Page 57 of The Addict

He shut the door, pulling me within a few inches of his face. His jaw clenched and as much as I dug my hands into his grip, I couldn’t break it.

“Get the f—”

“You think I didn’t notice your mess?” he whispered harshly.

Any retaliation I was forming shriveled into the back of my throat.

I knew it.

My cheeks flamed and a knot was forming in the pit of my stomach. I felt a wave of nausea strike me. I made an effort to pretend Damian’s remark didn’t matter to me.

“First off, if that Thorne trash ever lays a foot on our property again, I’m going to arrest him. You got that?”

When I didn’t answer, Damian shook me so violently that my head snapped from side to side. It brought back memories of when we were smaller Damian would practice his boxing skills on me as if I were a dummy. Since I generally had no idea how to fight back or defend myself, I usually just traded Damian one of my toys in return for him to stop using me as a human punching bag.

“Answer me!”

“Yes. You dick.” I groaned in pain.

“You’re going to college,” he repeated. “You’re going to better yourself and hang around the right crowds and make something of yourself.”

I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. “Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”

Damian said nothing, obviously understanding when he had been beaten. Although I knew the blow was a low one, I was also very aware of the fact that my brother didn’t give up that easily. We had always been competitive growing up.

For attention. For love.

Damian never lost those battles.

“I don’t care,” Damian finally said. “You’re going. Starting tomorrow.”

I shoved him. “Fuck you.”

Damian grabbed the back of my neck, pulling me forward again.

“You’ll go. Or I’ll tell father about all of your other...mistakes,” he warned.

I was enraged. Blackmail. A tactic right out of the cop’s manual.

“You don’t even know the half of it!” I yelled.

Nobody heard my opinions. Nobody listened. Nobody cared.

I was a corpse rotting away from the inside, awaiting the day that I would be laid upon my death bed.

Then they would see me.

Then they would care.

“You think I didn’t find the crack pipes?” Damian murmured sadly, his eyes distant.

I stopped breathing. “What?”

Damian pulled out what I feared from his jacket pocket. All of the pipes, and my cherished little bag of white powder sat potently in my brother’s hand, staring up at me.

“One time, Noah?” Damian ground out, circling me, much like David would do. Like father, like son, they always say.

“You found it, Noah?”