63. Torin
SIXTY-THREE
torin
If I could ignore him, I would.
The pages of the book I’m reading, The Terminal List by Jack Carr, don’t make Ozzy disappear from the study in our house or the impending feeling he’s here to tell me something I’m not going to enjoy.
And I was enjoying this fucking book.
“What?” I grind out, not bothering to look up from the thrilling—or was—pages of my book.
No response.
This motherfucker.
Flicking my gaze over the edge of my paperback, my cousin slowly ambles in the room with a laptop open in his grasp. “I’m not watching porn with you to explain what sex feels like.”
Alright, low blow.
My irritability that he gets to be with Bay at all hours at any given time pisses me off.
It shouldn’t.
I’ve been down this road a million and one times and convinced myself this is all for the best. That keeping my distance and ridding myself of every ounce of feelings I have for her is in the best interest of myself and my brothers.
But the fuckers won’t die.
“What do you want, Oz?” He holds my aggravated gaze with ease, always has, and opens a laptop. “What is this?”
“Watch it,” he orders, not bothering to wait for me to drop my paperback before it’s promptly shoved into my chest. I notice blood all over his white tee, but then Oz hits the spacebar, and audio immediately comes out from a very, very familiar voice that lived in my head for weeks on end.
“Bay, I’m good for you. I’d treat you like a queen. I’ve watched you for months get closer to Matteo, and he’s gonna change, babe. He’s gonna lead this group into something violent, and you’re not gonna wanna be around for that.”
Judah.
My chest constricts as I shakily drop my book in my lap and grip the edges of the laptop.
“Matteo said he wasn’t,” Bay counters. “It’s to protect South Shore and Shoreline Peaks from the Forsaken Crew.”
She’s so young.
And even though I can barely see her through the darkness enclosed by woods, I can make out her outline.
That sweet tone.
The moon shines ever-so-faintly through the top of the trees, and I can identify my brother’s tall frame a few feet away from her.
“He doesn’t give a fuck about South Shore,” my brother barks out. “He only cares about himself and the power he’s trying to obtain. He’s not gonna get it, Bay. Emilio Wildes isn’t going to pay him any mind unless it’s to play him. And if he gets in the way, Emilio is going to demolish him.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I know.” And he would. Judah despised Emilio, hence why he left The Landings and was looking for more to build on before he brought me with him. “You wanna go back to him?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you want to live and make it past sixteen, Bay? Matteo isn’t going to keep you around for that. He’s not going to make you anything but his whore.”
“Really?” she leers, that spunky attitude showing off for my brother. “You think I’m gonna stick around for that? You think I’m going… It’s not going to be like that. I just want—” She stops there when my brother steps forward.
“What do you want? I can give it to you.”
“Judah, please leave me alone. For your sake and mine. I’m not even the type of girl you like.”
“And what’s that? You’re beautiful, smart. One day, you’ll fill out into something so fuckin’ killer it’ll be sick. And I’ll be there to protect you from everything. From the war between The Landings and South Shore. From men who will try to hurt you.”
Men like me.
“How would you protect me?” Bay solicits. “You’d have to be with Matteo and the Pistol Posse to have support and?—”
“I have support,” Judah snaps, his voice wavering with impatience. “I left the most powerful family alive to…to just get the fuck away from them. You’re the only thing I’ve seen since leaving that’d make me go back to keep you from harm. I can change everything. We—together—could be the most powerful couple in all of here and the surrounding states.”
“I don’t want to be—” Judah wraps an arm around her waist and pulls Bay closer to him. “Please, Jud…you’re gonna get us killed.”
She knew even then of the power and ruthlessness of Matteo. When I tried to pull her away and break a piece of her for my own. When I promised similar things. Judah and I… we’re not so far off as to know of the threats surrounding us.
And we both wanted, at one time, to protect her from it.
Judah speaks, but I can’t hear him. I do see Bay trying to pull away from his hold, though.
“I can’t bear seeing you with him,” my older brother confesses before Bay is able to gain some space between them. “You can’t be around anymore.”
