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“Yeah, okay.” He snorted, amused. “We'll see.”
“Catch you later, mon frère.”
Rémy chuckled. “Bye, bro.”
My head was killing me. I tossed the phone next to me on the too-soft duvet where it sank down a couple inches. The thick material puffed up around the device, nearly obscuring it from view. I put my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling. The phone beeped, indicating it was low on power, and I groaned. Every damn device I touched somehow ended up malfunctioning. It’s like I’m some kind of human EMP. My very presence makes everything electronic spontaneously combust.
I didn’t have to look at the screen to know the battery was dying, because the stupid charger fritzed out yesterday. When I plugged it into the hotel's wall socket, sparks literally shot out of the damn thing. Without the stupid cord, my stupid phone would just have to up and stupidly die.
Shit. I dug both hands into my hair and swallow down the urge to scream. Rémy had no idea how much control he was asking me to give up. To go against more than fifteen years of deeply ingrained behavior. A decade and half of throwing myself on the grenade time and time again, in a bid to shelter my brother from the horrors of what used to be our life. Shielding Rém from Mom’s drunken binges and general neglect. Going to desperate measures to redirect Dad’s explosive anger and increasing violence onto me. I was the one who fed and clothed my brother. Made sure he got to school and took a bath and did his homework. I was the one to try and give Rémy the semblance of a normal childhood.
Okay, fine. We were dealt a shitty and no matter what I did to try and change things, our childhood was never going to be normal, but I hope I gave Rémy the illusion of normal. It was the best I could do and a thousand times better than growing up perpetually black and blue, haunted by pain and fear, telling your teachers your injuries were from hockey.
I know because that was me.
Then… I wasn't there for Rémy, and I would never forgive myself for my absence, even though it was the end result of something that needed to be done.
A sharp pain on my scalp brought me back to the present. I dropped my hands from where they were fisting my hair and yanking on it.
Twitch, twitch, twitch.
I got up and must've paced the room a hundred times, jaw clenched, fingers laced on top of my head, but it was pointless. The memories brought back the rage. I was too far gone. Too angry. Too worked up over both Rémy's injury and his request that I basically distance myself from him.
I growled and snatched up the remote. Maybe there was a game on. Or SportsCenter. Something, anything to distract me from the burning hot fury that sat in my stomach like a ball of magma. I smashed the power button.
Nothing.
Why the fuck didn’t anything ever work right?
Again and again I jabbed the button with the same result, until I hurled the remote across the room. It ricocheted off the wall and left a pretty serious dent. This time, I couldn't hold back my shout of frustration. Shaking, I sat on the bed and rubbed my twitching eye. I wiggled to get comfortable and felt rather than heard the crack of glass under my left butt cheek. I shifted to one side and pulled out my phone. The second I saw the spiderweb pattern across the screen, it was game over.
There was no calming me. Not if I was stuck in that room. And not when, in less than fifteen minutes, I was supposed to meet some of the guys in the lobby bar to grab something to eat.
Only two things worked to squelch the feverish anger once it built to such explosive levels. Both involved taking control. At that moment, it was strong enough where I could feel it, like this physical… thing, a big, dark mass that pressed against my insides and made my skin feel all tight and hot, ready to split open any second and pour out of me in a stream of uncontrolled violence reminiscent of dear old dad. Problem was, even if I used both of my coping methods between now and the next game, I knew damn well the second I stepped on the ice I would snap.
How was I supposed to keep my promise to Rémy and come face to face with Calloway tomorrow night for our final game in DC?
Kylie
“Where the hell have you been?”
I flinched so violently at another of Rocco’s sneak attacks, my keys flew out of my hand and clattered to the tile floor. I bent over to retrieve them while I fought to not drop dead from shock. Once my heart stopped trying to beat its way out of my rib cage, I straightened, looked at my brother, and gasped. The aftereffects of Rocco's fight with Sebastian St. Clair earlier in the evening were blatantly evident. Scrapes and bruises littered his skin, and his bottom lip was all puffy and split down the middle.
Fine. Rocco was angry. It's not as if I didn't know he would be. I did kind of leave Rocco hanging by grabbing Nat and ducking out, skipping our traditional after game dinner. Maybe notifying him by text message wasn't the greatest idea, but I knew he wouldn't get it until I was long gone and there was no way he could stop me.
At the time, I felt bad about it… for roughly zero point four seconds, then a flurry of nerves—the rush I crave, the adrenaline from the excitement of the unknown and doing something Rocco would hate—held me in its trance. Sheltered for so long by my well-meaning, hovering, helicopter brother from hell, sometimes I needed to do something dangerous. Something I knew Rocco would disapprove of, if not flat out for bid. If he found out, and I went to pretty extreme lengths to make certain he never did.
Unfortunately, even the best laid plans went sideways. Like tonight. I hadn’t planned on Rocco discovering certain things about me, such as the reason for my spontaneous moments of reckless abandonment, or maybe, last week when I hopped a ride home from the campus library on the back of my acquaintance slash study partner’s motorcycle, somewhere in my subconscious I wanted Rocco to see me pull up on Grant's rumbling crotch rocket. I had been over an hour late getting home and studiously ignored every single one of Rocco’s avalanche of texts and calls. Which meant I knew with one hundred percent certainty, my overprotective brother would be staring holes down at the street, waiting for me to arrive.
I can't explain it but there are times when I can't help myself. Can't control my actions. I don't like to think I torment Rocco on purpose, but I'm pretty sure that would be a lie. I want to say it’s an unconscious decision, to poke at the beehive the very sharp stick just to see what happens. But it’s not. The rare times I rile Rocco up, it's most definitely a calculated move. A personal, if petty, little rebellion that only one of the sides knows is deliberate.
In my defense, I actually knew Grant, unlike some of the other guys I’d gotten rides home from. Grant was in all of my journalism classes and came from old DC money, so even though Rocco didn’t like it, I knew Grant wasn’t a serial killer or something.
I felt sick and my hands were clammy, because Rocco—being the big jerk that he is—pounced the second I walked to the front door. He towered over me, a full foot taller than my five-six, and crossed his thick arms over pecs as wide as three of me standing sid
e to side, as he glared down. I shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. My face heated in humiliation. Rocco’s stare was so intense it was almost as if he somehow knew what I had been up to earlier in the evening. Just the thought of Rocco finding out was humiliating enough, despite the fact I chickened out.
And what if I had gone through with it? I was an adult and could make my own decisions. Maybe I was impulsive at times, intended to act first and think later, it was still well within my rights to make my own mistakes. Even if my actions were usually knee-jerk rebellions to Rocco's well-intentioned smothering.
