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  “Yeah, I guess, but we had dinner last night and he was just so distracted. And speaking of Clay, your brother is out of his mind….”

  Tracey didn’t start to breathe until five minutes after she got home. She dialed Rett’s number. In two seconds she hung up. What was she going to say? Was she supposed to ask him why he hadn’t mentioned that his sister was in school with them? Did it matter? Was she angry? Tracey didn’t even know if she had a right to be angry. Did she have any rights where he was concerned? At the very least she was hurt, but… She turned off all the lights in her house and went in the bathroom to think, or maybe sulk, but not to cry. She refused to cry.

  Tracey heard him pull up and the motor of his SUV die. The quiet in the house was so pure that she could even hear his footfalls on the gravel in the drive. He came to the door and knocked. She hoped he would go away. She really hoped he would just think she was gone away with a friend and leave. But then she heard the sound of his key click in the door. Tracey regretted the day she let him have it. He came in calling her name. She didn’t call back. Tracey saw yellow light seep in beneath the door. She would have to live through the moment. She stood up, trying to calm herself enough to walk out a rational, thinking person.

  Just before she could act and open the door, it was opened for her and light rained into the small chrome and white linoleum room.

  “Why are you hiding in the bathroom?”

  “I saw Angie tonight. At the ANM.”

  “Baby,” he breathed. “I was going to tell you about her. I was.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “I don’t have to, but babe, I know I should have.”

  “Go, Garrett. Just please go.” Her voice was so choked, she barely heard it herself.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, headlights flashed through the window. Rett’s SUV pulled into the drive. Tracey couldn’t believe he had come back. She went out of the bathroom and stood in the living room facing the door. He came in, followed by his sister, Angie who was wearing combat boots and pajamas. She looked over at Tracey, then at Rett, as if looking for reassurance.

  “Angie, this is Tracey. Tracey, this is my sister Angie.” He closed the door, then sat down on the sofa rubbing his temples.

  She couldn’t believe he had brought his sister over, introduced them.

  Angie cleared her throat loudly into the silence. “Uh, hi. Tracey, is it? Do you happen to know why my brother got me out of bed to come over here, even though he knows I have practice at six o’clock in the morning?”

  “You didn’t say anything to her?” Tracey asked him, upset that he seemed to be leaving this for her to explain.

  “Wait a minute…wait a minute,” she gasped. “You’re that girl from the video store yesterday… Are you dating my brother?”

  Tracey didn’t know exactly how to answer since they had never technically gone out on a date. She didn’t think it’d be appropriate to say that she was potentially in love with and sleeping with him, but no, they weren’t dating.

  A light dawned in Angie’s eyes. Then she sat on Tracey’s sofa and stared at her brother with her mouth open.

  Garrett ignored her. “Tracey, I’ve always meant to tell you she’s an undergrad here. I wanted to introduce you before now, but you didn’t want—”

  When he didn’t finish his sentence, Angie looked from him to Tracey, then back again. “She didn’t want what?”

  “None of your business,” he growled, protecting Tracey.

  “Hey, you got me out of bed to come here, not the other way around. Something is my business.”

  Angie was here now. She knew the most important part. She might as well know everything. “He was going to say that I didn’t want anyone to know we were together.”

  “You didn’t want anyone to know?” she questioned incredulously.

  “I don’t like the way you said that.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’m sorry. But it’s usually the other way around.”

  “I don’t know who you know or what you think your experience tells you about me, but that’s the situation.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend, I just know my brother and he’s more likely—”

  “Angie,” Rett warned.

  “Whereas I am the reject of the family and will date whoever I please—” That was interesting news. “—my brother is the most clean-cut, All-American, wannabe Southern gentleman you will ever meet. He hangs out on the strip. He wears khaki pants, tucked-in plaid shirts, and duck shoes, for Chrissakes. That’s the way it’s been in my family for generations. He played football in high school. He and my dad go hunting every fall. He goes to church every Sunday, even here at school. He’s got friends named Clay and Hunter and, yes, one they call Bubba. Even if his skin’s always tan, he’s the whitest white boy I know. Hell, his name is Rett, and you’re sure as hell not Scarlett. I mean, I can’t see him with a black woman without him being called ‘Massah Rett’ somewhere in the process!”

  “Will you just shut up, Angie?” he roared at her.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Tracey, I was just tryin’ to explain to you why I was in shock. I’m sure you know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  Tracey didn’t answer her. Just like that, she hated Garrett’s sister. In fact, Tracey got up and left the room. She went in the bedroom and held her breath. She counted to ten. She could hear them in the living room bickering. Tracey didn’t like Angie’s quick and surgical verbalization of the situation. It was all too true. But where Garrett and she had settled into things, never even saying the words ‘black’ or ‘white’ in that respect, she was putting everything out on a platter in front of them. This chick wasn’t pulling any punches.

  Tracey breathed out slowly, then counted to ten again. The counting and breathing thing was way overrated.

  “Tracey?” It was Angie.

  She turned to watch Angie enter the bedroom. “What do you want?”