My eyebrows clash together before Judah lunges for her, causing Bay to stumble back and fall to the ground. He takes advantage, straddling her body to the ground as Bay screams.
“Judah! Get off?—”
“It’s the only way,” he retorts before his palms and fingers tightly wrap aroundher throat. “I promise I’ll try to do it as quickly as possible.”
No.
No. No. No. No.
Through my glassy stare at the screen, my entire chest cavity caves in. Bay struggles underneath him, kicking with her legs, but she’s no match for my brother.
She’s too small.
He’s too big.
This…this can’t be right.
“Pleaseeee…” The desperate plea in her voice makes my heart shatter. The truth she’s repeated over and over begins to assault everything in my head and everything I’ve done.
I fucked up.
Not only did she suffer at the hands of my brother but also me.
Me.
Someone who promised to protect and love her.
We all know how that ended. I couldn’t do it; however, my brother doesn’t seem to be having an issue. And I’ve been protecting what happened to him and sticking up for his death.
Even there, in my dreams, I’ve listened to everything he’s said.
And I don’t know who the hell was talking to me or if I even know him anymore.
“I didn’t want you to bleed,” I hear Judah surmise sympathetically, seizing my attention as he bends closer and places his weight on her chest. “I’m so sorry, Bay. Please know…please know how much you mean to me. I know it didn’t seem like it, but I thought it was for the best.”
“Judah,” she begs again, her voice brimming with fear and causing a lump to form in my throat.
I deserve to choke out right now.
He was going to kill her.
Right then and there.
Alone.
“I’m sorry,” Judah repeats, the same amount of misery in his tone, but the difference between him and me is that I couldn’t bear seeing her disappear out of my existence. “Please…know how much, Bay. I’m so sorry.”
Judah leans in, and that’s when I see Bay thrust her forehead up and headbutt him in the face.
Not just once, but three fucking times.
Pride filters in my veins as my brother curses out loud before delivering a heavy punch to her face.
Then rage overtakes every emotion, and I welcome it over the gloom that taunts my every breath.
“Why’d you have to do that, Bay?” Judah rebukes, then snatches up her wrist and holds it over her head. “Why does everyone not want me?”
“I did,” I mutter, as if he can hear me. The dejection in his tone is nothing I’ve ever heard before, and it’s as though he had forgotten what he was living for.
“You wanna kill me now?”
I notice something in Bay’s hand. “You wanted to hurt me first. Just let me go, Judah. We’ll chalk this up as a bad?—”
“Chalk it up?” he carps out incredulously through a haughty tone. “No one pulls a knife or gun on me and lives to tell about it. Why did you do that?”
Judah makes a go for what has to be a weapon, but she’s quicker this time. I see her thrust it forward and Judah’s hiss of pain, which causes him to lose the upper hand
“Don’t do this, Bay,” he warns, as if she started this.
She kicks at his gut and makes contact, but he captures her ankles and yanks hard, getting her to fall back on her spine again.
But being Bay Astor means she’s not going to go down that easily—ever.
She nails my brother with her free leg in his chest, and that’s when Judah explodes.
“No one is going to use you!” he roars out as Bay scrambles back and gets to her feet. Judah does the same, and it’s a face-off of who’s going to come out of this alive. “No one can have you but me, Bay. We were meant for so much more than this. I can’t protect you if you choose him.”
“I need to go home.” A broken sob fills the air, over the crickets and the slight breeze that waves around the branches of the trees.
“You can’t,” Judah replies, taking another step in her direction. “You can’t leave.”
“I have—” He rushes her, and that’s when she has no choice.
Her blade penetrates my brother, and his palm falls to his hip, but Bay doesn’t stop.
I can hear the broken cries leave her lips the moment my brother falls to his knees, and the next scream from her lips shakes me to my core.
“ Judah ! Why did you— I wanted to go home!”
He shakes his head. “You were meant…for so much more. You’re in…so much danger, Bay. I can…keep…you safe.”
Did he want to keep Emilio away from her and saw this as the only way out from her destroying us?
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she wails, then begins looking around. “Judah, I’m going to go get help.”
