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Daisy’s phone buzzes in my closed fist. I take the risk and look.
This is all for you. We love you, Daisy. You’ll be happy later. – C & H
Fuck both of you.
I want her happy right now.
RYKE MEADOWS
“Ryke! Ryke!” Lo pounds on my bedroom door. “Ryke! Ryke!” Over and over and fucking over.
“Fucking A,” I grumble, my eyes tiredly opening. I press my hands to my forehead like my brain is about to explode.
Daisy stirs next to me. Fuck.
I lean over her while she starts to wake. “Go back to sleep, Dais,” I whisper.
She rubs her eyes and yawns.
“Daisy,” I force. “You need to fucking sleep.”
“Ryke! Ryke! Motherfucking Ryke!” Lo chants with his edged, pissed voice. He slams his fist against the door again and again.
I rake a hand through my hair, staring between the locked door and my pregnant wife.
“I’ll try to fall back asleep,” she yawns and then cuddles with Coconut who licks her cheek. She smiles. “You should see what your brother wants.”
We both know what he wants.
I step off the bed with my left foot, shirtless, only wearing gray drawstring pants. I grab my wooden cane by the nightstand and limp to the fucking door.
I open it roughly, just as he screams, “RYKE!” in my ear.
I grimace. “Fuck you.”
“Thanks, big brother.” He touches his chest in mock gratitude. “Follow me.”
I’d rather stay with Daisy and go back to sleep. I stay planted in the doorway. “You woke up Daisy.”
“Maybe you should’ve answered me faster then,” he says. “Think of it as motivation.” He pats my shoulder. “Now follow me.”
“Not today.”
As though expecting my response, he lifts a bottle of Maker’s Mark, swishing the liquid in my face. My temperature escalates, burning my fucking brain. I reach out to steal the alcohol from him, all I see is the worst thing in my brother’s hand. Something that could kill him.
He hoists it behind his head, out of my reach, and I wobble on my cane.
How…?
“How’d you fucking get that?” I growl. The house is empty of alcohol. None of us drink here.
With daggered amber eyes, he tells me, “I walked into a liquor store and grabbed one of my favorite whiskeys. I paid for it, brought it home, and here we are.” Not many people can possibly understand how hard it would be for Lo to just casually stroll into a liquor store.
I do.
I spent years helping him stay sober, talking him down, hearing his stories of almost going inside, of the raging pain. Like guzzling rock salt to just stay away. Why the fuck would he do this? Why the fuck would he do this?
“Why the fuck would you do this?!” I yell at him, fisting his fucking T-shirt. My lungs blazing.
“Why do you think?” he sneers, gesturing at me with the bottle. “If you don’t care about your stupid life, then I figured you would care about our stupid lives.” He licks his lips. “Am I right?”
My eyes burn.
“You can either follow me or I can take a swig of whiskey.” He opens the bottle between us like a fucking grenade.
I breathe hot air through my nose. Once upon a fucking time, I broke my sobriety in a similar way. Lo was in my position. I was in his. He had the chance to stop me, but he didn’t.
I can’t forget the years I spent with my little brother.
I can’t forget the struggle to just quit.
I can’t forget the fucking agony of his relapse.
My soul hasn’t died yet.
I react and rip the Maker’s Mark out of his clutch, nearly falling against the wall to do it. My brother steadies me with his hands on my shoulders. I don’t say another word, I just set the whiskey on the fucking floor, readjust my cane. And I limp ahead of him, out of the doorway.
“Looks like you still care about something,” Lo says behind me, passing through the basement’s entertainment room. When I start ascending the stairs, so fucking slowly, Lo runs ahead of me and stops at the top.
My features darken, still brewing about what he just did. His sobriety means more than rehabilitating my leg. It will always mean more.
I struggle on the sixth stair. “Wherever you’re fucking going, I’ll just meet you there.”
“No,” he says with finality.
My muscles flex, then my shin throbs. “What do you mean no?” I mutter under my breath.
“I’m waiting for you,” he says, no irritation in his voice. No malice or contempt. “I’m patient.” He nods in my direction. “Just like you were with me.”
