“Is the car nearby?” He doesn’t want to answer to me any more than I wanted to answer to Aiden.
“Fuck, Luke,” I curse. “Let’s go.”
We go to the parking lot, which is only a few feet away, and get in my new rental car. I drive. Luke’s in one of his wild moods, and he’s a shitty driver anyway. He has a tendency to get distracted, and get aggressive.
“Do we need to contact a lawyer?”
“No,” he says.
“Maybe,” he says after that.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “I’m not going to be welcome back there.”
“Luke,” I sigh. “What the hell kind of plan was that? Making us think you’d relapsed? We were fucking worried about you.”
“We’re all worried about all of us,” he says. “You know it. I know it. I wanted to get out from under Aiden’s thumb. He’s been fucking suffocating since Teddy died. He’s everywhere. He’s in everything. Even more than usual. If he popped up from the back seat right now, I wouldn’t fucking be surprised.”
We both glance over our shoulders really quickly as he says that. He’s not wrong. Aiden has a certain omnipresence that lives rent free in our heads that comes from him having the tendency to just fucking be places he shouldn’t be.
“So who were you going to hunt?” I ask him the question.
He glances over at me briefly. “I will tell you who I was going to hunt if you tell me who got you looking more strung out than I have ever been.”
We keep driving, looking dead ahead, neither one of us wanting to give in and give the information. For a good hour, we both hold out, playing a game of conversational chicken. Then it starts to feel like just normal driving and I forget that we’re waiting each other out.
“The girl at the funeral,” Luke says suddenly, jolting me very much back into my body.
“What about her?”
“Teddy knew her. He wanted to date her. Or was dating her. And I was going to try to find her. I figured if I could do it while the two of you were busy looking in other places, or Aiden was taking care of business or whatever.”
“Teddy wanted to date her? Or he did date her?”
“Teddy loved her,” Luke says. “I think he wanted to marry her. But I also think she’s caught up in all of this. There’s something about her.”
“Yeah,” I say. “There is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean she’s the reason I had that involuntary bender,” I tell him. “I took her and wanted to get information out of her, and have some fun along the way.”
Bam!
The steering wheel jerks to the side. I fight to control the vehicle with one side of my head ringing. Luke has just punched me in the ear, a blow that jolts me into a fury and makes me slam on the brakes.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” Luke demands, his fist cocked for another blow.
“The fuck, Luke,” I curse. I may not be Aiden, but I am still his older brother. I can still beat the shit out of him if I have to.
“I know what you do to women. If you did that shit to her, to the woman he loved? I’m going to beat your ass…”
“First of all, little brother,” I growl. “We don’t know if Teddy was being tricked or not. She’s not as innocent as she looks. And none of us owe allegiance to a dead man’s date. If you hit me again, I am going to make you regret it.”
Something in my tone and my eyes gets through Luke’s oafish aggression. He lowers his fist.
“What did you do to her?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
