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“Royce, stop.”
“Man, fuck you!” He spins around, shoving me in the chest. “Fuck. You! You haven’t been here, you don’t know the half of the shit she’s been through since the day you ran off!” he shouts at the top of his lungs.
The nurse ducks from what Royce said was Captain’s room, disappearing through a door at the other end of the hall while Victoria and Bishop appear at the end of it, both not bothering to hide the fact that they’re watching, probably enjoying this shit.
Royce is too hopped up to notice. “She was fucked. I mean straight the fuck up, all-around fucked,” he snaps. “I’d have sworn after all the shit the last few weeks, it couldn’t possibly get any worse. Wrong.”
“What happened?”
“Man, fuck you! I’m not gonna make this shit easy on you. You left, and not just her, you left us all. Captain almost fucking died, he could have, they both fucking could have and who knows, maybe I’d have never fucking found you! You wouldn’t even know!”
“I wouldn’t have stayed gone forever.”
“No, just after the funerals and after this place fucking fell apart. If Raven hadn’t flipped out and I hadn’t asked if she needed her music, I never would have known you had the iPod to even think to use the Find Me app on it.” He scowls. “You didn’t have to see Captain’s fucking face when he woke up after being out of it for over two fucking weeks and we had to tell him his brother abandoned his family like a weak little bitch!”
“I was weak!” I shout back, throwing my hands out.
“Yeah, you fucking were!” Royce booms. “Did you even stop to think how he fucking felt? You know Captain, Maddoc. You know every second he was with her he felt guilt in his fucking bones. He was doing something you agreed to, helping us all, helping her, and he felt guilt for that. You leaving only made it worse. You confirmed, in his mind he had a reason to feel like he betrayed you, something he would die before doing, you pathetic piece of shit!”
“I am pathetic,” I agree with him which only pisses him off more. “I had never in my life felt so damn pathetic, fucking helpless as I did the day I left. Days before that if you really wanna know.”
I step closer to him, but he shoves at me, sending my back flying against the wall.
“You felt helpless?!” he barks, getting in my face. “You fucking felt helpless?” A scoffed laugh breaks through his fury. “Try actually being helpless, motherfucker. Try watching her knees buckle from under her, her body going limp as she breaks down harder than she probably ever fucking has! Try being the one to hold her through that, wishing you could settle her while knowing there’s only one fucking person she truly wanted in that moment! Someone who I’m not even sure deserves her now!”
A knife to the fucking gut.
What the hell happened here while I was gone?
“You abandoned her,” he growls in my face, his body shaking with his rage.
“I gave her away, Royce.” A deep ache forms in my chest. “I gave her away because someone told me I had to.” My eyes narrow. “Never, ever have I allowed someone to come in and take what was mine, never have I not fought with all I fucking had to keep or protect what belonged to me, and I just ...” I trail off, my jaw clenching. “I gave her away, and I will never forgive myself for that. Ever. And I’d never fucking ask you or her or Cap to forgive me for it either.”
Royce punches a hole through the wall beside my head before stepping back, glaring.
“Wanna know what’s fucking worse?”
Reluctantly, his eyes snap back to mine, his body still facing away.
“I want to go to her, make her forget for a little while, make her feel good the only way I know how. And I want to do it now, while my brother is lying there with bullet holes in his body.”
Deep creases form on Royce’s forehead.
“Fucked up, yeah?” I look away.
He doesn’t say anything.
“I want her, brother. Now, tomorrow, always.” I let out a humorless laugh, closing my eyes when it all becomes too fucking much. “I didn’t think on it when it happened, didn’t have time or didn’t let myself, fuck if I know. All I knew was she was good in that moment. Safe and away from Collins.” I meet Royce’s eyes. “She wasn’t gonna accept. She told me no, like she told him no. She was dead fucking set on marrying Collins, said she would never come between us like that.”
Royce groans, shaking his head. “The fuck you do, brother?”
“Told her I’d leave you guys if she didn’t.”
