Copyright 2012
All work is property of Leah Crichton, any duplication or reproduction of all or part of the work without explicit permission by the author is illegal.
Sebastian was at the apartment early with Robbie at his side. He shoved past Sawyer. "Dude, you need to tell them."
Sawyer knew better than to ask about what? "Lane knows."
"I've known Sadie since we were fourteen."
"Who is Sadie?" Robbie asked. "More importantly, is she hot?"
Sawyer's hand instinctively made a fist. "You touch my sister and I'll kill you, yeah?"
Robbie blinked. "Whoa. What? Your sister?"
"His sister," Sebastian said. "Met her yesterday, she's a real sweetheart."
Robbie's eyes shot to Sawyer. "So he can call her sweetheart but I can't ask if she's hot? That doesn't seem entirely even handed."
"I'll give you even handed," Sawyer said. "She's fourteen."
"What?" Robbie's expression turned. "She's a kid. Was she like your long lost sister, did you just find her?"
"No," Sawyer said. "I always knew where to find her."
Lane had some sort of sixth sense about when Sawyer's fuse was running extra short. "Sadie is a schizophrenic," he said. "She lives at an assisted living facility."
"She's crazy?" Robbie asked.
"Don't you fuckin' call her that."
Robbie shook his head. "Sorry I didn't mean it that way. She has problems."
"You're about to have a problem," Sawyer said.
"Dude, I'm just trying to understand. This is a lot to take in," Robbie said.
"It is," Sebastian said.
They were right. He was emotionally charged following everything that'd happened with Lane and was being unreasonable.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you all about Sadie. I was just trying to protect her, you know."
"From us?" Robbie arched a single eyebrow.
"From you, yeah, Mister-is-she-hot, but more importantly from all this craziness going on in our lives. I was gonna tell you about her, but I was working up to it, then we got the record deal and it didn't seem like a good idea."
"We were a band for almost four years before we got the deal," Seb said.
Sawyer linked his hands through his hair. This was another reason he'd never mentioned Sadie. The questions. Always questions. "Look to tell you about Sadie involves talking to you about my past. I didn't have a good childhood. I had a horrible one and somehow talking about her means bringing up shit I'm not ready or willing to deal with."
Robbie shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Fair enough. When do I get to meet her?"
What? That was it? That was the only thing he had to say? "You want to meet her?" he asked.
"Yeah dude, any sister of any one here or out there, like Devin, is a sister of mine."
"She can be a little hard to take."
"Obvious if you're related."
Sebastian held up his hands. "Stop. That's kind of why we came here."
