Right. Considering I ran away from him like I was being freaking hunted.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
Brody shakes his head. “It’s cool, Beth,” he says nonchalantly, but how could it be?
“Really, I—”
“Hey.” He cuts me off, and waits for me to meet his serious gaze. “We’re cool.”
The door overhead flings open to a chorus of drunken laughter and footsteps tramping unevenly down the stairs.
“Maybe we should take this somewhere else,” David mutters. “We can go talk at our place.”
Neither David nor I realize his mistake before Sammy’s fury returns with a vengeance. “Our place?” he practically snarls. “’The fuck is even happening right now!”
I know my brother, and he has had enough, which he confirms by muttering something to himself and stomping up the stairs, pushing unceremoniously around the newcomers—two of David’s frat brothers whose names I can’t remember.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Sammy has never turned his back on me in all my life. My eyes sting viciously, and it takes all of my willpower to keep them dry. I know I will never lose Sammy in the literal sense, but that doesn’t mean I can’t break us.
And what about David? They’ve been friends for almost twenty years. Brothers, themselves.
I may have just gained a brother I never even knew about—not that I can even begin to process that right now. But I fear I may have lost the one I’ve known all my life—at least as I’ve known him—and essentially lost David the very same thing.
But as David pulls me into his arms and presses a tender kiss to my forehead, I feed off his calm. Even in this sea of chaos, he is my anchor. And just the comfort of his proximity reminds me we’ve all been through worse—that we’ll get through this, too.
We have to.
Chapter Thirty
David
I brush my lips over the soft skin of Beth’s forehead, promising her things I can’t articulate right now. I don’t know what will happen with me and Cap, with her and Cap, but I know that as long as she wants me, I will be here. I will stick the fuck around.
I want to get her the hell out of this basement, but I know our night isn’t over yet, and the sound of police sirens progressively growing in volume as they approach the house confirms it. At least Liz fucking came through.
I meet Brody’s gaze over Beth’s head, stroking my fingers soothingly through her tangled hair. “Liz told me the truth. It was Bogart who attacked her.” I gesture with my chin to the pile of garbage at Brody’s feet—my soon-to-be former frat brother. “She called them,” I say of the cops, who we can now hear entering from the main floor.
It still doesn’t make fucking sense. Brody—the creepy stalker who lurks in alleyways—is innocent. Not just innocent, but Beth and Cap’s fucking half-brother. And Bogart—all-around good-time guy, and our chapter’s fucking president—is about to be fucking arrested. He’s the last person I would have suspected of fucking assault.
Except…as I let my mind go there, little things he’s said and done over the years shift in context and meaning, and I become sick to my stomach. And then I remember the rip in Beth’s shirt, the knots I’m painstakingly finger-combing from her golden locks, and my eyes fix on Bogart.
My jaw clenches and my arm tightens around Beth.
“Don’t do it, man,” Brody mutters. “Trust me.” He gives Steven a not-so-subtle kick. “He’s not fucking worth it.”
He slides his gaze to Beth before meaningfully meeting mine.
“But she is.”
* * *
There’s something unburdening about the worst actually happening, only to realize it wasn’t the worst at all.
Cap won’t take Beth’s calls or mine, and he didn’t show up at our place after walking out of my frat house. And I won’t pretend it doesn’t sting in every way I always imagined it would. But…I have Beth in my arms, and for the first time, I know without a single doubt that if it were reversed—if I had Cap and lost Beth—that would be the true worst.
After we got home and she told me what Falco told her tonight, about my role in her worst heartache—especially now that I understand just how bad it was—I worried I might lose them both. But this fucking girl…she listened to my explanation, but she didn’t need it. She just gave me the benefit of the doubt, just like that—something neither Cap nor my father has never given me.
I don’t sleep. I just hold her, looking down at her blurred features, which are too close to my own to clearly make out, and I can’t help but think she looks even more beautiful from right here. So many things in this life, even the things that appear the most beautiful—especially the most beautiful—fall apart when viewed up close. They reveal flaws and imperfections, hidden truths that change your entire perception of them.
