Lane
“How could you just stand there like that?” I yelled at Jake. “You’re an even bigger asshole than I thought!” Furious, I hit him in the chest, but since he was as fit as I was, he absorbed it with barely a flinch.
I was no longer the well-dressed, well-educated, well-mannered brother. Unraveling by the second, my emotions were a ball of yarn undone, a bunch of string sitting in a big, twisted, mixed-up heap on the floor.
Fuck that; I was a bull pawing at the dirt, about to charge. Standing there in the middle of a civilized coffee shop, I was losing it like a little girl with a foul mouth.
“Jake! Fucking look at me,” I shouted as my hair flopped into my eyes. “You! You’ve got the nerve to say youdidn’t judge her?I’ve never once asked you to do anything for me when it comes to women.You had to know this one—the one I sent you to check on in the middle of the wilderness—meant something to me. And you can’t say something that would helpme? No, you fucking made it worse!”
“Lane, get a hold of yourself,” my brother said, putting his hands on my shoulders, trying to calm me.
I pushed his meaty hands out of the way with my own. Mine might have been smooth, unlike his rough ones, but they were the same size. A reminder that we were from the same DNA, so how could we be so very different?
“I will not get a hold of myself,” I hissed. “I’ve had a hold of myself for too damn long! Did you know that chick too? Did you know she knew Bess? Was this a fucking setup?”
“No! She looked at me kind of strange and asked if I had a brother, and I thought maybe you or I slept with her, but never this. Never.” He tried to get me to sit, trying to push me toward a seat.
Fuck him.
“Listen, Lane,” he said in a low voice. “You’re sounding crazy. And you’re letting her get away.” He pointed toward the front door.
“Don’t you fucking tell me I’m crazy. You and I both know what you owe me.Everything, Jake.Everything! So, give me a break and don’t tell me what to do or who is walking away. We were never meant to be, Bess and me. Let it fucking go!”
I didn’t have a chance to hear what my pain-in-the-ass brother said next because the manager came over and politely told us to take our disagreement elsewhere.
Since I was in a dense fog, Jake guided me out the back door to the alley that led to his gym. Unable to think straight, my brain was clouded with images of Bess—coming down the escalator in Florida, wading nude in my pool, and resting on her couch with her feet in my lap.
When my brain fog cleared a moment later, it occurred to me that I didn’t have a car, had no way to escape. I had nothing, not even my self-respect.
“Fuck!” I roared to no one, my voice bouncing off the brick walls, swallowing me up. I was pathetic, nothing but a shell of a man, broken beyond repair.
When they wheeled Bess out of Jake’s gym years ago, it was my chance for redemption, to do something selfless and good for someone who was truly in need, but I didn’t. I could have stayed and made sure she was okay, climbed on board the ambulance and sat next to her while they took her to the hospital, but I didn’t.
I added another fucking lie to a box full of them that were buried in my black heart. My body was a graveyard for dead lies, ones that couldn’t be resurrected and fixed. Like a fool, I’d thought I could slip my way into Bess’s life, leaving the transgressions of my past decaying in my soul, and act like we could have a fresh start at something spectacular. But we couldn’t because my life was shit.
I’d never been a violent person, but years of guilt and holding things in had built up inside me and were pushing on my pores to get out. It was an impossible situation—either let the demons out, or keep them captive inside my own living hell.
I wasn’t even sure which side was going to win.
“Fuck!” I yelled again in the alley as Jake kept a respectful amount of space between him and me. We hadn’t fought or wrestled since high school—and he might work out for a living—but he knew I packed a punch. I’d never fought anyone else in my life, leaving that to him. Jake had taken people out on the baseball diamond and at various fraternities scattered around campus, but not me. I was always the one with a perfect GPA and my emotions in check.
Well, not any-fucking-more, and I knew exactly where I was going to start. I might have lost any chance at redeeming myself from my sins of the past two decades, but in the last few hours, I’d changed into a darker version of myself. A deeply sordid Lane. The demons were rising, and I couldn’t stop them. Not anymore.
I had succumbed to the evil I’d tried so hard to keep at bay. Finally free, it rushed through my body, spilling onto the concrete wherever I stepped. It both preceded and followed me, my new fucking calling card.
“Get your car, Jake. Now.”
I think he nodded. While I waited, I paced the alley, stalking its length as I made my plans.
And then he pulled up in his black-on-black Hummer. Which was perfect, because I was prepared to steamroll an asshole or two.
“Hurry the fuck up!” I yelled at Jake. He was speeding up the curves of the mountain in the pitch black, but it wasn’t fast enough.
“Faster,” I shouted.
My fingers were working overtime on my phone, beating the thing to a pulp. With twenty percent battery left, I screamed, “Yes! Got you, motherfucker!” And then I punched an address into the GPS.
I might not be getting my girl back, but that didn’t mean anyone else could have her. Or my precious fucking diamonds.
