LITMIR.BIZ

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was …my brother. Not a client. My brother committed suicide from that bridge eight years ago yesterday. I was there, talking to him, trying to talk him down, but…’

      Sebastian’s hand stilled. This he hadn’t expected. He sat up and shuffled over to her, opening his legs, snuggling her into the V between his thighs. His powerful quads bracketed hers. His feet rested on the floor beside hers. He wrapped both arms around her waist and pulled her against him. ‘I’m sorry.’

      Callie opened her eyes and sagged against him as if she’d just had a ten-tonne bock of concrete lifted from her shoulders. She bit her lip. ‘It was a long time ago.’

      Sebastian nuzzled her neck and dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘What was his name?’

      Callie faltered. Tears welled in her eyes. Nobody involved in the case back then had ever been particularly interested in his name. He had just been a system failure. A chart number. And people who knew she’d been Zack’s aunt and guardian had been too embarrassed or polite to ask.

      She was curiously touched by the way he’d just humanised her brother.

      ‘Andrew.’

      Sebastian rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘Did Andrew have problems or…?’

      ‘He was a schizophrenic.’

      ‘Ah.’

      Callie drew in a ragged breath. It hurt to talk about him. But it was nice to acknowledge his existence after years of avoiding the topic.

      ‘In and out of psych wards from the age of sixteen. He was non-compliant with his meds and…transient… homeless for the last few years…’

      The ugly scene at the restaurant came back to Sebastian and things clicked into place. ‘That must have been difficult.’

      Callie remembered those years of trying to help, trying to save him, trying to get him to see reason. Trying to be sister, mother and health professional, and failing at all of them. Learning the hard way that you just couldn’t help someone who didn’t want to be helped.

      ‘The voices just got too much for him.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. If anyone knew how mental health issues could affect family life it was him. Sebastian was quiet for a bit and they sat in a strange kind of solidarity that had little to do with the amazing sex they’d had for the last four hours.

      After a while he moved back onto the bed and she followed him, turning into his side and draping an arm over his chest.

      ‘Is that why you became a psych nurse?’ he asked into the silence that stretched between them but somehow didn’t feel unnatural.

      Callie didn’t answer for a moment, then she flipped over so she was lying on her stomach, her chin propped on his shoulder. She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Any of it. She just knew it felt right.

      ‘My mother was bipolar and Andy was diagnosed at sixteen. I didn’t seem to be able to help either of them but I wanted to be able to do something. To try and help others. To…I don’t know, understand, maybe.’

      Sebastian used his forefinger to push back a lock of her hair that had fallen forward. Callie really had been through the wringer.

      ‘What about you? Why’d you decide to become a psychologist?’

      Sebastian searched her face. ‘My father was a Vietnam vet. He was a prisoner of war for a brief time. He suffered severe PTSD. My mother was clinically depressed most of her life. Because of Dad mostly. Their marriage was certainly no bed of roses. So…’ he shrugged ‘.I guess for the same reasons as you. To help. To understand.’

      Callie nodded, liking the openness of his pale green eyes and the fact that he was some kind of kindred spirit. She shot him a slow smile. ‘And what on earth are you doing in this neck of the woods? Community mental health is a little lowbrow for such a hotshot, surely?’

      Sebastian chuckled but felt his gut tense. The answer to that one was complicated and a lot closer to home than the ancient history that was his family.

      He played with a lock of her hair, rubbing its silky strands between his thumb and forefinger. ‘I just needed a change of pace.’ Callie was looking at him intently and he averted his gaze to what his fingers were doing. ‘To try something different.’

      Callie arched an eyebrow at his evasive answer. But she didn’t say anything. His reluctance struck a chord, though, as she recognised her own behaviour in his avoidance. She didn’t usually talk about herself either.

      Instead, she leaned forward and kissed his very sexy, very understanding mouth. She lingered there as his tongue stroked her lips and desire squirmed through her belly. She smiled at him as she eventually pulled away and cuddled into his side again.

      ‘So,’ Sebastian murmured after the silence had gone on for an eternity. He’d been too wrapped up in the press of her breasts against his ribs and the slow, steady fan of her breath against his chest to speak.

      And grateful that she hadn’t insisted on knowing more.

      ‘What I want to know is, how come you aren’t married with a swag of kids by now?’

      Callie laughed. ‘You have to ask that? With my gene pool? Inflict that on some poor innocent child? You have got to be kidding!’

      Sebastian smiled. ‘You could have married,’ he pointed out.

      She shrugged. ‘I haven’t really found that one person, you know. I guess there have been a couple of guys over the years who I’ve hadlongish relationships with but… not for a quite some time.’

      Not since Zack. There’d been nothing other than brief encounters while her nephew had lived with her.

      ‘Let’s just say I haven’t found a man yet who’s comfortable with my no-kids rule. Besides, I raised Andy’s kid from two through to ten—I’ve done my mothering.’

      Callie had spent a good part of her life caring for others. First her mother then her brother and then her nephew. All ending in heartache. Her mother’s death, her brother’s suicide had been harrowing, but saying good-bye to Zack had been like an emotional wrecking ball. She never wanted to be that vulnerable again.

      ‘Raised? Past tense? Where is he now?’

      Callie shifted, a spike of pain pushing her against the bed as she rolled onto her back. ‘Back with his mother,’ she said, staring at the ceiling.

      ‘She wasn’t always around?’

      Callie shook her head. ‘Zack’s mother was a drug addict. And my brother wasn’t capable of looking after him either. Aleisha’s parents raised Zack until Andrew died and then…they couldn’t cope any more. They didn’t know if their daughter was dead or alive from one minute to the next and they were getting old, in their seventies. Too old to cope with an energetic two-year-old-boy. So I took him in.’

      Sebastian could hear the emotion making her voice husky. He glanced at her. She had her eyes closed. ‘But he’s back with her now?’

      ‘Yes.’ She swallowed as the pain intensified. ‘She’s clean. Has been for two years. She’s married to a good guy—very stable with a great extended family—and she has a great job. She wanted her son back.’

      Sebastian didn’t have to ask to know that giving her nephew up had been gut-wrenching for Callie—her soft, tremulous voice said it all. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, rolling up on his elbow and dropping a kiss on her shoulder.

      Callie nodded, squeezing her eyes together tight. ‘It was the right thing to do.’ She drew in a ragged breath. ‘And it’s working really well. He lives nearby, goes to the same school, has the same friends. He adores his stepfather. He’s happy, that’s all that matters.’

      Sebastian kissed her shoulder again.

      Callie

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