Chapter 14
Hunter
“People always expect brothers to be treated the same,” I tell Rayne as he sits back on his bed. “Especially when you’re only a year apart. But the truth is that our father always had a favorite. And that favorite was me.”
Rayne furrows his brow. “But…”
“I know. It sounds weird, because Wes is the obvious favorite now. But when we were young, really young, my father hadn’t started hating me yet.
Weston was a surprise baby, coming so quick after I was born.
And he was a difficult baby, apparently, and even worse as a toddler.
Wailing every night, never happy, never calm. But I was an angel.”
“So your dad liked you better as a baby, and that’s why you were a dick to Weston for the rest of your life? I’m not buying it.”
“When I was six and he was five, Weston accidentally knocked another kid off a platform at the playground. The kid broke an arm, and Weston went home and told our father that I did it.”
Rayne narrows his eyes, like he can’t decide if he believes me or not.
“Weston doesn’t tend to lie,” he says.
“Not usually. But he did that day.”
“Why?”
“Because if Dad knew Weston did that, he’d have hit him with a leather belt, many times.”
Rayne’s face suddenly morphs from anger to shock. “Your father hit you when you were children?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “He hit Weston. Never me.”
Rayne already looks like he wants to cry.
Big-hearted Rayne.
You have no idea, do you?
“Fuck. Wes never said anything about that,” he says softly.
“And I shouldn’t be telling you, either, because Weston’s story isn’t mine to tell. Do you see why I don’t go around blabbing about why we’ve never gotten along? Because it’s not just about us.”
“How bad was the abuse? From your father?”
“It happened anytime Weston pissed him off, pretty much. It all stopped when Dad married Heidi. He wouldn’t dream of hitting one of us in front of his beautiful new German wife.”
Rayne knew our stepmom just about as well as we did.
Our mother ditched us when we were barely toddlers, and my stepmom had come in relatively soon after that. She’d married my dad right around the time that Weston and Rayne started their friendship, at the start of middle school.
Everything changed after that.
“I can’t believe Weston went through all of that and never told me. I feel awful.”
I nod. “As a kid, I was rageful at him every time he lied to our dad. Every time he fucked something up, he tried to pin it on me.”
“But he was only trying to protect himself from your father.”
“Yes. But after Lune died… I thought things would change. I thought Weston would accept the fact that I was all he had left in the family. But instead, he was colder than ever.”
Rayne really does look like he’s about to cry, now, but he doesn’t let himself.
“I was so fucked up after Lune’s death that it only made me hate Wes more. She was my best friend in the goddamn world, and all I had left was Weston, but he still wouldn’t speak to me at home.”
“He thought you hated him, Hunter.”
“That’s what he wanted you to believe. I don’t even know if it was ever true.”
Rayne narrows his gaze at me. “Weston was terrified of you. When I slept over, we’d be under the sheets, and he’d tell me stories about you pulling fucking knives on him, Hunter—”
“That was only once. And you have no idea why I pulled that knife on him.”
“And you expected him to just be okay with that?”
I let my eyes burn into Rayne’s. “Weston came into my room and told me that he was going to confront our father. He was going to try to fuck up our father’s life, because he caught him cheating on Heidi.”
Rayne furrows his brow. “What?”
“I knew if Weston exposed our father like that, Dad might kill him,” I say, deliberately emphasizing the final two words. “You think I’m a monster, Rayne, but you don’t know that our father is much worse.”
“He wouldn’t kill his own fucking son.”
“Maybe not. But he definitely would hurt him. I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t watch Weston get abused again. Even if I was pissed off at Wes, I couldn’t watch our father bully him again—”
“Jesus, Hunter—”
“Because if I saw another bruise on Weston, I swear I would have killed my father for it first.”
Rayne goes silent. His expression is unreadable.
It feels like I’m hurting Rayne just by saying all of this, because it’s information that only hurts to know.
I pull in a long, slow breath, trying to quiet the rage inside me before I speak again.
“I pulled a knife on Wes because he was about to confront a man who didn’t care about him, and I had to fucking stop him. I do care about Weston, even though I can’t stand him. If that’s too hard for you to understand, then consider yourself lucky you don’t have a family like ours.”
“It’s awful.”
“We never got along, but no. I don’t hate my brother. I could never hate him, but I will never be close to him. You need to accept that, Rayne.”
He gives me a cold look. “I don’t have to accept anything.”
“Excuse me?”
