Chapter 16 #2
“What?” I blurted, my voice rising. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you and your perfect grades and your perfect manners and your perfect everything,” Lucas screamed. “Dad and Papa doted on you all the time and forgot about me entirely.”
I couldn’t believe the things I was hearing. Lucas and I were grown men, and here he was, bringing up things from our childhood that he was definitely remembering wrong.
“Dad and Papa didn’t love me more, if that’s what you’re insinuating,” I said. “I worked hard while you goofed off and got into trouble. That’s why you spent more time grounded than not.”
“You made me look bad,” Lucas said, lunging at me again and swiping for his phone. “Nothing I did or said ever made them look at me the way they looked at you.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said, making a break for the porch door. “You’re an adult. Stop blaming everything on Dad and Papa. You keep putting me in danger because you think it’s funny.”
“Now who’s the one bringing up our childhood and using it as an excuse?” Lucas raced after me.
I reached the door, opened it, threw the phone and keys as far as I could into the yard, then pulled the door shut and faced Lucas again. “The omega auction was less than two days ago,” I told him firmly, not quite shouting. “And all those pizzas you had sent to my house was last month.”
“I thought you might be hungry,” Lucas growled with ridiculous seriousness that would have made me laugh under any other circumstances.
“This has to stop, Lucas,” I told him as firmly as I could, standing taller and blocking him from getting to the door so he could go after the phone and keys.
“I refuse to let you push me around anymore. I’m done with it.
You’ve tormented me for years, and I’ve just sat back and let you because I wanted to believe that maybe you’d changed. ”
“That’s your fault, not mine,” Lucas said, panting as he ran out of energy and trying to reach around me to get to the door handle. “You’re the schlub who fell for it every time I pulled something. It was hilarious,” he growled, glaring at me.
I shook my head, feeling sad more than anything else.
“I’m not okay with it,” I said, feeling a new sort of strength deep in my core.
It had to be because of Saint. “I was never okay with it. I let you keep walking all over me because you’re my twin brother and I thought cutting you all that slack was loving you. But it wasn’t and it never will be.”
“Get out of my way,” Lucas roared, trying to pry me bodily away from the door now, completely ignoring everything I was saying.
It hurt my heart. Not because Lucas was being his usual, combative, selfish self, but because for the first time, I realized he was never going to change.
Nothing I did to love him or care for him or try to show him support or encouragement was ever going to make a dent unless he wanted to change.
I didn’t know if that would ever happen, but whether it did or not, I was powerless to make my brother a better person.
“I’m not letting you outside so you can call your criminal friends and warn them about what’s coming,” I said.
“I’m not letting you ruin this police operation because you don’t want to face the consequences of what you’ve done.
It’s time to pay the piper, Lucas. And I mean that when it comes to the way you’ve treated me as well. ”
“Move!” Lucas shouted, shifting to try to push me away from the door.
It was like lecturing a brick wall. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Lucas was never going to change.
Maybe it was the grief in my heart that made me weak, or maybe Lucas had a burst of strength in the middle of wearing himself out. He shoved me hard enough that I stumbled to the side, but when he grabbed for the porch door, he, too, stumbled, because Saint pulled it open from the other side.
Lucas stumbled back, his face contorted in a wince, probably because of his post-heat aversion to touch. He shrank away from Saint and from Fenn, who walked in after him. “Let me out!” he shouted. “I want my phone. I’m calling Wally and telling him everything you shits are planning.”
Saint moved quickly to me and wrapped his arms around me. Part of me wanted to melt into him, to hide my face against him and block out everything happening around me. But a greater part of me wanted to stand up and do what was right.
“You can’t do this to me,” Lucas continued to growl, backing up as Fenn shut the porch door and stepped closer to him. “I have rights! I want a lawyer! I want my phone!”
“You mean this phone?” Fenn asked, holding up Lucas’s damp cell phone.
I cringed, uncertain whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that the phone wasn’t lost in the grass somewhere.
“Yes!” Lucas jumped and made a grab for it, but Fenn held the phone out of the way. “Give it to me!”
“I don’t think so,” Fenn said. “You’re not going to need it anyhow.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Lucas demanded.
Fenn glanced at me for a second, catching my eye, then looked at Saint, then focused on Lucas again. “You don’t need it because you already got a text,” he said. “Your Dumfries gang is already on its way, but now the Westfield family is coming, too. They’ll be getting here any minute now.”
Lucas’s face lost all color, and he sagged so hard he had to catch himself on the back of the sofa. “They’re what?” he wheezed.
I knew Fenn was talking about the police who would be posing as the Westfield family.
I knew the whole thing was a set-up and that the only way we would be able to pull the whole sting off was if Lucas believed everything we told him.
But that didn’t stop me from feeling more than a little weak and woozy when Fenn went on to say, “The Westfield family is on their way, and they’re pissed off that the exchange didn’t happen at midnight, like it was supposed to. ”