Chapter 5: The Brother's Burden

The next morning brought crisp October sunshine and the return of electric power, as if the storm had washed away more than just the lingering summer heat. Elara sat in her rental car outside Leo's auto shop, her hands gripping the steering wheel as she tried to work up the courage to go inside.

After Liam's revelations in the candlelit darkness, she'd barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face as he'd spoken about his father, heard the pain in his voice when he'd mentioned Leo's role in keeping them apart. The brother she'd always seen as her protector had become something else entirely—a guardian who'd made choices she'd never asked him to make.

The garage bay doors were open, and she could hear the familiar sounds of Leo's work—metal on metal, the hiss of air tools, classic rock playing from his ancient radio. He'd taken over Morrison's Auto when old Pete retired, building it into the most trusted shop in three counties through sheer competence and that easy charm that made everyone feel like family.

She'd always been proud of Leo for staying, for building something meaningful in their hometown. Now she wondered what other decisions he'd made on her behalf without her knowledge.

"Elara!" His face lit up with genuine joy when he spotted her walking across the oil-stained concrete. Leo Vance at twenty-nine was still the golden boy who could make anyone smile, tall and lean with their father's easy grin and their mother's warm eyes. Grease streaked his coveralls, and his hair stuck up at odd angles, but he looked happy in a way that spoke of a man comfortable in his own skin.

"Hey, stranger. Mom said you were in town, but I figured you'd be too busy with your fancy renovation to visit your favorite brother."

"My only brother," she corrected automatically, the old joke falling flat as tension coiled in her stomach.

"Details." He wiped his hands on a rag, studying her face with the intuition that came from growing up together. "You look like hell, El. The project giving you trouble?"

The project. As if Liam Blackwood could be reduced to something so simple.

"We need to talk," she said, the words coming out harder than she'd intended.

Leo's expression shifted, wariness creeping into his eyes. "That sounds ominous. Want to grab lunch? Maggie's still makes those burgers you used to love."

"Here is fine." She glanced around the empty garage. "Where we won't be interrupted."

He set down his tools with deliberate care, the easy smile fading from his face. "This is about Liam."

It wasn't a question, and she didn't treat it like one. "Why didn't you tell me about his father?"

Leo's shoulders sagged slightly, and suddenly he looked older than his twenty-nine years. "How much do you know?"

"Enough. About the drinking, the violence, the night you found him in our backyard." Her voice was steady, controlled, but she could feel fury building beneath the surface. "The night you told him to stay away from me."

"Elara—"

"Is it true?" The question cracked like a whip. "Did you tell Liam not to pursue me?"

Leo was quiet for a long moment, staring at the concrete floor as if it held answers to questions he'd been avoiding for a decade. When he finally looked up, she saw guilt written in every line of his face.

"Yeah," he said simply. "I did."

The admission hit her like a physical blow, even though she'd been expecting it. Hearing it confirmed was different from suspecting it, final in a way that made her chest tight with betrayal.

"How could you?" The words came out as barely a whisper. "How could you make that choice for me?"

"Because I knew what his life was like, and you didn't." Leo's voice was rough with old pain. "Because I'd been cleaning up after his father's rages since we were fifteen, and I couldn't stand the thought of you getting caught in that crossfire."

"That wasn't your decision to make!"

"Like hell it wasn't." The rare flash of anger in Leo's voice startled her. Her brother almost never raised his voice, almost never lost his temper. "You were eighteen years old, Elara. Eighteen and brilliant and full of dreams about college and architecture and building something amazing with your life. You think I was going to let you throw that all away for a guy whose biggest priority was keeping his old man from beating him to death?"

"You don't know that I would have—"

"Yes, I do." He stepped closer, and she could see the pain he'd been carrying all these years. "Because I know you, El. I know how you love—completely, recklessly, with everything you have. You would have stayed. You would have tried to save him, tried to fix his family, tried to carry burdens that weren't yours to bear. And it would have destroyed you both."

The words stung because they held a grain of truth she didn't want to acknowledge. At eighteen, she had been impulsive, romantic, convinced that love could conquer anything. Would she have stayed? Given up Northwestern, given up her dreams, to stand by Liam through whatever crisis was consuming his life?

Maybe. Probably.

"But that was my choice to make," she said, the fight going out of her voice. "My risk to take."

"Not when I could see the wreckage coming from a mile away." Leo's expression softened, becoming the protective older brother she remembered. "Liam's father wasn't just a drunk, Elara. He was violent, unpredictable, dangerous. That night—the night of your party—Tom Blackwood had torn apart their house, put three holes in the drywall, and threatened to kill Liam if he didn't come home. We found him passed out in a pool of his own blood."

Elara's hand flew to her mouth, horror washing over her. "Oh God."

