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“I never saw, I never appreciated the things you did for the family. All the ways you stood by our side, all the ways you always had our back. The ways you helped out even when you were a kid. The ways you’d assume responsibilities without having to be told. How you’d make grocery runs without having to be asked, pick up Shep’s slack when he’d be busy with soccer practice. In fact, it should’ve been obvious to me back when you’d run away and —”
“You knew?”
His eyes bore into mine. “Of course I did. You’re my little brother. Of course I knew you’d run away.” Then, scoffing, “And of course like a shitty big brother, I assumed it was because you were angry and throwing a tantrum.”
“I was angry.”
“Yeah, but you had a right to be,” he says. “I rode you hard that week. At practice. Chewed you out just because you missed a goal and never appreciated the fact that you’d made the net every single time before that. All because deep down I was afraid that if I let you slip up once, it was going to happen again and again and what if you end up like him. And what if I could’ve prevented that but I didn’t. What a sorry excuse for a brother, huh.”
“No,” I say immediately, my chest feeling tighter and tighter. “You were a good big brother. You are a good big brother. You did the best that you could.”
“Not with you.”
I chuckle harshly, my breaths getting strangled, my muscles locked tight. “But what if you were right? What if I am —”
“You’re not,” he says firmly, his eyes flickering with conviction. “Because if you were, you wouldn’t want to kill me just because I said her name.”
I grind my jaw. “But that still —”
His hand shoots out and he grips the back of my neck like he used to when I was a kid and he wanted me to not only hear something but understand it as well. “Listen to me, you’re not like him. I spent my life thinking that. I spent my life punishing you for it and I know what a huge mistake that was. I know how big my regret is, and trust me when I say it’s not a good feeling. In fact, it’s the worst feeling in the world, misunderstanding my own brother, and I refuse to let you do that, got it? I absolutely refuse to let you misunderstand yourself. You’re not like him. You were never like him. You’re more of a man than he ever was. You were more of a man at twelve, when you’d run away but came right back because you couldn’t abandon your family, than he ever was, yeah? That’s why you came back, didn’t you?”
I clench my jaw, unable to respond in this moment.
But turns out he doesn’t need me to say anything. He simply tightens his hold on my neck, almost shaking me, and says, “And if you still have doubts about it, I want you to think about her. I want you to think about the girl you love who made me see it.”
“What?”
His nostrils flare with a sharp breath. “I wish I could say that I had this epiphany all by myself. But I didn’t. It was her. She told me to stop fucking around and really think about things. That day. She told me to really look at you and I did. And I’m fucking embarrassed to say that it was easy. More than easy to see the differences.”
While I’m watching him, stunned, he delivers his last blow. “So if it becomes difficult for you to see the differences too, I want you to think about her. The girl you love and who loves you back just as much if not more.”
She doesn’t.
She does not.
She did once, yeah. But she can’t be foolish enough to love me now.
And I don’t love her either.
Do I?
Because if I do, then what does that make me? If I love her, how could I do to her what I did?
How could I lie to her?
How could I keep lying to her, knowingly, consciously? Just because I know that if I told her the truth, that I tricked her into marrying me, she’d run.
And how is it that that’s not the worst thing that I’ve done to her?
Despite my good intentions, despite the massive guilt that keeps getting bigger and bigger as the days pass without me telling her truth, I took advantage of her trust and fucked her. Not only that, I recorded it too.
Actually, I fuck her every night and record it.
I fuck her every night like a depraved animal and then record the shit out of her so I can watch it at practice and jerk off. So I can look at her face, stare at her body. Because I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t get to do that. I don’t know how I’d breathe, how my heart will beat and my blood will pump.
