“Let me tell you one thing, Taylor,” he fired back, maintaining his composure, as he always did in these moments—that was something that drove me crazy about him. “I’m sorry for what happened with Kam, and I never wanted things to go this far. I tried to stay away. But we can’t control who we love. And I’ve loved her since I was ten years old.”
“She was mine,” I shouted, clenching my jaw. Then his face transformed, and he reached up and grabbed the collar of my shirt.
“She belongs to no one.”
I pushed him backward. “Don’t you dare put your hands on me.”
“Or what?”
“Enough!” my mother shouted. “You’re brothers! You can’t let a girl come between you; family’s more important than that…”
“Oh, please. Don’t come at me talking about family…” I responded.
“Mom’s right,” Thiago said. “I didn’t make all these sacrifices so we could end up like this.” He ran his hands down his face.
“You and your fucking sacrifices… You’re not the only one who’s had to make sacrifices, Thiago!” I shouted.
“Everything I’ve ever done, I did so you and Mom wouldn’t want for anything,” he said, looking wounded. All I saw was hostility, lies, and more lies. I was blind with rage, and I couldn’t see the truth in any of what he was saying. “I gave up everything so you could go to a good school and be captain of the basketball team; I coached you so you could make it to the finals…”
“Excuse me,” I intervened, “but I’m the one who’s spent hours bent over the books studying and even more hours at the gym. You didn’t do anything for me. I did it all myself.”
“If it wasn’t for Mom and me, you would’ve had to drop out of school and work,” he said.
“Are you going to hold that against me? Dad offered us child support! You’re the one who turned it down! You’re the one who said we didn’t need it!”
“You want his fucking blood money?” he asked.
“Thiago!” Mom and I shouted at the same time.
I continued: “He didn’t kill her! He may have been a cheating bastard, he may have been an asshole, but he didn’t kill her, dammit! It was an accident!”
My brother transformed. That was no surprise. The subject of our sister was off-limits. The mere mention of her was enough for my mother to bury her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“His mistakes are what killed her, and for me, that makes him a murderer, a murderer who ruined my life and took away all my opportunities—like the ones you have right now,” Thiago said.
“You’re not the only one who lost a sister and a father, Thiago. You keep talking about my opportunities. Well, I fought for them! You picked the easy path, and look how it turned out! And now you’re so jealous of me that you couldn’t help but steal the girl I love right out from under me! Well, go on! Go live your life and leave everyone else in peace!”
Thiago went quiet and looked at me—long enough that I couldn’t tell if it was minutes or hours. Then he turned to Mom, who was sitting in a chair, crying.
She’d never seen us argue like that before. What was happening to us?
“Taylor, I never intended to take anything from you,” Thiago said softly. He looked tired now, and much older than he really was, and a tiny part of me, deep inside, felt sorry for him. “If this is what you really think, then it means I didn’t do as good a job as I thought. And if you ask me to stop seeing her, then I will. You’re my brother, and I love you. I lost a sister, I’m not going to lose you, too. But I love her. I’m in love with her. Do you really want me to stay away?”
He had looked me in the eyes, wanting me to see that he was sincere. I didn’t need to think it over. “Yeah. I want you to stay away from her. And from me. Forever.”
