“Come on,” he draws out. “Forgetting we’re brothers?”
“No,” I say to him. “We’re not.”
“Pretty sure we are, so you’re gonna have to get used to it, Moore.”
I twist on my heel, damn near ready to shove him up against the old siding of the building. The only reason I don’t is because I respect Llewellyn too much to cause a scene in frontof his establishment. Hell, if he knew Finn was poking his snout around, he’d have a fit about that alone.
My blood morphs into smoldering hot lava as I stand in front of him and growl out, “I don’t have to get used to shit. You need to stay away from me. We’re nothing alike and whatever game you’re playing at, I’m not interested.”
I take a step closer. He holds his ground because he’s Finn. I’m not stupid enough to think that he’d cower to me. The smirk playing on his face does drop, though. I consider it a bigger win than making his knees buckle.
“Remember when I told you I was done with you in the back of your car on the strip? I wasn’t fucking around, and I’m not now, either. We’renotbrothers. We weren’t three months ago. We’re not now. We never will be.”
“You keep forgetting that it was kept from me, too. I’m not saying we have to be best friends. Fuck, I don’t entirely know what the hell I’m doing but…”
I don’t know why I do it, but I ask. “But what?”
He grits his teeth. “He always preaches that blood is permanent and how it’s the one thing you never cross. You fuck with family, and you pay the consequences.”
I stare at him for a long second and then the sound barrels up my chest and pours out of my mouth. I wouldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. I laugh. It’s sudden and deep and hearty. He stares at me, but I can’t help it. He actually thinks he can take back everything he did?
I don’t fucking think so.
His audacity is truly admirable.
“I don’t know what’s so goddamn funny,” he mutters.
“You,” I tell him. “You are. You think you can come around, share some bullshit sob story about how you were raised by the same man who bailed on me and enabled my mom’s drug habit and think that,” I snap my finger, “it’s enough to wipe the slateclean? That it’s enough to erase the fuckery you’ve caused and kickstart some kind of brotherly bond you’re suddenly searching for?” I pause for effect. “Well, I hate to break it to you,Brother, but you’re shit out of luck on this one. Your guilty conscience is on you this time, not me.”
THIRTY-TWO
COLSON
“Tommy was off his rocker tonight,”Eli says as he comes up behind me and pulls a shirt over his head. He sent me a text, inviting me over to his place for a beer when I got back from Gulliver’s. And because of Finn irritating the hell out of me, I said what the hell, why not?
Except Eli forgets to mention that he rents a room in a crowded house. Claims there’s no point in renting one on his own when he spends most of his time training at the gym or out.
And I get that but these people he lives with? They weren’t considerate when I arrived. No one greeted me, which honestly, I’m fine with. But the two people making out on the couch could have at least put clothes on. Or maybe even just left the common area.
It reminds me an awful lot like a halfway home, especially when some dude walks out from the back hallway and starts yelling at the couple on the couch and bitches at a guy in the kitchen scrambling eggs.
That’s about when Eli brought me back to his room. It’s a decent size and smells a lot better than it did out there. There’s a bed on one side of the room, a couch on the other. A flat screenis mounted on the wall above his dresser, and there’s a few odds and ends floating around.
“Oh yeah?”
Eli went out earlier for a fight. I didn’t show up to watch.
“Fucking out of his mind.” He grabs a can of beer from his mini fridge, pops it, and hands it over. I shrug off the thought that comes when I take a sip. The one that says this isn’t me. I don’t go out at all hours of the night. I don’t make drinking a regular habit. I don’t kick back with guys who are one bad decision away from ending up in a hospital room or jail cell. And Eli? He’s hugging both lines.
“Why? What’d he do?” I ask.
“Nearly had it out with Remy because he lost. The dumbass rolled his ankle two hours before he had to go out to fight. Didn’t tell Tommy.”
“Was it bad enough to sit out?”
Eli grabs a can for himself. His eyes fall shut when he plops down on the couch next to me and guzzles some. “Could barely walk.”
I wince.
