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“You think we planned this?” Tag asked. “Practice safe sex, kids.”
“Always,” Elsie said, looking lofty.
And he looked at Alaina, wondering if she would feel offended by that, but instead, she laughed. “Doesn’t always work.”
Well, that answeredthatquestion.
“That’s chilling,” Elsie said.
“Sorry,” Alaina said. “Reality’s reality. I made dessert,” Alaina said, getting up from the table and bustling back into the kitchen. Where she pulled the most beautiful cake he’d ever seen out from underneath her cake platter. Pineapple upside down cake with caramelized pineapple and gleaming bright cherries. “And I’ve got homemade whipped cream.”
“Gus, you really did hit the big time,” Brody said.
Except he couldn’t get those little interactions between Elsie and Hunter and Tag and Nelly out of his mind. He couldn’t... They couldn’t be that. They just couldn’t be. And they never would be. They were something else. She’d said it earlier. They were friends. By necessity. They were friends, because he couldn’t afford to let his emotions off leash.
Here we go.
No. He knew. He knew that only his father was responsible for his behavior. He did know that.
It was just...he was also well aware of his own behavior. Well aware of the kinds of things he did when he was pushed too far.
He could be a lot of things. Older brother. Protector.
The wordfathergot caught in his mind and spun there.
Would it be fair to ask the babynotto call him Dad? No. He’d offered to be the baby’s dad. But it wasn’t the same. Because he wasn’t the same. As any of the men sitting around him.
He looked up at sweet Alaina, who just had no idea what the hell kind of messed-up place his brain was. What the hell kind of wasteland his heart was.
But all of this made it clearer. What theyweren’t. What they couldn’t be.
And he worried. He worried if she could be happy. But she seemed happy. She had seemed happy earlier. So why he was borrowing trouble, he didn’t know. Why he was comparing, he didn’t know.
He knew that he was different than them. They didn’t have to be this way. They didn’t have his weaknesses. He’d gone at his dad swinging when he got himself locked in that shed. Because a thirteen-year-old boy had been no match for a grown man. But hell...
When he’d been grown, and his dad had gone after Lachlan one last time, one final time, Gus had snapped.
And yeah, there were rumors all over the place that he was a murderer.
They might be serious, but mostly he suspected people thought it was funny to claim extreme violence on his part without ever thinking it through too deeply.
Nobody knew how close he’d actually come.
Beg.
Beg for your life like you made me do.
Another hit. And another. The feeling of him giving way beneath his knuckles.
Damn, that had been satisfying.
Cry for it. Like you made me do.
I won’t set you on fire, though. I’ll just let you burn in hell. But first, let me bring you up to the gates.
The memory made something metallic flood his mouth. Made him feel almost ill. And he took a bite of the cake to try to banish it.
But it was still there. Even though he could tell the cake tasted great. It was still there, and he was still Gus.
