The Long Shot. Ellen Hartman

learning to shave. So while he and Wes might be physically matched, he was still able to back his little brother down a step when he wanted to.

       “You wouldn’t be laughing if Coach Mulbrake had called the cops when he found out his car was stolen—”

       “It was a joke, not auto theft.”

       “How is it not theft if you took his car out of his garage without his permission? The only reason he didn’t file charges is that I begged him not to. I worked too damn hard to get to a place where I don’t have to ask anyone for favors, and I spent the last hour doing exactly that because you think everything is a big freaking joke!”

       Wes squared his shoulders and put his hands on his hips. “You’re not even going to listen, are you?”

       The kid might be eighteen, but he still sounded six when he thought he was being treated unfairly. Which happened more often than expected in the privileged life of Wes Fallon.

       “I don’t know what you could say that would convince me you haven’t screwed up the sweet deal you have here to play ball and get a college degree on top of it. You’re suspended, Wes, and unless we scare up three hundred hours of community service and a fistful of letters of recommendation, you can kiss your college-basketball career goodbye.”

       Deacon felt sick thinking about how wrong college had gone for Wes. He’d tried to give his brother everything, and he had a horrible feeling Wes didn’t want any of it because he didn’t know how much an education, respect, a life with value meant. How could his brother throw away his life on irresponsibility?

       Wes might have been too young to know what had really happened to their parents, but Deacon had watched his dad drug his life away, day after agonizing day, until the man had died of exposure, drunk and strung out in the snow, just a few months after Wes was born. Their mom had died two short years later, killed in a fire at a club on a night when she’d called in sick to work. Deacon understood what happened to people who didn’t fear consequences.

       “No, Wes, I’m not in the mood to listen. Get in the car. Keep your mouth shut, and we’ll talk later.”

       “I’m not getting in the car.” Wes’s cheekbones were stained with splotches of red, a sure sign he was angry. That only served to piss Deacon off more. What exactly did Wes have to be angry about?

       “I’m not asking you, Wes. I’m telling you. Get in the car, because if I leave without you, I’m not coming back.”

       He climbed in the driver’s side and slammed the door. He took his time finding the key and fiddling with his seat belt, the whole time praying that Wes wouldn’t call his bluff. Deacon felt a stab of the panic he thought he’d left behind when he signed his first pro contract—panic that he’d lose his brother because he was too stupid to figure out how to rescue him.

       Wes took off, striding down the sidewalk in those stupid flip-flops, head and shoulders above most of the other college kids.

       He put the car in gear and crept along, keeping behind his brother.

       They’d gotten to see their mom in the hospital for a few minutes before she died. He was twelve when he promised his mom he’d look after his two-year-old brother. Not a day of his life had passed since that he hadn’t worried about Wes. Which was why a big portion of his anger today was aimed squarely at himself. He’d let his brother down, and it was up to him to get him back on track.

       He pulled up next to Wes. “You’re acting like a child. Get in the car.”

       “You’re treating me like a child. Screw off.”

       They reached a corner, and Wes crossed, while Deacon had to wait for a bunch of students to slouch past the bumper of his car, cell phones pressed to their ears, oblivious to the traffic, oblivious to the beauty of the campus or the beauty of being kids who fit in there. No wonder Wes took all this for granted. Every last one of them did. When Deacon finally had an opening, he eased the Porsche through and caught up to Wes. He hit the horn, but his brother didn’t turn his head.

       “You’re suspended, remember?” he yelled, and three girls turned to stare. “You can’t stay on campus. Where the hell are you even going?”

       When Wes stopped walking abruptly, one of the girls ran into him. He grabbed her arm and helped her catch her balance. She swept her hair back off her shoulders, looking up at Wes and falling for his smile without a second thought. One of the other girls stepped closer. Moth to the flame. Deacon shook his head, watching as his brother’s inexhaustible charm claimed another victim. The girls said something, and Wes shrugged. They walked off, Wes eyeing them, focusing anywhere but on him waiting in the car. Wes could follow the girls, walk right on out of Deacon’s life if he wanted to. He’d turned eighteen and the legal guardianship was over. Wes was under no obligation to do what Deacon said anymore, so he did the only thing he could. He held on. Waited.

       Finally, Wes opened the passenger door and slumped into the seat, his long legs, in beat-up jeans, stretching under the dashboard.

       “Can you not talk to me?” Wes asked.

      Yeah. He could do that.

       He edged back into the campus traffic. The sooner he got them out of here, the sooner he could start making plans for how he could pull this rescue off.

       They stuck to the not-talking plan while they stopped at the dorm and packed up Wes’s stuff. Wes spoke once to ask if they could wait for his roommate, Oliver, whose hearing for his part in the cheating had followed the Fallons’, but Deacon was mad at Oliver, too, and he said no. They didn’t speak again as they loaded the car and left campus, or on their drive back north through New York toward the upstate town of Lamach Lake, where Deacon lived.

       In fact, the not talking to each other lasted longer than Deacon had expected. Wes wasn’t normally one for extended silences. Or brooding. If something was wrong with him, everyone in the vicinity knew all the gory details because he whined and moped and generally made a nuisance of himself until someone fixed whatever the problem was or until Wes forgot there’d been a problem in the first place.

       The silence lasted so long it unnerved Deacon. He said something he’d never said to Wes: “Do you know what I had to do to give you this life you’re bent on throwing away?”

       Wes didn’t look at him. Didn’t move. Deacon should never have said that. He’d raised Wes because he loved him, and he didn’t resent it. When he glanced over, Wes lifted his eyebrows as if daring him to say something else.

       “You’re freaking smirking at me? You have no idea how easily your life could have been utter crap. It still could if you’re not careful. You can’t go around not caring and blowing off opportunities forever. Someday you’ll have to settle down and work.”

       He could hear himself yelling, hear the things he was saying, and he wanted to stop, but he was just so angry. How could Wes not know he was lucky to be where he was?

       Wes’s voice was clipped, controlled and utterly cold when he spoke. “I don’t have to stay with you, you realize. If looking at me is going to piss you off this much, I can leave. I’m eighteen.”

       “Too bad you’re suspended from college or you could go back there.”

       Wes turned his face toward the window.

       “You made a commitment to your team when you took that scholarship. Fallons don’t let their teams down. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

       If it did, Wes wasn’t telling.

       Deacon couldn’t allow this situation to fester. He needed to put a game plan together quickly, before Wes decided to handle things on his own. He pulled the car off to the side of the highway and, heedless of the traffic spinning past him, got out, then slammed the door. He called Victor Odenthal, his former agent and current business partner.

       “Vic, are you busy?”

       “Sadly, no. I had a date tonight and she canceled on me. If a