Amber: Read My Lips (F&L Story #5)

Read My Lips: Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Linc parked his truck behind his brother's and studied the white farmhouse before him.  There was a fresh coat of paint on the wood siding and trim flower beds in front of the wide porch.  A swing hung from chains and lace curtains graced the inside of tall windows, thrown open to allow the fresh spring air into the house.  Linc understood why Wil loved it here.  This was a home built for a family.  And for the first time since he’d known about his brother and Sally, he didn’t feel envious or bitter.  He was happy for Wil.

Turning off the engine of his truck, he spied Wil coming out of the side of a barn, pulling his shirt around his shoulders and buttoning it.  Sally emerged right after, adjusting her own shirt over her swelling belly.  Linc chuckled.  Those two.

“Hey, bro,” Wil called as Linc walked up to them.  “What brings you all the way down here?”

“Pay back,” Linc said with an evil grin.  “Your fly is open.”

Wil turned red as he zipped his jeans, and Sally laughed and swatted her husband’s shoulder before coming to Linc to give him a hug.  “Hey, handsome.  What happened to your eye?”

“Hey, yourself, beautiful,” Linc replied, giving her a kiss on the cheek, which surprised both her and Wil.  He gingerly touched his black eye.  “It’s a long story.”

“Watch it, or I’ll blacken the other one,” Wil growled, pulling his wife away from his brother.  “This one is taken.”

“Doesn’t hurt to look,” Linc said and pulled his brother into a hug as well.  Wil’s eyes widened and he stared at Linc with confusion.

“Are you dying?  Cancer?  Alzheimer's?”

“Ha, ha,” Linc laughed.  “I’m fine.  I just needed to see you...talk to you about some things.”

Wil shifted and looked around for his hat.  Then blushed again when he saw it lying on a wheelbarrow full of horse manure, probably discarded in haste, along with his belt, which peeked out from under some hay.  “What kinds of things?”  He retrieved his hat, inspected it, shrugged and stuck it on his head anyway.

“That’s gross,” Sally scoffed and snatched it off of him.

“Hey!  It’s the only one I’ve got left, you ran over the other one!”

“And it served you right for eating all the ice cream,” she retorted as she grabbed a handkerchief from her back pocket and set about cleaning the chunks of manure off the brim.

Linc smiled at the both of them.  And they stared oddly at him.  Probably never seen him smile so much, but he had a lot to smile about today.

“You look different...you sure you’re not sick or something?” Wil asked, finally get his hat back on his head where it belonged.

“I’m fine...better than fine,” Linc replied, wanting to talk to his brother without Sally around.

But that golden-haired female had that look in her eyes, and that knowing grin on her face.  “He’s in love,” she said as though it was secret.

Wil frowned, looking his older brother up and down.  “How can you tell?”

“Oh, a woman knows,” she said.  “You hungry, Linc?  I’ve got a meatloaf in the oven and a new cake recipe I’ve been dying to try out.”

Wil groaned.  “Another cake?  Woman, you’re gonna get fat and the doctor’s gonna get upset with you.”

Sally smacked him again.  “I’m not fat!  Am I, Linc?”

Linc wisely shook his head no.  “Not at all.”

“See?” she grinned sweetly at her husband.  “He’s taller and smarter.”

Wil popped Sally on the behind as she walked toward the house.  She shot a look of retribution at him with a sexy smile, and Linc and Wil stood together watching her sway through the back door like only a happy, well-fed pregnant lady could.  “I’m the one getting fat,” Wil growled.  “Look at this.”  He lifted his shirt and patted his stomach.  Not a pudge anywhere.  “I’ve gained ten pounds.”

Sally’s shout came out of the kitchen windows, “It’s all going to your fat head!”

Wil leaned closer to Linc.  “She’s got ears like an elephant.  Hears everything.”

“I heard that!”

“See there?” Wil said, not bothering to lower his voice any more.  “Can’t even sneak a bag of chips out to the pasture without her hearing me crunch.”

Linc chuckled.  “Yeah, I can see how your life is so terrible.”

“Hell, no, it’s not terrible,” Wil replied, and Sally yelled, “No cursing!  The baby can hear you!”

“Another thing I’m not allowed to do anymore,” Wil sighed, and clapped a broad, calloused hand on Linc’s shoulder, leading him into the house to the kitchen.  “So...why are you really here?”

“It’s about Amber,” Linc began as they emerged through the door, and Sally interrupted again, “That sweet, deaf girl from the wedding?”

Linc looked at Wil.  “You didn’t tell her?”

Wil shrugged.  “Why should I?”

“Tell me what?” Sally asked, her golden eyes scouring both of them.

“Ah, sh*t, now you’ve done got me in trouble,” Wil muttered, and Sally threw a spoon at him.  “No cursing!” she grumbled.

