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I was coming out of the bathroom, on my way to Irish, when my brother stopped me in the hallway. “We need to talk.”
Dutifully ignoring him, I sidestepped him and kept walking.
“Aoife, stop.” He caught ahold of my arm and pulled me back to him. “Please. We need to talk about this.”
“What’s wrong, Kev?” I snapped, begrudgingly falling into step alongside him as we walked down the corridor toward my classroom. “Are you blaming me for your busted lip, too?”
“Your boyfriend’s henchman hit me.”
“Yeah, well, snitches get stitches, asshole.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” Holding his hands up in front of me, my brother tried to reason with a part of my heart that wasn’t there anymore. Not for him, at least. “I know what I did was shitty, okay? It was a really bad thing to do, Aoife. I get that now.”
“Too little, too late.”
“Aoife, please?” He sighed heavily. “Come on.”
“No. You’ve heard what people are saying about me,” I replied flatly, stopping outside of my classroom door. “You’ve seen how they’ve been treating me. You cultivated that, Kev. You orchestrated this whole damn thing. So, shove your apology up your ass, because it doesn’t fix anything for me.”
“What you said yesterday about Joey? You were right,” he admitted, scrubbing his jaw with his hand. “I don’t like him. He does threaten me. I did do it to hurt him.”
He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.
“But I didn’t take into account what my actions would do to you,” he added, sounding genuinely remorseful. “I didn’t think, period.”
“What you did can’t be fixed with an apology,” I replied, unwilling to bend. “You can’t detonate a bomb on someone’s life and then say oops when everything is blown to hell.”
“How’s the uncle-to-be?” Paul asked, when he stepped out of our classroom. Slinging an arm around my brother’s shoulder, he smiled cruelly at me, while addressing my brother. “Alright, Kev?”
Looking embarrassed, my brother shrugged awkwardly before muttering, “Alright, Ricey?”
“Oh, bog off, Paul,” I growled, just about done with his bullshit. “I’m trying to have a private conversation with my brother.”
“Private?” He sneered at me like I was a piece of shit on his shoe. “There’s not a whole pile private about you, now is there, Aoife?”
Glaring up at him, I gave him the finger. “Screw you.”
“I told you that he’d ruin you,” he pushed cruelly. “And now look at the state you’re in.” His gaze trailed over me, lingering on my stomach before he shook his head. “You’re already getting fat.”
“Ricey,” my brother said, trying to defend me. “Leave her alone.” It was a pitiful attempt, and once put under the pressure of Paul’s stare, he crumbled, shoulders slumping.
“What do you care, lad?” Paul laughed. “You said it yourself. Your sister’s a fucking slut.”
I cast a glare to my brother, who had the good grace to bow his head in shame.
“You think I care about your opinion, Paul?” I shot back, determined to defend myself against this asshole’s taunting. “The best thing I ever did was get away from you.”
“No, that was the best thing you ever did for me,” he sneered. “It was the worst thing you ever did for yourself, because now all you’ll ever be is the mother of that junkie scumbag’s little bastard.”
“Say it again.”
The breath left my body in a dizzy rush when a familiar menacing voice filled my ears. My shoulders sagged and I honestly felt like I was about to collapse from the surge of relief that rocketed through my body.
“Say it again, asshole,” Joey repeated, coming up to stand behind me.
Tossing his hurley and helmet on the floor, he let his schoolbag fall off his shoulder and hooked one strong arm around my waist before backing me up against his hard chest. “I dare ya.”
Shivering when his hand smoothed over the small swell of my stomach, I felt like crying when his thumb gently moved up and down.