He’s furrowing his brow. “Both of you were abused. Even if you weren’t the one being hit, it’s still abuse because your father made you—made a child—watch his brother get hurt.”
“Trust me, Rayne, I’m aware of that. I had enough trauma in my childhood to fill a thousand file cabinets in therapists’ offices.”
“So you and Weston should fucking talk, for once,” Rayne says, raising his voice.
“And suddenly we’d be best friends? I think he has you for that.”
“Maybe not. But I still think that you’re both adults now, and he’s your only brother. You don’t have to tell me what you did in London but you should at least be open with your brother.”
“Neither of you are ever going to know about London. Why do you keep bringing it up?” I ask, a flare of anger rising in me. “You don’t know your place.”
“The mafia, Knox? Tell me what you did for the Thornwick family,” he says.
And his words land on my heart with a heavy thud.
Not possible.
He doesn’t know about that.
How would he know about the family?
Something cold moves through my chest. I stand up quickly and watch Rayne flinch a little, thinking I’m about to come at him.
But he’s wrong.
I’m getting out of here.
I reach for a black hoodie and pull it over my head. I take my wallet and phone, and a knife to slide into my back pocket.
“Have a good night, Rayne.”
I shut the room door behind me and run down the staircase, heading out onto the street.
Fucking far away from him.
I’m only halfway down Red Row before a girl has her arm around me.
There’s a beautiful brunette draped over my shoulder in front of Luros sorority, pressing her lips to my cheek as her redheaded friend snaps a picture of the two of us.
I can’t stand it.
But I’m not going to tell her that.
It’s not personal, anyway. I wouldn’t be able to stand anything right now, because I feel like I’m in a spiral.
A spiral with Rayne fucking Colson right at the center.
“Cute as hell,” the redheaded girl says, taking multiple photos of us with her phone.
We’re sitting on a wooden bench under a tall oak tree that lines the Luros house property. The girl kissing my cheek smells like mint gum, and even after her friend is done taking pictures, she lingers near me, pressing another little kiss to my earlobe like she wants more.
I’m letting her do it, even though I want to push her away.
“This is perfect for the scavenger hunt,” she says as she finally leans away. “We were supposed to get a picture with a hot stranger. You’re way hotter than the guy Kim got a picture with.”
“Hey, fuck you,” the redhead says, glaring at her friend.
They both laugh, and the brunette turns back toward me. “You should come to our party tonight. Girls from Luros and a couple of the Greek sororities.”
I could easily turn this into more, if I wanted to; I could fuck her, and maybe fuck both of them, if they were into that sort of thing. But right now, my dick doesn’t have any interest in them, even though they clearly want me.
I can feel them eye-fucking me as I stand up from the bench.
“Busy tonight, unfortunately,” I tell them.
There’s only one person from Luros that I want to see, and I know she isn’t going to be at the party tonight.
Briar is the closest thing I’ve had to a real friend in years.
A friend who actually just wants to talk to me.
Not a friend who is using me for something.
Not a friend in a crime family who sees me as a means to an end.
I clench my jaw and my skin prickles at what Rayne said to me, just ten minutes ago. Somehow, he found out that I’d known people from the Thornwick crime family in London, although there was no shot in hell he knew what that involved.
No one else could know.
Certainly not Weston.
I know Rayne won’t say shit to Weston yet. But I need to find out how to make sure Rayne doesn’t ever tell a soul.
I lean back on the bench and look down at my phone and there’s two messages.
Rayne: We’re talking when you get back.
I ignore that one, looking at the other, instead.
Briar: Sorry!! Just give me two more minutes, I’ll be outside soon.
I glance up and see that the brunette is still looking down at me. Probably still wondering if she can rope me into something tonight.
“Nice day,” I say, but I can’t fake a smile.
“Oh my God, I love fall,” she says. “Always makes me feel… invigorated.”
“Slut,” her friend chirps from beside her. “She’s trying to say it makes her horny.”
“No I am not,” she protests. “Maybe it makes me feel a little sexy, but what’s wrong with that?”
She bites her lip as she smiles at me.
I used to use this kind of attention like a currency.
But right now I just wish I knew how to turn these girls down without sounding like a prick.
Sorry, ladies, but for some reason my cock only wants the one person it shouldn’t want, lately, and that’s my younger brother’s bestie.
I still fucking wanted to kiss him, even when I wanted to strangle him, back at the house.
Rayne had that effect on me.