16. Colt
16
COLT
This is bizarre. The one thing I wanted more than almost anything in my life, and I have it here, now. My brother is in the shower—he went first, being bloody and everything—and I’ve stayed with Leni while we wait.
“They’re really both dead?” She’s barely aware of what was happening back there—whatever that bastard used to knock her out, he used a lot of it.
She wraps both hands around a mug of tea, which probably tastes like shit because I brewed it for her. I know tea isn’t exactly a challenge, but I’m not used to taking care of her like this. “Yeah, they’re definitely dead. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“How can you say that?” There’s something small and sad in her voice. Defeated. “How am I not supposed to worry about what happens next? I mean, they’re dead, and people are going to want to know how it happened.”
Down the hall, the bathroom door opens, and Nix strolls out in a pair of my sweatpants that I left out for him. I still can’t believe it. He’s actually here. I never believed he was dead, but there were times I wondered if we would ever breathe the same air again, since he was so determined to stay away.
He walks on silent feet, like a ghost, and I notice how slowly he approaches Leni, rounding her end of the sofa like he’s afraid of getting too close. Sure, now that I’m around, watching him, he wants to be all protective and gentle. Where was that when he decided to tie her up and use her? “We’ll take care of the bodies. Don’t worry,” he insists. “We’ll go back in the morning, first thing.”
She’s not convinced, wrapping her arms around herself once she’s drained her mug. “It is really weird, having you here like this,” she admits. I’m glad she said it, so I didn’t have to.
“Yeah, you’re usually busting in and doing whatever you want when you show up around here, right?” I ask, and I’m glad when he flinches. He deserves a hell of a lot worse than that.
“It’s weird being here,” he admits. “I didn’t expect this, whatever happened. If I wasn’t watching you earlier…”
Leni shivers, and he winces at the sight. “But some things matter more than staying away. I couldn’t sacrifice you to keep myself safe.”
“Okay, okay.” I’ve had enough of this. “Let’s not throw a parade for you or anything, you know? What the hell is with you letting me think you were dead all this time?”
“You didn’t believe I was.”
“That doesn’t matter—you get my point. Why did you stay away all this time? And how…”
He waits with a smirk twisting his lips until I finally have to look away. “Come on, brother,” he invites. “What were you going to say?”
Asshole . “How did your face end up the way it is?”
He runs a hand over the scar tissue, covering almost half of a face that used to be as familiar to me as my own. With a soft sigh, he lets himself drop into an armchair across from us. “I’m not proud of what I did, but in the moment, it felt like the right thing to do. Really, it was Bradley’s idea—and I know he can’t defend himself now, but it’s the truth. If it was all me, I would tell you. And it’s not like I didn’t go along with him,” he adds with a bitter laugh.
“What are you talking about?” Leni whispers, though I think I know. It’s the only thing that makes sense, the only reason he would have for letting me think he was dead.
And he knows that, too. His eyes meet mine before he confesses, speaking slowly, like every word takes effort. “We set the fire in the house. Bradley and me.”
Leni flinches, and I take her hand while he keeps going. “I never gave him any specifics of the shit he made us do, but he knew I hated Dad. And that day, I’d had enough. I was ready to explode. There was all this shit inside me, all this rage, and I wanted to make him hurt. I thought burning down the house that meant so much to him, burning up all his things, he might finally feel a little pain. And… I don’t know.” He can’t look at Leni anymore, can’t watch her crumble in pain. He looks away before muttering, “It got out of hand. I don’t know what the hell we were thinking, but it all got out of hand.”
“Did you know they were home?” she whispers. The pain in her voice—I wish somebody would hit me and get it over with, because I could stand that. I can’t stand the sound of her pain.
“I didn’t know your mom was there. I swear. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew she was there. She wasn’t home when I got there with Bradley, and we went down to the basement for a little while hanging out—that must’ve been when she got home. It was so stupid. We were drinking; I wasn’t thinking straight. I am so sorry, really. She didn’t deserve that.”
Leni releases a shuddering breath and looks at the floor, breathing slowly like she’s fighting to control herself.
