“Sports?”
“Yeah… Go Pats.”
What the fuck? I left the bathroom and sat down on my bed. I’d chalked a lot of odd moments up to my imagination, but I wasn’t imagining that these two were full of shit. When Teagan came out of the bathroom, she had a towel wrapped around her. Normally that would be enough to make me forget everything, but not the way I was feeling.
She tilted her head and smiled. “Should I get dressed?”
“Yeah, you should.”
Her face fell. “Oh.”
I said nothing while she gathered her clothes and went back into the bathroom to change. When she came out I stood. “Are you fucking my brother?”
“What? No!”
I looked her square in the eyes. “Then what the hell is going on, Teagan? Because you two were arguing about something. And it wasn’t sports or universal healthcare—like my brother said it was.”
She closed her eyes. “We’re not sleeping together, and we never have. But you need to talk to him about what’s going on.”
“What do you mean, what’s going on? Are you saying you know something I don’t?”
She stared at me.
I moved closer. “Teagan, talk to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She took a deep breath. “Think about it. What’s the one thing I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about?”
“I don’t know. Stuff from work? Medical stuff?”
Teagan just kept staring at me.
I closed my eyes. Fuck. I was such an idiot. The first time they met, she’d thought he looked familiar and later asked if he’d been in the hospital. He’d been a dick to her ever since. The realization kicked me in the stomach. I opened my eyes.
“Is he okay?”
“Talk to your brother, Max.”
? ? ?
“What the hell?” My brother rubbed his eyes. “Are you drunk? It’s two in the morning.”
I brushed by him and entered his apartment.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
He shook his head. “Not this crap again.”
“I’m not screwing around, Austin. I know something is going on with you, and Teagan won’t tell me, which means it has something to do with your health.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m not leaving until I get the truth. So you might as well get it over with and start talking.”
My brother’s face changed to something resigned. “Take a seat.”
He walked over to the cabinet and took out a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. Filling them both, he held his up to me before sucking it back. I followed his lead. Austin poured a second, but only filled his glass this time.
“I had back pain for a while. I figured I’d pulled something. But it didn’t get better. Then I started to have trouble running. I’d get winded in half a block when I used to be able to run ten miles without breaking a sweat. One night, I was getting a bottle of water from the fridge, and the next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor. I’d passed out. So I went to the ER.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“You were away for a hockey game. That’s the night I met Teagan. I didn’t remember her at first. She hadn’t said much, just shadowed the doctor as he went from patient to patient. It wasn’t until I saw her in scrubs that I remembered. I guess seeing her in context jogged my memory.”
“Okay…but what happened at the hospital?”
“They ran some tests, took X-rays, and did an ultrasound. When they came back, the doctor told me I had an abdominal aortic aneurysm.”
My eyes widened. “Like Dad?”
Austin nodded. He lifted the shot glass from the table and knocked the second one back.
I dragged a hand through my hair. “What can they do for it?”
“They can take it out surgically. But there’s always the risk of it rupturing during the procedure.”
Which was exactly what had happened to our father, and he’d died on the table. This time, I poured the shots. After we each drank another, I shook my head.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re going to tell me I’m young and healthy, so my chances are better than Dad’s were, so I should just have the surgery to reduce the risk of it rupturing itself.”
“Is that what the doctor recommends?”
Austin nodded. “He said if I don’t get it taken care of soon, walking will probably become difficult. I’m already winded just going from my car to class. I feel like an eighty-year-old man.”