  “To apologize. I get carried away sometimes, and I forget. Rett’s used to me, but you’re not. I shouldn’t have said all that. But can I tell you something?” she asked, coming to stand in front of Tracey.

  “I don’t know….”

  “Please, just hear this. Be careful. My brother is very charming and persuasive and selfish. He doesn’t have a chivalrous bone in his body that’s not connected to the ‘him-getting-what-he-wants’ bone. Don’t get wrapped up in him.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t get pissed, but I don’t see him being in a long term relationship with you.”

  Hurt pelted Tracey’s insides like hailstones. “As he said, I’m the one who wants the relationship to stay the way it is. Not him.”

  “Or so you think. Don’t take it to heart that I’m here, that he introduced me and you. I know it seems like a grand romantic gesture, but I’m his sister and I’m the black sheep. I am the only one who he’s been one hundred percent honest with. I am the only one he could trust with something like this without worrying about what I’ll say or do or think. He can tell me anything and I’ll love him no matter what. That’s how close we are. It doesn’t mean he’ll ever acknowledge—”

  “I don’t need him to acknowledge me!”

  She placed her hand on Tracey’s arm. Tracey shrugged it off roughly. “I’m sure he cares about you or he wouldn’t have bothered. He wouldn’t have gone to this kind of trouble. Especially not if he’d slept with you already, but I’m right about my brother.”

  Tracey’s bottom lip trembled and she tried to think of something to say.

  “You don’t know me. So why are you telling me this?”

  Garrett walked into the room, and his sister went silent. Tension marked every stiff movement and there was a tick in his jaw. His eyes held hers.

  Tracey had never been as quick as she wanted to be in these situations. She was always that person who thought of something brilliant and life-changing to say three days later. She wanted to ask him about what Ang
ie had said. That or to kick him out of her life because if there was a time to end this cleanly, this was it. But, sadly, she was not quick and she would not break up with him in front of his sister. Tracey felt angry, pathetic, and alone, and still he watched her. She wanted to believe he was not the way Angie described him.

  He remained silent, watching her.

  “How long have you been dating?” Angie asked.

  “We’ve been friends since August,” he answered without shifting his gaze.

  “How long have you been sleeping together?”

  “Now, that really isn’t your business,” Tracey mustered up the spirit to say.

  Angie smiled Garrett’s smile at Tracey. Then looked from Tracey to Garrett and back again. In the silence, she left the room.

  The pair stared at each long enough for Tracey to feel a tear in the corner of her eye and for Garrett to come forward to wipe it away.

  “Don’t.” She stepped back and away from him.

  He moved forward again and grasped her upper arms gently in his hands. “Tracey, I love you.”

  More tears slipped from her eyes.

  “Angie knows me for sure. I don’t know what she said to you, but she’s honest to a fault. I can’t say she wasn’t right about the… the convenience of keeping this quiet. But you didn’t want anyone to know. That wasn’t me alone. And she’s right, I can trust her with any secret, but who better to start opening up to? Who better to be the first person to know us, together?”

  Tracey didn’t say a word. It amazed her that she was so eloquent internally.

  He came forward once again. His arms slipped around her and held her tight. He held her so tight that she felt a sob deep in her chest.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  Tracey hugged him back.

  * * *

  “Hmmm. So my brother’s dating a black woman. I think I’m going to lay down and die.” Those were the first words out of her mouth when they went, hand and hand, back into the living room.

  “You got practice in the morning?” Rett asked his sister, ignoring her comment. Angie nodded. “I’ll tell you what. You can take the truck back and drive it to practice in the morning. Just come get me when you’re done. Really, any time tomorrow is fine. I’ll be here all day.” He turned to Tracey. “If that’s all right with you?”

  “Actually…” Actually, she wanted him to stay there and tell her he loved her again while he made love to her and exorcised her of reborn insecurities. “I still have some things to sort out. I think I’d rather be alone tonight.”

  He sighed deeply.

  Garrett led Angie towards the door. Even then, Tracey chose to believe the girl just didn’t know her brother as well as she thought, that the fact that he loved her—and she knew he loved her—would overcome any bad behavior on his part. Tracey would find out later that you didn’t grow up in a house with someone for twenty-plus years without knowing him almost better than anyone else ever could.

  “Just one thing.” Angie glanced back and forth between the two of them as she stood to leave. “Can I see you kiss?”

  “No,” they both said at once.

  Chapter 15

  Angie crossed her arms in front of her as her brother escorted her out. They stood on the porch staring each other in the eye. “So?” she challenged him.

  “So what? So you’re going to tell me why you just tried to ruin what I have with that girl?”

  “I didn’t try to ruin anything.”

  “I brought you here just to prove to her that I wasn’t hiding you and that I didn’t want to hide you. I’m not saying you didn’t make a point, but I brought you here to put her fears to rest. And what did you do?”

  “Yeah, what did I do?” She got in his face to ask the question.

  “You went in and tried to ruin it.” He shrugged his shoulders the way he always did when he was trying to make her feel childish.

  “How in the hell did this all start?”