I scowl. “I’m not fucking patient.” I’m impatient more than he realizes.
“You forgot already, bro?” He shakes his head, feigning disappointment.
Sweat gathers on my brow, and I lean my arm against the railing for a second. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You would slow down for me when we were on a track, see how I was doing, push me to run just a little faster. You’d do that every time. You could’ve stopped on day one. I yelled at you, called you the worst fucking names, and you just kept running beside me, ahead of me. Waiting for me to catch up to you. And guess what, I did.” His eyes redden. “You were patient with me. So this, right here”—he gestures between me and him—“is me being patient with you.”
Our history jostles me, screams at me, hugs me—and I nod a few times, sensing the way I’ll go before I do. I bend my right knee just a fucking fraction, just enough to climb the stairs marginally faster. I grit my teeth.
Trying to catch up to him.
When I reach the top, he says, “Goddamn, what took you so long?” He taps my shoulder again. “This way.”
I follow him…to the sliding glass door. The fucking backyard? “We could’ve gone outside through the basement.” We didn’t have to climb the steeper, narrower flight of stairs.
“I know, but I really wanted to see you Hulk out.” He opens the sliding door with a bitter half-smile. There it is. Behind all of his dry talk, I know he forced me up the stairs for me, not for himself.
To help me.
I would’ve done the same thing to him.
I don’t say anything as I pass him, and I spot a Yoga mat unfurled by the pool. Lily and Daisy already put out Halloween decorations, even though it’s only the first week of October. Spider webs cling to the black iron fence, and plastic tombstones are staked into the grass. An orange pumpkin inner tube floats across the heated pool.
Lo unfolds my exercises that he printed out. “Your physical therapist said you haven’t moved out of mobility and flexibility yet.”
I nod. I can’t start strengthening my muscles without improving those two first. I slowly sit down, cool morning air rushing towards me in a heavy gust. “Next time, let’s do this in the fucking afternoon.”
Lo stiffens. “What was that?”
“The afternoon,” I tell him. “Don’t wake me up this fucking early.”
He rocks back like I slugged him in the jaw. I didn’t think these words would assault him, but I watch him breathe out, his features tightening.
He squats ne
xt to me and says, “No.”
I run both hands through my hair, my elbow resting on my bent left knee. “What does it matter when we do it?”
“Take a look around, Ryke,” Lo tells me, his eyes fucking murderous.
I stare up at the dark sky that begins to lighten.
“This is your favorite time of day, and that hasn’t changed.”
Sunrise.
I woke, almost every morning, to see the horizon painted orange and muted blue. I went climbing. I ran. At the first sign of light. I married the only girl I’ve ever loved—the minute the sun ascended.
I can’t do the things I used to. “Maybe I’ve changed.”
“It’s not physical, just mental,” Lo tells me. “You’re going to run again.” He says it in that desperate tone, like he can’t fathom a fucking world where I slack behind him. He has no idea the pain…he can’t understand how deep it fucking runs.
I crack the strain in my neck and then lie back. “Okay.” I prop myself on my elbows while Lo holds my right calf, helping me bend my knee towards my chest.
It won’t go that far.
The muscle stretches, and pain starts radiating after the short movement. “Wait,” I wince from discomfort.
“You went farther yesterday,” he reminds me. “I’ve seen you bench press after someone took a portion of your liver. I had to pry dumbbells out of your hands back then. You can fucking do this now.”
I wipe the sweat off my forehead, and I try again but stop in two fucking seconds, knives cutting into my kneecap. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand?”
I let out a heavy breath. “I can’t.” I shake my head over and over.
He narrows his eyes at me. “When has Ryke Meadows ever given up on himself?” He points at my ribcage, the story behind the inked chain, anchor and phoenix something I explained to him last Christmas. After we both fell into the tree, sweeping up broken ornaments together. “You have a tattoo that basically says, don’t drag yourself down. What are you doing now?”
“I’m fighting—”
“You’re dying!” he screams at me. “You’re dying right in front of me.” His furious eyes pool with tears, his vulnerability shining through. Making him seem younger. Fragile. My little brother.