“I didn’t tell you because it’s really none of our business,” Wil said, picking the spoon up off the floor and tossing it in the sink.  Sally planted her fists on her hips.  She seared a look at them both...then the annoyance and confusion cleared from her expression.

“That’s who you’re in love with,” she concluded.  “Chloe’s sister...ohhh, Chloe’s gonna have a fit!  And after what Daniel pulled on her the other day!”

“What did Daniel do now?” Wil asked his wife.

“None of your business,” she said hotly.

“And Amber and Linc is none of ours,” Wil told her, rooting his boots into the floor like a man facing down a wall of charging soldiers.

“Well, he didn’t just drive five hundred miles to keep us in the dark, now did he?” she retorted.  Turning back to Linc, she asked, “What’s going on with you and Amber?  You fell in love with her, and she doesn’t want anything to do with you, isn’t it?”

Linc scrubbed his fingers through his hair, uneasy about the whole situation now that he was here.  “Actually, it kind of went the other way.”

Sally read something in his face which caused her to relax and gaze at him with a mother’s sympathy.  She crossed over to the table, pulled a chair out and said, “Sit down, honey, and tells us all about it.”

Linc did.  He slumped into her spindly kitchen chair, and over a pot of decaf coffee -- another thing Wil scowled about -- and told his brother and sister-in-law almost everything, skipping the intimate details.  He talked until he had no breath left inside him, he talked like he’d never confided in anyone ever before.  Wil never made a comment, leaving all that to Sally, and finally, it got to the reason Linc drove all this way on a whim.  He looked squarely at his brother and said it...what he’d been holding inside him for three long years.

“Wil...Wilson, I am deeply sorry for betraying you.  You are my brother.  I should have stuck by you from the beginning.  I cannot say how much my own guilt and shame has caused me to hurt you.  You should not have gone to prison.  You should not have been held responsible for Macie’s accident.  I should have believed in you from the start.  I hope that someday you can forgive me, and if you want to beat me to a pulp for the way I’ve treated you these past three years, then I will gladly let you.”

Silence entered the kitchen.  Sally welled up and turned to Wil for his response.  Linc never took his eyes away from his brother.  “Forgive me,” he begged in a whisper.  Wil slowly stood, stared down at Linc for too damn long...and left through the backdoor.

“Wil!” Sally shouted at his retreating back, amazed and plainly upset at his behavior.  Linc took her hand and squeezed it.

“It’s okay,” Linc said.

Tears fell from her eyes and she turned back to Linc.  “I’m sorry...I’m so sorry for both of you.”

“Don’t upset yourself,” he told her.  “It’s not good for the baby.”

Sally gave him a weak, watery smile.  “Babies,” she whispered.  “Don’t tell Wil...I want it to be a surprise.”

Linc squeezed her fingers again, overjoyed for them.  “I won’t.  I promise.”

She wiped her cheeks, and got up to stare out the window.  “He just needs time, I guess.  We’ve talked about this...he’s been waiting for it, since the wedding when you told him you were happy for us, but you never really apologized.”  She sighed heavily, and bent to check on the meatloaf in the oven.  “Sometimes, I catch him staring at our wedding photos, especially the ones with just you and him.  He misses you, Linc.”  She turned back around, propping her elbows on the counter behind her.  “He’s been so afraid you would never forgive him.  You loved her a lot, didn’t you?  Macie.”

He nodded.  “A whole lot.”

“And now you’re in love with Amber.”  Not a question.  Not even an accusation.

“I am,” he stated clearly.

She sighed out again, rubbing her belly as she gazed toward her husband walking past the barn and out into the fields.  “I didn’t use to like you, you know.  I thought you were angry and bitter and you didn’t deserve a brother like him.”

“You were correct,” Linc admitted.

“But,” she said, pulling her gaze back to him, “I was never able to hate you completely.  Don’t you think, that because all that happened between you and Wil, we are where we are right now?  I got him, my babies, happiness and love, and here you are, in love, too.  Do you believe in fate, Linc?”

Linc smiled faintly, fiddling with his coffee mug.  “On days like today...yes.”

She smiled in return.  “Me, too.”  She pushed away from the counter and shooed him out of his chair.  “Now, get out of my kitchen while I finish dinner.  Go talk to him again.  I’m sure he won’t bloody you into a pulp.”

Linc bent over to kiss her cheek.  “Thanks, Sally.  I’m glad we got a chance to really talk.”

Sally waved him out the door, fondly muttering, “Damn, soft-hearted cowboys,” and he turned back for just a moment to wink and say, “No cussing in front of the babies.”

Sally slapped his back.  “Baby,” she hissed, “Don’t you dare slip up and pluralized it!”