And he knows it, and I see the pain it brings him, but maybe he deserves it.
“Finally, it was all too much, and we started to run for the back door. I thought we would have more time. I really did, but it spread fast. Bradley pushed me in front of him—he was screaming at me to get out. And I did. I made it out maybe a handful of seconds before the explosion. But he was still inside.”
“It’s Bradley in your grave?” Leni whispers. “I was visiting Bradley all these months?”
His head bobs slowly. “Yeah. I was a John Doe at the hospital. Somebody picked me up after I stumbled through the woods and finally found the road. I was so out of it, and all bandaged up after they treated me at the hospital, and I didn’t have my ID on me. I heard reports on the news from my bed, and I knew I couldn’t tell anybody who I really was.”
“And what you really did,” Leni whispers with an edge to her voice, like she’s spitting the words out. “Because they would know from the burns that you were there when it happened. But you could’ve pretended it was an accident. You could’ve told them you were dazed and didn’t know what you were doing. Right?” She looks at me for backup, her eyes wild and wide.
“Yeah, that’s true,” I agree. “There were so many things you could’ve done that wouldn’t involve, you know, basically gaslighting me for seven months into thinking my brother was dead when he’s really alive. And do you know what that did to her, too?” I demand, jerking a thumb toward Leni because it’s not easy for me to admit what it did to me. It’s easier to bring her into it and make it more about her. Less embarrassing, too. “And Mom! I guess you saw the message about her being here, being awake now, right? You know about all of that.”
“I do, and I went to see her one night when she was asleep. Thank you for keeping me updated.”
He’s being sincere, and I get where he’s coming from, but something about it makes me burst out laughing. “Listen to you. Acting like I was, like, watering your plants for you while you were on vacation or some shit. You could have told me. You should have told me.”
“I didn’t know what the hell you were going to think or how you would react,” he argues. “For all I knew, you’d be pissed over what I did.”
“Fuck off,” I growl. “That is such bullshit. After everything we’ve been through? You think I would betray you over something like this? You think I wouldn’t help you? I would’ve done everything in my power to keep you?—”
“I didn’t want you to do that!” he snaps before I can finish. “Maybe I didn’t want you to have to, like, harbor a fugitive or whatever you want to call it. Maybe I don’t even want to be here now,” he adds with a growl. “I’m putting you both in danger by being here. I shouldn’t have come.”
“It’s too late for that now,” Leni tells him, but there’s no anger in her voice. Nobody in the world would blame her for being furious, for never forgiving him. I wouldn’t even blame her if she refused to be in the same room or the same apartment. Even if he did save her tonight.
“It’s not too late to get out of here before the two of you have to pay for what I did. I’m not going to stay.”
When he stands, I stand too, shaking my head, laughing at him. “Oh, right? Because it’s that easy? You come here, get cleaned up, and then you go? What if I go to the authorities tomorrow, tell them you’re alive and in town somewhere?”
“What if I leave before you can do that? I could go somewhere else, anywhere else, and you would never know where.”
“If you were going to do that,” I point out, folding my arms, “then why haven’t you done it yet? Why are you still here? I know why.” All it takes is the slightest shift of my gaze, glancing to the side where Leni sits. The way he lowers his gaze tells me I’m right.
His fists hang at his sides, flexing rhythmically. “I’ll do what I have to do. But I will not let you two get caught up. I haven’t spent seven fucking months living like a goddamn hermit to sacrifice you now. I could only ever hurt you.” When he says that, it’s Leni he’s talking to, Leni who he watches like a hawk. He can’t stay away from her. It makes me wonder how deep his feelings are—I didn’t know he had feelings for her in the first place, at least not the kind I have.
“And it would hurt if you ran away now,” she whispers. “Not only me. It would hurt Colt, too, even if he won’t say it out loud.”