"Liam spent the next three months dealing with police reports, hospital visits, court dates. His father was arrested twice, hospitalized four times, and nearly died from alcohol poisoning. That's the reality Liam was facing while you were starting your freshman year at Northwestern."

She sank onto a nearby work stool, the weight of revelation making her legs unsteady. All these years, she'd painted Liam as the villain of her story—the boy who'd made promises he didn't keep, who'd abandoned her without explanation. She'd never imagined he'd been fighting battles she couldn't even comprehend.

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" she asked, her voice small.

"Because you were nineteen and in Chicago, building the life you'd always dreamed of. Because telling you would have brought you home, and we all knew—Mom, Dad, me, even Liam—that you belonged somewhere bigger than Northwood Creek."

"And Liam agreed to this? To just... disappearing?"

Leo's laugh was bitter, hollow. "Liam fought me on it for weeks. Kept saying you deserved the truth, deserved to make your own choices. But every time his father landed in the hospital or jail, every time Liam had to miss work to deal with another crisis, he understood a little more why staying away was the right thing to do."

"So he left town."

"He left town. Got a job with a construction crew in Colorado, sent most of his paycheck home to pay for his father's medical bills and legal fees. He called me every few months, asked how you were doing, if you were happy." Leo's voice grew quiet. "I always told him you were thriving, that you'd moved on. It seemed kinder than the truth."

"What truth?"

"That you spent your entire freshman year walking around like someone had ripped your heart out. That you threw yourself into your studies so completely that Mom worried you were making yourself sick. That even now, ten years later, you still go rigid every time someone mentions his name."

The observation cut too close to the bone, exposing truths she'd worked so hard to bury. "I got over it."

"Did you?" Leo's eyes were gentle but unrelenting. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you built an entire life around making sure you'd never be that vulnerable again."

She wanted to argue, to tell him he was wrong, that she'd moved on and built something meaningful in Chicago. But sitting in this garage where they'd all spent so many summer afternoons—her, Leo, and Liam, working on cars and dreaming about the future—she couldn't deny the kernel of truth in his words.

"I made the best decision I could with the information I had," Leo continued. "Maybe it was wrong. Maybe I should have trusted you to handle the truth. But I was twenty years old, scared for my best friend's life, and desperate to protect my sister from a situation that was already destroying everyone it touched."

Elara stared at her hands, processing everything he'd told her. The anger was still there, but it was complicated now by understanding, by the recognition that Leo's choices had come from love, even if they'd caused pain.

"He came back," she said finally.

"Three years ago. After his father died." Leo wiped his hands again, a nervous gesture she remembered from childhood. "I thought about calling you, warning you he was home. But you seemed so settled in Chicago, so successful. I figured it was better to let sleeping dogs lie."

"Except now I'm working with him."

"Yeah. That was... unexpected." He studied her face. "How's it going?"

She thought about the past three weeks of careful avoidance, professional courtesy masking years of hurt. Thought about last night's revelations in the candlelight, the way her heart had ached when Liam spoke about his father's death.

"Complicated," she admitted.

"He's a good man, El. Whatever mistakes he made when we were kids, he's spent the last decade trying to make up for them. The hardware store, the contracting work—he's built something solid here. Something honest."

"Are you matchmaking?"

"I'm just saying that maybe it's time to stop letting the past define the present."

The words echoed what Liam had said the night before, and she wondered if this was some kind of conspiracy between the two men who'd shaped her life in ways she was only beginning to understand.

"I need to go," she said, standing abruptly. The garage suddenly felt too small, too full of memories and revelations she wasn't ready to process.

"Elara, wait." Leo caught her arm gently. "I know I don't have the right to ask for forgiveness. What I did—keeping you in the dark, making choices for you—it was wrong, even if my intentions were good. But I hope someday you can understand why I did it."

She looked at her brother—really looked at him—and saw the weight he'd been carrying all these years. The guilt, the second-guessing, the knowledge that his choice to protect her had caused pain for everyone involved.

"I understand," she said quietly. "I don't like it, but I understand."

Relief flooded his face. "That's more than I deserve."

"Probably." But there was no real heat in the words. "I need time to process all this, Leo. To figure out what it means for... everything."

"Of course. But El?" He waited until she met his eyes. "Whatever happens between you and Liam now, whatever you decide to do with this information—make sure it's your choice this time. Not mine, not his, not anyone else's. Yours."

As she walked back to her car, Elara felt like she was seeing her entire history through a different lens. The night that had defined her understanding of love and loss, the decade of carefully constructed independence, the walls she'd built around her heart—all of it had been based on an incomplete picture.

The question now was what to do with the truth.

And whether ten years of hurt and misunderstanding could ever be forgiven, let alone forgotten.