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But walking down the side street toward my new vehicle - a new, but not obnoxiously expensive, black pickup - and hearing my name called by a voice I most definitely recognized, yeah, it made me see why I needed to keep my ass off the main streets in Navesink Bank.
I didn't want to do this.
This was why I had the shitty duplex in the crummy area.
This was why I only left my house when absolutely necessary, especially during the day.
This was why I should have fucking gone to goddamn Home Depot.
I didn't want to see any of them.
I didn't want to have to look them in the eye and tell them I was done with them, that they should just move on and forget me.
I didn't want to have to watch as I stuck a knife in their guts like I had needed to do countless times to my own.
But there was no avoiding it, even as I tossed the bag into the open window of my truck and turned around to face him.
My brother.
Christ, it hurt to even think that word.
I thought I was over it.
I thought I had hollowed myself out enough not to be affected by this family shit.
But, apparently, preparing yourself for the inevitable, and actually facing it up, were two completely different things.
He looked the same. A bit older maybe, like I was myself. But the same. Same inky black hair. Same eyes that I saw reflected in my mirror every morning. Same bone structure. Same height. Similar built. Same ink. And a whole fuckton of it. More than there had even been when I had gone away.
But that came with the trade, I guess.
"Hunter," I said, keeping my voice hollow, praying to fuck none of the emotion I was feeling right then could be heard in my tone.
"What the fuck?" he asked, spreading his arms out, shaking his head, the pain I couldn't express plain in his voice, in his eyes, in his very stance.
Knife, meet gut.
Christ, it hurt more than I thought it could after so long.
"What the fuck, what?" I asked, going for hollow, and succeeding judging by the way his shoulders slumped further.
"Six years, Eli? Not a fucking word? We didn't even know if you were fucking alive in there."
"Pretty sure they inform next of kin when an inmate bites it."
His brows furrowed. "What is this shit?" he asked, waving a hand at me.
"What shit?"
If there was anyone who could tell you when you were being off, it was family. If there was anyone willing to call you on it when they saw it, it was siblings.
"Did you get a psych eval in there?"
"Think I lost my mind?"
"If your dead motherfucking tone is anything to go by, bro, yeah, I think you lost your damn mind. Do you have any idea how much Ma cried over this? Try as she might to hide it, you could see it on every fucking holiday. You know how many times we sat and talked about you, worried about what could be happening to you in there? Do you have any idea what it was like to try to tell the girls that it wasn't that you didn't love them anymore; it was just that you were in a bad place in your head."
The girls.
Fuck.
Whatever was left of my heart dissipated with that comment.
"Shoulda just told them I was dead."
I reached for my door, pulling it open.
"Why the fuck would we ever do that?"
I turned back to him, looking him square in the eye, willing him to see the truth in my words.
"Because it's true."
With that, I dropped into my seat, turned the engine, and reversed right the fuck out of there, my pulse pounding in my temples, throat, wrists, fast enough that it was alarming, that it was making my head start to swim.
I wasn't going to lose it.
I wasn't going to fucking let that happen.
I needed to shut it down.
But even as I tried to, tried to shove all of it back in the box, I knew I couldn't do it.
I needed to scream.
I needed to hit something.
No.
Not hit.
No more hitting.
Not even a motherfucking pillow.
Never again, goddamnit.
I couldn't go there.
But I needed to stop the cycle.
My head was swimming.
My vision was going tunnel.
My heart was a jackhammer in my chest.
If I didn't do something soon, I was going to lose it.
And I didn't even have a target for the rage.
Could the damage go collateral?
Could I become that monster who beat on someone innocent?
Without even knowing what was happening, I slammed the truck to park down the side along the building, hopping out, and storming up, hands down at my sides opening and closing, making nearly-bloody crescents in my palms.
Losing it.
I was fucking losing it.
I wrenched the door open, seeing one person inside browsing.
