“I’m not jealous!” he yells back, voice thundering around the room as I’m hit hard with his resentment. And it doesn’t fall on deaf ears that he didn’t refute my comment about his habit or anything else but his jealousy.

“You’re not? Try again, asshole. You think I don’t hear the comments, see your bullshit, know you try to undermine anything that goes good for me? You think I’m that fucking naive to your game? Undermining deals, throwing a bag of blow my way the minute you see the sirens reflected in the windows of the house? You use my guilt against me, so back the fuck off me and own it!”

My mirror image just stares at me, chest heaving, eyes glaring, and animosity pulsing off him in waves and crashing into mine. “I’m not jealous of you and your bullshit career. Daddy’s favorite sure is fulfilling his potential while leaving me with the raw end of the deal, having to take care of Mom.”

“Take care of her? I believe I foot the bills.” I step into him, chests bumping against each other. “Besides, I didn’t realize getting high was taking care of her—because you’re still getting high, aren’t you? Drugs more important than promises, right?”

“Fuck you!”

“Right back atcha, brother! At least my conscience is clean.” I say the words but my father standing before me pressing the cold steel to his chin flashes through my mind. My conscience is anything but clean because I didn’t try to stop him. I shove the thoughts from my mind. Try to step up to the plate and be the heavy hand that Hunter needs to clean up his act.

“Can’t be too clean since Dad’s dead, right choirboy?”

We circle like caged dogs waiting for the chance to rip each other apart. We’re purposely trying to hurt each other, and it’s going to do nothing good for our relationship but fuck if it doesn’t feel good to let it all out right now. To hurt someone else for a change rather than sit back and take it.

“Clean is something you know nothing about,” I grate the words out. “What’s your drug of choice now? Coke? What’s next? Heroin, so you can really fuck up our lives?”

“People are going to hear you. Calm the fuck down—”

“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down when it’s my goddamn ass on the line! Let them hear me!” I yell at the top of my lungs. “You afraid for them to find out? Huh? Are you?” I goad him. “Then do what you fucking promised. Clean yourself up! I’m taking the fall for you this one time, Hunt, but no more. I’m done. You’re my own flesh and blood, man, but this is bullshit.”

“Figures. You get all high-and-mighty this year with your recording contracts and your whores … think you’ve proven yourself to the world and yet the only thing you’ve proven to me is that you’re a selfish bastard just like he was. Like father, like son.”

His words cross the short distance between us and slam into me like a battering ram. In that split second I don’t register that I know he’s just taking a potshot to shut me up from calling his bullshit on the carpet. I don’t process anything except my fist cocked back and the rage screaming through me to take the shot, do the one thing I want so badly but know will do nothing to ease the pain in my soul.

Make me be just like him.

“Can’t do it, can you?” He taunts me, wants me to hit him so that he has something else to hold over my head.

My arm trembles with the rage I feel inside. At him. At Dad. At Mom. At Quinlan for looking at me with those eyes that I don’t deserve looking at me. At fucking everything.

I see a flicker of regret glance through Hunter’s eyes. And that tiny show of our connected DNA pulls me back from the brink because I fear that I have so much rage pent up inside me, if I hit him I won’t be able to stop.

And you can’t undo harm you’ve done to your family. I know this because I’m living proof. I can’t undo what our dad did; I can only try to make it better.

Goddamn higher road. Taking it is bullshit when some days I’d rather drive off the edge.

My heart’s pounding with rage and my head doesn’t want to be filled with regret I can’t take back, so I lower my arm. I’ve gotta get out of here. Got to get some fresh air and have a few beers to calm the fuck down. And then call Quinlan to try to explain why I said what I said.

“We’re done here, Hunt.” I put my hands out in front of me to tell him I don’t want to do this anymore because I still sense his rage.

“I haven’t used since that night.” His voice is quiet, resigned, and laced with the only apology I think I’ll ever get from him.

I nod my head in acceptance of his confession, but know that with Hunter his regret is fleeting and it’s only a matter of time before he moves on to resent something else. Time and again he’s proven this truth so I take what I can get when I can get it.

“She’s waiting for me,” I say with a lift of my chin toward the exit, keeping pretenses up. “I’ve got to go.”

We’ve been arguing for so long, she might not still be there. I glance down at my phone to see how long it’s been.

