skin pale, his mouth clenched hard. Nero was shaking his head.
“No clinic is going to cut a sixteen-year-old kid.”
Bruce’s gaze went to Nero. “It wasn’t a clinic. I don’t even know if it was a real doctor. All I remember is Dad handing me my usual morning smoothie, then waking up on a table in a place I didn’t recognize. I was hurting like hell, and beside me there was a guy explaining that I’d need to ice my balls for a couple days and there’d be no football until Monday.”
Josh shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. You’re his favorite. It’d be his fucking wet dream for you to make a dozen little Bruces to entertain him in his old age.”
“I had it checked a few years ago. I was dating someone, and she wanted kids.” Bruce shrugged. “I’m so mangled up with scar tissue that reversing it is out of the question.”
Laddin stepped forward. “Not in the normal way of things, maybe. But with magic—”
“It’s not reversible,” Bruce repeated firmly, his jaw hard. “Because if it was, I’d have to give my kid to that asswipe fairy.”
Right. No kids. Ever.
Meanwhile, Josh was still pacing. “He never clipped me. He didn’t touch Ivy. Why would he pick you?”
Bruce shrugged. “You ran faster? She’s a girl? How the fuck should I know?”
Laddin frowned, looking between the lines. “Did they run faster? Or did you run interference to protect them?” Everything he’d seen of Bruce told him that the guy protected people, even at the cost of his freedom. That had been the forfeit he’d agreed to with the Grand Cheesy, if things hadn’t worked out. Bruce had offered himself up as a slave.
“No,” said Josh as he continued to pace. “This is all bullshit. You hated me when we were kids. You tortured me.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said, his voice thick. “I did. I fucking loved hurting you. Because in my head, you were the reason I’d had my balls chopped. I blamed you because I was a stupid kid and because Dad cheered every time I knocked you down.” He straightened up in the chair, leaning toward his brother. “But I’m not that dumb kid anymore, and I’ve been trying to make it up to you. For years. But you wouldn’t return my phone calls and never came home so I could talk to you face-to-face.”
Josh rounded on his brother. “Why would I? Why would I believe a word you say?”
Bruce didn’t have an answer for that. Neither did anyone else. So the silence hung dark and heavy in the kitchen while all Laddin could hear was the rasp of Josh’s breath and the hard beating of his own heart.
“He just saved our lives,” Laddin inserted into the silence. Why didn’t anyone remember that? Why wouldn’t anyone listen to him?
“And he ate a fairy apple,” Nero said softly. Then he reversed a kitchen chair and straddled it. It was a casual pose, but no less intimidating as he faced Bruce. “We need to know everything. From the beginning. What did Bitt—you know who—offer, and why did you take it?”
Bruce nodded, but his gaze was on Josh. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything.”
And he did, starting with a salad fairy offering him a cherry, which he refused until Bitterroot threatened Josh. Then he explained the cheese fairies, the regular fairies, and the fire, all the way up through this morning when they’d all been there. And he explained that the apple would give him more, though he had very little idea what that meant.
By the third time through, Laddin had had enough. “He saved our lives, Nero. All of us. Say thank you and be done with it.”
Nero rubbed his hand over his face. “But what is he leaving out? What isn’t he telling us that will come back and bite us in the ass?” Then, before Laddin could argue, Nero held up his hand. “I’m not saying he’s hiding anything on purpose. But every detail counts with the fae.”
“There isn’t anything more,” Bruce said wearily. “I’ve told you everything.”
“Not by half,” Josh said from his place next to the kitchen island. “You didn’t tell us why you ate the cherry in the first place.”
“I did tell you,” Bruce said, irritation finally leaking through his tone. “He said he wants to enslave you. I was trying to stop that.”
“And suddenly you’re acting like a big brother? Now, when I don’t need you at all?”
Laddin saw the impact those words had as they hit Bruce. He didn’t know if anyone else saw the guy flinch or notice that his gaze dropped to the floor, but Laddin sure as hell saw the way the man’s hands tightened into fists and then slowly, carefully released. So Laddin said what Bruce wouldn’t.
“He’s still trying to do it, though. Because you’re his brother and because he protects people. He’s a fireman and a paramedic. And if he can’t help his little brother, then who the hell is he?”
“I don’t know,” Josh answered, his voice bleak. “I don’t know