“No,” he says flatly. “They won’t make it. I guess I was wrong.”
“Put pressure on it. Judah, let me?—”
“I didn’t want to kill you, Bay…but you’ll either ruin us all or be ruined. I’d rather save you from that.”
She already did.
And I helped.
I dropped her in the middle of a fucking ocean and tried to erase her from the Earth. I had her sisters ripped from her out of spite for taking my brother away.
“What are you fuckin’ talking about?” Bay rants. “You’re drunk.”
“And you’re too fucking…dangerous.” He releases a strangled exhale. “Matteo will either break you…or kill you. I would’ve possibly—” He bows forward, holding on to his side as he does and taking my heart with him. I’m watching my brother die in front of my eyes, and I wasn’t ready for this. I saw a video—something similar before, but this…a combination of Bay and Judah so desperate for two different things, I’m barely breathing from my guilt. “My brother…he’s young…tell him…”
I drop the laptop, not able to connect at this moment anymore. It’s all my fault—what I’ve done to Bay—but my brother tried to take her from me as I did.
Ozzy’s dark attire shows up in my peripheral, wordless and adamant I finish the video. That I need to see the truth, all of it because I have hell to pay for my sins in every sense of the word.
“Judah?” Bay’s questioning fear draws me back to the screen. Her outline is predominant as she cautiously approaches my brother. “Wake up. Judah, please.” She gives him a little kick. “Judah!”
“He’s dead, sweetheart. You stuck him good.”
My nostrils flare at the sound of Matteo’s hero act.
This bullshit video, both the one he showed me before and tried to assassinate Bay with, I’m going to fuck up his entire posse while he watches before I kill him.
“He tried to hurt me. He?—”
“I saw,” Matteo says, void of emotion. “I heard everything.”
“You didn’t…you didn’t save me.”
Matteo raises his hand, a gun in his palm, ready to be used. “I was ready.”
“What do I do? Should I call the police and?—”
Matteo scoffs dismissively and pulls her into his arms. “I got this. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, okay?”
That’s when three gunshots ring out spitefully through the video, and I hear Bay call for Judah again. My fingers fold along the edge of the laptop as I slam the thing closed.
I try my best to draw in a gasp of air, but it comes short.
“You here to kill me like you said you would if I touched her?” I mindlessly ask Oz. “Because it’d be fitting.”
“No,” he croons smoothly. “Bay doesn’t want that.”
My eyes narrow as I jerk my head up to him. “You seriously asked her that?”
“Didn’t need to. Emilio wants you dead.” I stare at him, a million scenarios and reasons running through my head as my skin feels as though it’s on fire. Ozzy doesn’t pull his crystal-clear gaze off me, completely mindful of every move, emotion, and chaotic instance running through my brain. “She told him no.”
“Why?” There’s no reason for her to keep me breathing. Her best bet is to off me so I can’t betray her again.
Not that I could or would.
“Us.”
I shove his laptop off my lap, permitting the thing to fall gracelessly to the hardwood floor and rise from the leather La-Z-Boy I’m in, unable to sit still a second longer. “Where is she?”
“No.” His one word is final, standing up to me—not that he ever had a problem doing it before—and doesn’t move away, almost chest to chest with me as he puts his foot down when it comes to his wife.
And as much as I don’t want to respect it, I have no right to fight him about it. I lost that the moment my brain flipped to convince myself she and I could never be something.
That, even though I wanted it, she’d fuck me over in the end.
When it was I who was the main star in the feat.
I grind my teeth and avert my gaze to the door. “You’re not gonna be able to keep me away from her forever.’
“I will until I don’t need to.”
I lick at my bottom lip, giving me something to do instead of busting him in the mouth for my sins. “Does she know?”
I see Ozzy shake his head before picking up the discarded laptop from the floor.
He’s the constant. He’s the one who didn’t see what I thought I saw.
He believed her.
“Just be happy you’re alive.”
Ozzy’s cryptic comment smacks me in the face before he pivots and abandons me with the veracity of Bay’s words, my brother’s death, and the all-consuming blameworthy conviction of my actions.