Chapter 33 Festering Wounds #2
“Keep lying to yourself. Maybe one day you’ll believe it.” He kicks me off with a huff.
I hit the ground, pain flaring in my side.
He scrambles to his feet. “I’ve been where you are. Stop fighting me. I’m on your side.”
“You’re on the Fox side.”
I jump to my feet and run at him. We crash into the side of the bus. The metal booms as it dents beneath us, and something sharp along the panel slices into my side. It burns, but I kept driving forward.
He grabs my shirt and twists it into a fist. He pulls me close to his face.
“If you’d stop for one second, you’d realize you’re on the Fox side.” He pulls me back and slams me against the bus again. “You say you’re protecting her. Why? Cause you’re on her side, you dipshit.”
“You don’t think I know that?!” We lock arms, wrestler-style, but there is nothing playful about this.
“Then what are we doing? And what are you waiting for?”
Our foreheads nearly touch, and we both breathe as if we’ve just run ten miles through fire.
“I fucking hate you,” I snarl.
“No, you don’t.”
I don’t.
I hate myself.
I hate myself so damn much.
We circle, just clinging to each other.
“I thought you weren’t fighting anymore?” I snarl. “For Hope and the baby.”
“You’re worth it. You facing whatever you need to, Hart. You’re worth it.”
A growl tears up my chest, but it sounds more like a defeated plea.
“Why didn’t I stand up for her first?” The question tears out of me.
“Because you were young.” He says it like he understands the weight I’ve carried, because he has.
“I was old enough.”
“Neither of us was old enough.” His tenderness makes me feel seen and not judged.
I’m losing my fight. We’re circling, but barely holding on.
“I don’t want to fight with her anymore.”
“Then stop.”
“I want to tell her everything. I want to beg for her forgiveness.” I pause. “I want her.” Those last three words nearly kill me to say out loud.
He grips the sides of my face. “Tell her that. Tell Jade.”
“I don’t deserve her.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Levi, I have treated her like shit.”
We’re not yelling anymore, just breathing out the words.
“She hasn’t been a picnic.”
“Don’t say that about her. I made her that way. When I first met her, she was quiet and kind. By the time I was done with her, she was angry, hard, and bitter.”
“She was hurting, just like you.”
The battle between us is gone, but our grip doesn’t falter like our slow circles.
I shake my head. “I was the one who hurt her.”
“Hart, she knows. She knows our struggles. She relates. If anyone understands us more than anyone, it’s a Fox.”
“She should have found someone else. A guy who treats her the way she deserves to be treated.”
“But she didn’t.”
“Because I ruined that for her. She doesn’t trust anyone because I broke her trust.”
He presses his forehead harder against mine. “Or because she loves you, man. Because she never stopped loving you.”
“What if she did stop, and this has all been in my head?”
“You don’t know until you talk to her. What’s the worst that happens? She rejects you?” His fingers dig into my face. “It’s no worse a rejection than what you’ve been living with for over ten years.”
We part. Bloodied lips. Torn shirts. Old pain. Maybe hope.
He wipes blood over his lip with a chuckle.
I blow out a deep breath. “I’ve carried this alone for so long. This torturous battle inside me. I wake up with it every fucking day. I have been since the night I walked away from her. Battling this need to please and obey my family, and the desire to abandon it all for her.”
“I’m sorry, Hart. It sounds exhausting.”
I stay silent, trying to piece together my next move.
“But honestly, Hart.” Levi stretches his arm. “You stay out of our sibling wrestling matches for years. Never throw the first punch. Walk away. And this week, you’re like a ticking time bomb begging to fight.”
“I can’t think straight.
“I hate to be Dean, but maybe go rub one out.”
I punch his shoulder. “Shut up.”
“Man, it’s what you need.”
“No. I need her.”
His big, stupid grin is cheesy. “Then go get her.”
I find Bronx lounging at the fire pit, poking at a half-charred stick.
“She’s back and hit the hay, big guy.”
My gaze falls on him.
He holds up his arms. “I know. Fuck off.”
I exhale. “You want a beer?”
He quirks up one eyebrow. “You poisoning it?”
I shrug. “I haven’t decided.”
He shrugs. “I’m sure I’ve drunk worse. This one time...” And he goes into some elaborate pranks his brothers have pulled.
Everyone was right, he’s a good storyteller. We sit around the fire for what feels like hours. I keep hoping she’ll come out, but she doesn’t.
The fire crackles, and the night stretches on. Bronx retires, but I spend the night out here again.
It’s not until the next morning, when the first slivers of light haven’t even kissed the horizon, that I see her sneak away from the campground.
I get up and follow, keeping my distance, unsure if I can muster the courage that my brother instilled in me.
She stops at a secluded spot just beyond the camp, a little clearing tucked away, and sits in nature, like it’s a part of her.
Watching her like this, so at peace, so beautiful, it tears at a longing so deep it feels like it could swallow me whole.
It hits me like a wave.
The ache.
The wanting.
And I know, this is the moment I’m going to bare my soul to her.