Oh fuck. The texts read urgent from Westbrook. I turn to Hunter.

“It’s Mom.”



Chapter 20


QUINLAN

“I don’t need your shit, Colton.” I roll my eyes and flop back on the couch, phone still at my ear when all I want to do is pretend I have a bad connection and hang up. I love my brother dearly but on top of the crap day I’ve had, I don’t need his two cents over him finding out about my date with Luke.

I ignore my line beeping another incoming call from Hawkin for what feels like the hundredth time since I left the seminar today. I opened up and he shut me down. I don’t want to think about it or the sting from my dashed hopes and the emotions I sat thinking about during the damn lecture while all the while he was thinking about Delta Sig girl. My eyes burn with tears I refuse to shed because this is on me and ignoring my damn mandate for casual only.

“Q, you’re obviously upset, you won’t tell me why, which means it’s over a guy, and to top it off I find out you actually went on a date with the dickwad? I mean two and two—”

“Does not equal four,” I say, exasperated. “It’s nothing. No one. I’ve already moved on.” Like hell I have but he doesn’t need to go into big-brother mode more than he already has.

“Fucking women,” he mutters, causing me to laugh. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

The sincerity in his tone makes me smile softly at that side very few get to see to his hard-assed demeanor. “Yes. I promise,” I tell my brother.

“You’d tell me if it wasn’t, right? I don’t need an excuse to kick Luke’s ass but it wouldn’t hurt either.”

Testosterone much? Jeez. “Colton! He was nothing but a gentleman.”

“Okay, okay. Just tell me one thing,” he says. “Is the asshole you’re upset over a racer?”

The laugh comes freely now at his relentless and inherent dislike of Luke Mason. Hawkin’s voice fills my mind despite the pang it causes. Rocker trumps racer. “No. A musician,” I deadpan.

“Fucking figures,” he grumbles. “That’s even worse.”

“Yep. You know me—I make all the wrong decisions with all the wrong guys,” I say, imagining the look on his face at that comment.

“Fuckin’ A, Q … What the—”

“Night, Colton,” I tell him with a smirk on my face. I’ve fulfilled my little-sister duty to torment her older brother for the week.

“Night.” I love the exasperation in his voice because it means I was successful.

I hang up the phone and toss it on the couch beside me and scrub my hands over my face trying to ignore my racing thoughts even though I know they are going to win in the end anyway. I glance over to the trash can, where an empty cookies ’n cream half-gallon ice-cream container sits on the top. Ironically, I ate the dessert earlier as I tried to process what the fuck happened after the lecture today. And I’m still just as clueless now as I was before the rigorous workout, the soak in the tub, and the call from my brother.

How did Hawkin and I go from hot, curl-your-toes sex before the lecture to him going out with Delta Sig girl? Something is screwy and I’m so fucking sick and tired of thinking about it—being hurt by it despite telling myself I shouldn’t be—that I just want to go to bed to prevent myself from doing the one thing I’ve wanted to do since I walked up the steps of the auditorium: Call him.

I refuse to be the desperate groupie clinging on for one more roll in the sheets when he made it obvious he’s already put me with his other dirty laundry. I could answer my phone when he calls to ask him myself but just need to figure this all out before I do that. I’m not a weak person but something tells me I could easily fall back under his hypnotizing spell.

I close my eyes, the couch beneath me a little too comfortable, and drift off. At least I think I do, because when the pounding starts on my front door, I’m startled and jump up off the cushions, heart racing, head foggy, and adrenaline pumping. My immediate thought is fear. I mean I’m still trying to clear dreams from my head as I trudge to the front door, my mind not even considering that I’m wearing my cami-tank and panties.

The knocking begins again and when I look through the peephole, I’m shocked wide awake with anger. “Go away, Hawke! You’re not welcome here.”

“C’mon, Quin!” He pounds again, the door vibrating beneath my cheek pressed there so I can watch him through the hole.

“No. Go away.” I flick the porch light off, holding tightly to my resolve and dignity, and shuffle down the hall. I stand in the family room for a moment, indecision reigning over what to do next as he bangs on the door again. I flick the light off by the couch, certain that I just need to sleep this off and maybe like a hangover, it’ll be gone in the morning.