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“I told you I was moving out,” I said.
“Where?” Drew asked.
I scuttled around him and headed out, down the hallway and to the kitchen. I felt irrationally safer with open space between us. Which was silly because Drew was a nonviolent person. We had been to several rallies on the topic.
“I’m going home with him,” I said.
And there it was. The dirty wrong truth. I was my brother’s and that’s all there was to it. No matter how wrong it was. I could never deny Torin Reilly anything.
Drew put his tennis racket down deliberately on the counter. He didn’t even ask who “he” was.
“I don’t think you want to do that, Laoise,” my ex-fiancé said deliberately.
Drew might not have realized it, but he had positioned himself between me and the front door.
I didn’t blame him for being angry, but I was feeling antsy. Torin would soon be waiting by my truck and if I was late, he would come looking for me. And I didn’t want this going badly. I didn’t want Torin to do anything that would jeopardize his newly-released status.
“I’m sorry, Drew,” I said. “I have to do this.”
“Laoise, this is just textbook codependency,” he said. “Your stunted emotional development has caused this. I told you to go to therapy.”
“I don’t care what it is,” I said defiantly. “All I know is that I’m going with Torin.”
Drew’s lip curled up, in an ugly expression I had never seen on his face. “If you go with him, he’ll try to fuck you,” he said. “Your own brother. I mean, he needs a psychiatric intervention.”
I felt a flare of anger.
Torin was a psycho.
But he was mine to call psycho.
And mine to protect.
“Just move out of the way, Drew,” I said. “I’m sorry, but it’s better this way.”
Because do you really want to be engaged to someone whose brother makes her come harder than you ever could?
“I’m sorry, Laoise,” Drew said as I tried to move past him. “I’m really a very kind man. You know that. But you’ve left me no other choice. I’m going to have to call the police on you.”
And suddenly Drew hit me, the ring on his finger cutting open my cheek. The blow knocked me down, sent me sprawling onto the kitchen floor. He leaned over me and hit me again, his fist connecting with my eye. I tried to crawl away and he grabbed my legs.
“This is about Torin, isn’t it?” he said. “Your brother has got some sick obsession with you and you can’t see how dangerous he is.”
He slapped me on the other cheek, and I tasted blood in my mouth.
And it wasn’t just self-preservation that urged me to my feet. It was Torin. The worse I was hurt the more difficult it would be to keep him from killing Drew.
Desperately, I opened up the kitchen drawers, trying to put something between me and Drew.
But he just kept coming.
I avoided another swing, but just barely, ducking under Drew’s fist.
“Stop it!” I cried. “What is wrong with you?”
“I’ve already put a down payment on the reception site,” he said.
“Cancel it, then!” I screamed, pulling drawers out wildly as I circled the kitchen island.
