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“What? Hit her?”
And my brother laughs again. “The least she’d deserve it, but—”
“Fuck. You.” The roaring in my ears overtakes everything and something snaps.
I go at my brother before I can think, my hand bunched into a fist and I punch him, hard, in the face.
Tyler staggers back and another voice rises. Loud, commanding, and before I can do anything, my arms are caught and someone breathes loud and harsh.
“What the actual fuck, man?” Tyler shakes his head and rubs his jaw, moving back. “I came to— Ah, it doesn’t matter. If you want her, you can have her.”
And he stalks off.
“What’s your problem?” Brian says.
Senses still reeling, the rough voice brings me slamming back down into reality. “What do you think my problem is?”
I shake my friend off.
Brian lets me go and crosses his arms, his feet planted apart like he’s ready to take me down if he has to. “My problem is you’re standing in your yard that you share with your pregnant wife, fighting over another woman.”
“No.” I stop. “That’s not what happened.”
“Looked like it to me. You invite me over for the game and I walk into this. Jesus, man.” His voice drops low. “Fighting over your ex? I thought you were over her. And your brother’s in your life again?”
“It’s complicated.” I flex my hand that starts to ache. It’s complicated all right. I attacked my brother because for a hot second I’d taken the words from the man’s mouth as he’d hit Jessica, but had he? Shit, I don’t know.
And this isn’t about her at all. It’s about my brother. I miss him. Blame him. Love him. Hate him. Anger and resentment at all the lost years are more what is behind me hitting Tyler than actually thinking he’d hit his wife.
Or anyone.
And it was pure betrayal to me, like the last tether had been severed and I didn’t know him anymore. The thing that makes us twins, knowing each other so well on an almost primordial level had suddenly been taken by his words, because if he hits his wife and I never got even an inkling, I’ve lost him.
Completely.
I force myself to breathe and think.
Out of anyone, I know the two people involved in this and she’d worn makeup yesterday, but she didn’t have any swelling or anything like that. It’s something I’ve learned to pick up on when women do that.
Shit.
Brian is still talking, I realize, as we stand in my front yard, and I make more of a mess of things.
“You’re married to someone else,” Brian says. “It’s not complicated. Except of course you rushed into that. Even though I was there every step of the way to warn you against doing something stupid. You need to think things through.”
“I didn’t rush,” I say, my voice a snarl. “She was pregnant.”
“And that’s why you married her?”
“Yeah, Travis. Is that why?”
If my heart were capable of dropping out of my chest, it would be lying on the ground in front of me.
Carefully, so I don’t throw up or pass out from the sudden drop in my blood pressure, I turn to see the heartbreak written on her face.
“Is that why you married me?”
17