“I don’t know,” I mutter, talking to her but glaring at him. “Maybe I wouldn’t give a shit. He didn’t give a shit about what it did to me all these months, did he? Reading my messages, not bothering to say a word back.” I can hardly believe the way it makes me feel when I say the words and remember all the time I spent typing those emails, keeping him updated, hoping like hell something I said would get through to him. Believing, being the only one who did believe, wondering how we were ever going to tell Mom he was gone, since even telling him she was still alive wasn’t enough to get a response.
Now, I’m the one whose fists are clenched. One punch wasn’t enough. I could knock him flat on his back and it wouldn’t be enough. “Yeah, maybe he should go. It was a mistake to have him here.”
At least he looks sorry now, but it doesn’t change anything. I can’t get back all the time I spent hoping and wondering and wishing the rest of the world could understand what I understood.
“I’m asking you to believe me,” he mutters. “Just try to understand. I thought I was doing the right thing. For all of us.”
“I’m not going to thank you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“Then why bother telling us any of this?”
“I only want you to understand why I did what I did. And how sorry I am—really, really sorry,” he whispers to Leni, who only sniffles in response. “I wish I could take it back. I know that sounds empty and stupid, but I do. And maybe that’s why it was important for me to stay away,” he adds with a shrug. “I’m no good. I cause pain. That’s all I’ve ever given you, right?” he asks her.
“Maybe you were just too much of a coward to face up to what you did,” I murmur, because I have never been so pissed off at anyone in my life. And not just pissed off, either—it goes much deeper than that. He betrayed me by not trusting me with the truth. He made a fucking fool out of me. He made my girlfriend think I’m crazy for believing what was true all along. And I’m supposed to understand him?
“Maybe I was,” he snaps, scrubbing a hand over his head. “Maybe I’ve been living in a fucking pit ever since as punishment for that—and so many other things, things I don’t deserve to be forgiven for.”
“Do you really want forgiveness?” she asks while I fight to make sense of the storm raging inside me.
I watch, silent, as he thinks this over. “I never imagined getting it. But now that I’m here… I mean, now that I’m with you, both of you… is it possible? Can you forgive me for what I did?”
I hear the agony in his voice. I see it on his face. I know it’s the right thing to do, forgiving him, and there is definitely a part of me that wants to. It doesn’t matter how I feel about what he did or how long he stayed away. At my core, in the deepest, truest part of me, I’m too happy he’s back to want to keep fighting. At least not tonight. We’ve already been through enough.
And deep down, I’m afraid if I push too hard, he’ll leave for good. I don’t want that. And it would haunt Leni, just like everything that happened tonight is going to haunt her, probably for a while.
It’s too much for her, the way I knew it would be. “I need to go to sleep,” she whispers, shivering, rubbing her arms. “My head is going to explode. I can’t think about this anymore tonight.”
I know what she means, since I feel the same way. The adrenaline rush passed a long time ago, and now I feel empty. I should be overjoyed at having my brother back, but right now I’m numb. “That’s a good idea. Things will look better after we sleep for a little bit.”
When Nix frowns, I add, “You’re staying here. With us. You know how much room we have in the bed.” A quick flash of pain in his eyes makes me feel good. I want him to regret what he did. He deserves much worse than that for using her.
But still, I want him to stay. He’s my brother, and I know who he really is inside. I know how Dad twisted him, but I know he doesn’t need to stay that way.
And if I push him out of my life now, what hope does he have?
“Okay,” he says with a sigh, like he had a choice. Leni leads the way to the bedroom, where she doesn’t bother to flip on the light before stripping down to her underwear and crawling into bed, curling up in a ball in the center. I strip down to my boxer briefs and get in behind her, drawing her close, watching him over her head.
He only hesitates a second before sliding under the duvet, lying on his back rather than facing us, bending an arm under his head and staring up at the ceiling. “Please, don’t leave,” Leni whispers in the dark.
Something tells me even if he was planning to, he won’t now. All because she asked him to stay.
For a long time, we were the ones who had power over her. Somewhere along the way, that shifted, and now she’s the one holding the cards.
The thought stays with me as she starts snoring softly, and after my brother closes his eyes. I’m the only one still awake, caught between wondering what happens next and feeling complete for the first time in forever.