I promised myself I wouldn’t.
I can’t be for him what I was for Webber.
I can’t constantly give and expect different results if all I’m going to get is pain and suffering at the end of it. He has to be willing to meet me halfway.
But he’s not even on the same road as me.
I’m gentle as I wrap my hand around his and unhook his finger. His expression doesn’t change. It’s as stoic as it was when he dragged me into this room, but he understands. The line is still there, and there’s no erasing it. It’s written in permanent ink and the only way around it will be to forge a new one in a different color.
But those thoughts fly out the window when Finn makes his entrance, pushing into the room with watchful, assessing eyes. Like he’s on the lookout for me. I know then that he couldn't have picked a worse moment to show his face.
TWENTY-EIGHT
COLSON
I thoughttonight couldn’t get any worse, but then Finn walks into the room and knocks me into the past. Back to thoughts of my life revolving around Murphy’s Law, and the whole idea if something can go wrong, it will.
I want the comfort of being close to Violet and the peace she brings me, but my body betrays that, and it’s because of him. My hands fist at my sides, and I take one more glance at the oversized sweatshirt draped over her lithe body and know it belongs to him.
To Finn.
To my goddamn half brother.
Disgust coils in my stomach, putting a mean spin on a ride of teacups I rode once when Sebastian and I were kids and Aunt Bess took us to an amusement park an hour away. My head rages with the onset of a headache from my match. I want nothing more than to drag Finn out into the center of that room and not let up until he’s the one on the floor with his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. Give him a little bit of what he gave me all those weeks ago.
I’m not the same person I was when Finn and Clyde had me by the balls and held Mom’s debt over my head. I owe themnothing, which is the reason I lunge forward and give Finn no time to react. I crush him against the wall faster than it takes him to blink, my forearm pressed against his tattooed throat.
Long gone are the days where I fall in line to his every word. I’m not his puppet anymore, and if I knew I could get away with it, I’d press just a little harder and watch the familiar war that raged in my eyes not long ago spark to life in his.
He wheezes, his lips quirking into a smirk despite me constricting his airway, “Good to see you too, Brother.”
Brother.
The urge to cut his tongue out and douse it in kerosene hits strong. It’s so much darker than the thoughts I’m used to thinking. I tack it to the wall of my mind as a red flag but pay it no mind as I sneer, “Don’t call me that.”
“It’s what we are, isn’t it?”
I don’t let up on my grip but bear down on his throat more.
Violet shouts out in an uncompromising tone I’ve only ever heard when I had Sebastian in a similar position. “Let him go, Colson.”
Finn holds a hand up to Violet at her demand. She quiets, and I wonder, what the fuck has been going on behind my back for him to have that kind of control over her when, a minute ago, she put up a fight with me.
She wouldn’t let me get an inch with her—granted, I didn’t deserve it—but now she’s letting him call the fucking shots? What makes him any more deserving than me?
“You and I are nothing to each other,” I grit out, my voice harsh and unrelenting.
He squints one of his eyes in thought as a garbled noise leaves his throat, and all I see are all the moments he tore me down. Him forcing me to pay Mom’s debt because she was too weak to do it herself. Ambushing me in that alleyway and standing there while Nic gave me a bloody lip and bruisedmy ribs. My broken finger. The threats, mental abuse, and emotional stress.
And that’s not even getting into his dad being the biggest piece of shit in the world. The person who fed my mom’s addiction and waited for her to go just one step too far so he could claim everything she left behind. He stood there beside him every step of the way. Never once challenging how goddamn wrong it was.
I remove my forearm from his throat and grip his shirt. I shake him until his back thuds off the wall. He lets me. Allows me to turn him into a ragdoll. Outside of me headbutting him the night near the battery plant in Harrison Heights, this is the only other time I’ve put my hands on him. To be honest, it’s marvelous. “Why did you bring her here?”
“Why did I…” He chuckles, low and deep and then suddenly stops. A line forms between his brows. He shoves me so hard that I fall back a step, then smooths a hand down his shirt, fixing the wrinkles. He clears his throat, freeing it from the strain I put on it a second ago. “Because you’re out of your fucking mind. You pulled Janie out of her shitty dealings, and for what, if you’re going to end up doing the same stupid shit?”
Violet pipes up, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” I don’t need to glance over to know her eyes are burning holes into me.
“Fuck you and your brotherly act,” I spit at Finn. “You didn’t care about me then and you don’t now. You enjoyed making me bleed—in more ways than one—and knocking me down every chance you could. And now you’re using her to get to me?”