  “I don’t know. We met and kept running into each other and one thing led to another.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Uh-huh.” Garrett started to hand her the keys to his car.

  Angie didn’t take them. “Rett, I don’t think you should hurt that girl.”

  “Why do you think I would?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I mean, you know what Momma always tells you about you and Kim. ‘Don’t play house if you’re the only one who knows it’s a game.’ ”

  “This is not a game to me. I’m in love with her.”

  “Well, I hope to hell not.” She cocked her head to the side.

  “What do you have against this? Aren’t you the one who wanted to date that boy with all those dreadlocks?”

  “Yep, but I’m also the one who doesn’t give a damn what anybody thinks about me. I date who I want to when I want to, I just don’t take them home to Momma and Daddy. And usually I don’t even let my brother Rett meet them ’cause he’s just as bad as Momma and Daddy. But you can’t do what I do. You’re the Golden Boy. I don’t know if you’re in love with her, or if she is in love with you. But I do know she’s not Juliet, and you sure aren’t Romeo.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you know what it’s supposed to mean. Even if you love her, in order for you two to be a real couple, your whole life has to change. I’m not being dramatic, Rett. You can’t hang out with the same guys. You can’t go to the same places. You can’t bring her home. Momma only tolerates me in the house these days because Dad makes her. But she can barely stand me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is.” She put a hand to her chest. “But I have come to accept that. I’ve had to build a whole other network of people who care about me to make sure I stay happy.”

  “Dad cares about you, no matter what.”

  “I know.”

  “I care about you, no matter what.”

  “I know that, too.” Impulsively, she hugged him hard. “Clay knows somethin’s up. So does Charles, he said.”

  Rett ignored her comment. “Just take the keys. Come get me in the morning.”

  “She said she wanted to be alone.”

  “She’ll change her mind. See you tomorrow, Angie.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Garrett.”

  Rett waited until Angie pulled off to take a deep breath and go back into the house.

  Tracey was still sitting in the same place and she looked up at him as he entered. She had a look on her face that was like…like…it was just horrible.

  “What are you doing back?”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “So you ignored me.”

  Rett couldn’t help himself; he grinned and nodded. Tracey rolled her eyes. But he saw a little smile, which meant he was just this side of home free. He sat down on the sofa beside her. She crossed her arms over her chest. He put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to him. She was nice and warm and soft. At that precise moment, talking was the last thing he felt like doing, but he couldn’t get to point C from point A without hitting point B first. “Tracey?”

  “What?”

  “We’re both adults who care about each other—”

  “You don’t understand. There’s more to it than that. Angie knows what kind of person you are. She knows how potentially bad this could be.” She paused. “And, Garrett, I need to know. Do you have a problem with me? I mean, who I am. Do you have a problem with me being black?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Not necessarily true.”

  Okay, not as home free as he’d thought. “Well, do you have a problem with me being white?”

  “I don’t—”

  He didn’t let her finish that thought. It was either going to be “I don’t think so” or “I don’t know,” neither of which he wanted to hear right then. “Or maybe you’re just tolerating me because I’m so talented in bed?”

  He nipped at her n
eck, and Tracey squealed a little, trying not to laugh. “Don’t do that. I told you I need to sort things out. “ Garrett took that opportunity to pull the front of her shirt down, along with her bra, exposing one plump breast, which he seized with his mouth. He heard her moan above him and knew that no matter how much she fought, they were done talking for the night.

  * * *

  The very next day, he tackled changing their relationship.

  “Hey, Trace, read this sheet and let me depose you.” Garrett handed her a piece of paper. She sat up in bed to take it. Tracey had been lying down all day because she hadn’t been feeling too well. Granted, that hadn’t prevented him from forcing her into rigorous physical activity just moments before. He said he didn’t care if he caught her cold. He was so affectionate, his hands and lips everywhere. When they realized they were out of condoms, he nearly went into apoplectic shock, until Tracey reminded him she was on the pill, and they had established that they both had clean bills of health—despite her perpetual cough. The sex had been, well, yummy.

  “Hmm.” Tracey studied the paper. “Depositions.” It had been an interesting case minutes ago, but she didn’t remember at all what it was about.

  “Tracey?”

  “Yeah, Garrett?”

  “I don’t know how to say this.” He leaned against the wall.

  “Tell me what?” Tracey glanced up from the page.

  “I don’t want us to see other people.”

  She lowered the paper in her hands and looked up at him. “What?”

  “I mean, well, just what I said. I don’t want us to see other people.”

  “I didn’t know that we were seeing each other,” she countered.

  “Well, what do you call it, Tracey?” His jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she changed her tactic. “Besides, I’m not the one who’s in a relationship.”

  “Well, babe, neither am I,” he said pointedly. “If you’ll recall, I broke it off with Kim.”

  “Then it’s settled, isn’t it? I’m not seeing anyone, and you’re not seeing anyone.” Tracey tried again to focus on the case but found it impossible—especially with him standing there deeply studying his coffee, obviously dissatisfied. She sighed impatiently. “What is it, Garrett?”