Linc chuckled and walked out into the falling sunlight to find his brother.  Wil sat on a fence post, chewing on a stick of straw and gazing blankly at a pair of horses in the pasture.  When he heard Linc’s footsteps, he glanced briefly at his brother, but that was about it.

Linc leaned an elbow over a wooden slat and stood in uncomfortable silence next to his brother.  Minutes passed, and the sun fell behind the tree line.  When Wil did decide to speak, it wasn’t at all what Linc expected.

“I saw a guy get beat to death on my second night,” he said.  “Child rapist and murderer...sadistic bastard.  Kept pictures of everything he did to those poor kids.  He’d only been locked up for maybe four hours before they got to him.  Funny thing about it was that he wasn’t in prison for raping and killing those children...got caught with a pound of heroin.  But the guys in there...they knew...they could see the evil in a person’s eyes.  And they didn’t go easy on him.  By the time they broke both his legs and shoved his penis up into his ribcage, he confessed to everything...”

Linc swallowed a rise of bile in his throat.  His brother had been there...seen that...lived it.  “Did you...?”

Wil tossed his straw to the ground and asked, “Did I land a punch or two?  No...I kept to my cell as much as possible.  Didn’t want to get involved in all that gang sh*t and taking sides against each other.  Just wanted to do my time and get out.”

“I’m sorry, Wil,” Linc began, but Wil jumped off the fence and growled, “Hell, Linc, quit apologizing!  I knew what I was doing, why I confessed.  I was trying to take some of the pain from you...I couldn’t stand to see you hurt.”

Linc shook his head in denial.  “Still...you should know--”

“I’ve known,” Wil said quietly.  “I’ve always known.  Honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever hear it, but I’ve known.”

Linc snorted a breath of wry amusement.  “You sound like Amber.  She believes she knows, she’s just waiting to hear it.”

Wil looked at him sternly.  “That you love her.  You still haven’t told her.”

“I didn’t even know for sure until last night,” Linc argued.

“Bullhonky!  You knew from the very first moment.  Why did you think you were so fascinated with her at my wedding?  Did you think that was your pecker drawing you toward her?”

A grin flashed in Linc’s face.  “A little, yeah.”

“Ah, hell...you are an idiot,” Wil grumbled.  “If Pop could hear you now...”

“Hey, I’m a guy,” Linc started to explain, but Wil drew back and punched him...actually punched him right in the nose.  Linc fell back to the dirt, holding his spurting face.

Wil towered over him.  “If you were that kind of ‘guy,’ you would have been f*cking every pair of legs to come your way in the last three years, but I know for a fact that Amber is the first lady you’ve been with since Macie.  Frankly, Linc, I’m ashamed of you more than anything else.”

And Linc, with blood running down the back of his throat and out his nose, stared blurry-eyed up at his pissed-off brother...and started laughing.  Really laughing.  His teeth shone through his lips, tinged pink, and his eyes teared up with the sting of his nose and laughter he couldn’t keep inside.  A broken nose to go with his black eye.

“A crazy idiot,” Wil muttered, jerking Linc to his feet.  “So, what have you been telling Amber?  ‘I’ll love you eventually’?”

“Something like that,” Linc admitted nasally as his nose began to swell up.  Wil growled violently and pushed him back to the ground.

“Sally’s gonna get pissed ‘cuz I hit you,” he said.

“No, she won’t,” Linc said, trying to stand on his own.  “I’ve got leverage over her.”

His brother’s eyes narrowed.  “Oh, yeah?  What kind of leverage?”

“Can’t tell you...or she’ll hit me with a frying pan,” Linc said with a grin.

Wil rubbed the back of his head as though plagued by a memory.  “That really hurts, by the way.”

“I’m so glad she’s your wife,” Linc said, testing his nose to see if it still bled.  “Amber just kicks me.”

Wil grinned at that, seemingly happy that a woman was keeping his brother in line.  “I wouldn’t mind that for a change...wanna switch for a few days?”

“F*ck off,” Linc growled and knocked Wil’s hat off his head.

“Damn it!  Stop that!  It’s the only one I’ve got left.”

“So, you’ve mentioned.”

Wil grabbed his hat, stuck it on his head with a grimace and pushed Linc toward the house.  “How many curse words do you think we can say before we get back?”

“Not enough,” Linc answered.  Passing the barn, he stopped and asked, just to make sure, “So, Wil...about that apology...”

Wil shook his head.  “Forgiven and forgotten...we don’t have to talk about it ever again, if you don’t want to.  Just don’t wait three years to tell Amber how you feel...woman don’t like to wait.”

“No, we don’t,” Sally shouted from the back porch.  “So, get your butts in here!  I’m hungry!”