Chapter 10
The Wildfire Thorn
Today is going to be a bad day.
I knew that as soon as I woke up.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, but when I did manage to find some, I saw my mother in my dreams. Not the first time and probably won’t be the last either. I usually don’t remember any specifics of dreams like this except her face. She looks like how she always looked: tired but loving, her blonde hair fluttering around her face, her blue eyes looking at each of us with endless patience even though she should’ve lost it a long time ago.
And in the midst of all that, there was a bruise on the side of her head.
She would have a lot of them from what I remember. But she always had excuses for them too. Excuses that no five-year-old would ever doubt, no matter how transparent they seemed.
I did, though.
I always did.
Because I knew the truth. It’s a burden to know it, isn’t it? The one who knows the truth is always the one whose shoulders are the heaviest.
Anyway, I knew right away as soon as I woke up that today was going to be one of those days when I needed to distance myself from everyone.
“What the fuck was all that?” my brother Conrad snaps.
This is not distancing, though.
I look at him from where I’m standing just inside the door to one of the back rooms on the bus. We’re on our way to our next game and this was the only place we could’ve talked. Set up like an office with a tiny desk and a chair, this isn’t a huge space, but it affords privacy. And it’s better than standing in the middle of the parking lot and having words with onlookers, which is what my brother wanted.
If it were up to me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.
Standing on the other side of the desk, he doesn’t give me a chance to reply as he continues, “I cannot believe I’m having this conversation with you: but what’s going on with you? What’s happening? You’re benching players, arguing with them. You’re acting like you’re pissed off at the world, more than usual. Is it because?—”
“Mom would say that,” I say softly, causing him to stop and look at me with a frown.
“What?”
I lean against the door only because my knees are shaking. “She’d say she walked into a door.”
Conrad is watching me carefully. “What are you talking about?”
I look into his eyes. “When he beat her.”
Conrad blinks.
That’s the only reaction he gives me. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t affected. Our oldest brother is the most controlled, disciplined, self-sacrificing man I’ve ever known. He gave up his dreams, his career, his happiness for the sake of us. And he would’ve kept doing it if he hadn’t found the girl of his dreams and if she hadn’t pulled him out of his still life.
He’s the best man I know.
People compare me to him. My own siblings say I’m Conrad 2.0. Good, controlled, quiet, responsible. They can depend on me. They know I’ll show up. They know I’ll get the job done.
But I know the truth, don’t I?
I know I’m nothing like Conrad.
I know I’m not good.
All of this is a way to keep me leashed. It’s a way to keep them safe from me.
It’s a way that I don’t become the man who birthed us.
“You…” he begins but trails off. “When he beat her.”
“I know,” I tell him.
His jaw clenches for a second. “What do you know?”
I swallow, pressing my spine against the door, looking for something in the room that I can use to ground myself. Because the world is slowly disappearing. And then I remember.
Her touch.
From only a few minutes ago.
It was soft, feathery at first and then became tight and hot. Strong. Stronger than I could’ve guessed for a girl so tiny.
I use that.
I use the memory of her touch in the middle of all the chaos and take a deep breath. “That on top of being an alcoholic with anger issues and a fucking manwhore who fucked around on Mom, Dad was also abusive. He hit her. Smacked her around when anger got too much.”
“You—”
“And I know you know that. Of course you know that. You’ve seen it. You grew up with it more than any of us did. Which is why I also know that you’ve kept it from us.”
His fists are clenched and that tight control that’s his forte is straining at the edges. I can see he’s shocked that I knew. But also angry that there was something to know in the first place. And then his protective instinct kicks in like always and he asks, “Does anyone else?—”
“No.” Then, “Not beside you and me. And more recently Ledger.”
Ledger had to be told because of his own anger issues.
Conrad’s still cautious. “So Callie doesn’t know?”
“Absolutely not,” I assure him.
I’d die before I’d let Callie find out. Even though she’s married now—to the guy we all hated once upon a time, by the way—with a baby girl and another on the way, she’s still our baby sister. And nothing touches her. Least of all our piece of shit father who left as soon as she was born, quoting her birth to be the reason for his abandonment.
“And Shepard?”
I think of how small her hand looked on my heavily breathing chest only minutes before and take another deep breath at my twin brother’s mention. “No.”
Not that it gives Conrad any relief because he asks in the same tight voice, “How do you know?”
Sometimes I forget that I’m one of his brothers. That he cares about me as well. Not because he hasn’t shown it over the years but because it’s hard for me to imagine, after all that I am and all that’s inside of me, that he’d find me worthy of his care.
But then again, he doesn’t know the truth about me, does he?
“He told me,” I answer him.
“Dad told you,” he asks in a flat voice, but I know the question is there.
“Yeah,” I say, thinking about her sitting out there, by the window, her eyes on the passing scenery like she wants to be out there rather than cooped up in a bus with a bunch of Neanderthals who can’t stop salivating over her. “I think I was about five. I found him crying in the backyard. He said he’d done something bad. And when I asked what, he told me. He said he’d never done this before and that he wouldn’t, after this.”
I’m fisting and unfisting my fingers.
I’m trying to keep her face in my mind. Her unique metallic gray eyes; her pouty lips; the way she looked when she caught the snowflakes in her hands last night.
“Fucking liar,” Conrad mutters.
“What?”
Conrad looks at me a beat as if he doesn’t know if he should say it. But then decides to and shares, “Wasn’t the first time.”
I go still.
“He got his start long before that.”
He says more, my brother. I can see his mouth moving, but I can’t hear him. And in a few seconds, I know that I won’t be able to see him either. He’ll disappear right alongside the world that’s already getting blurry by the second.
I’m trying to imagine the feel of her hand on my body. I’m trying to imagine her laughter, her voice. I’m trying to imagine the way she looked when I made her come, wings flanking her, black hair sprawled over the pillow, all flushed and hot, dewy with sweat, so beautiful that if my heart wasn’t buried under six feet of ice, it would’ve broken at the sheer beauty of her.
I’m trying to fucking imagine.
But nothing is helping me slow down the race of my heartbeats. The rush of my blood.
“I am like him.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I think the world has gone quiet. There’s a pin drop silence both on the outside of my body and on the inside.
And I can breathe.
I can see.
Aside from the obvious advantages, I don’t know why I said that. What made me blurt out the biggest secret of my life. The secret I wanted to take to my grave.
Maybe it’s the fact that it’s suddenly gotten harder now.
Much, much harder to keep it.
To carry this secret around.
Not from the world, no. The world can go fuck itself.
From her.
After last night.
After how she looked at me with her gemstone eyes. Like I’m her hero. Like even though I have something bad in me, I still have something good too. I’m worthy of redemption.
Of her forgiveness.
Sometimes I think that pretending to be my twin brother and deceiving her were the least of my crimes. Because this is a bigger deception, playing this role of a good guy.
In reality, I’m an unhinged, unstable grenade who couldn’t even look at her without going into a mad panic. The feeling of hopelessness and helplessness that used to overcome me whenever Mom used to make excuses for her bruises.
In reality, I’m an emotionally paralyzed man who couldn’t even take her joke. She was joking about the door, wasn’t she? I could see that. I could see she was trying to put me at ease, but like a moron, I couldn’t take it.
I didn’t even ask her if she was okay.
I didn’t even have the decency to make sure she was okay.
So maybe I blurted the truth out because I had to. I had no other choice. Because if I can’t tell her—I’m not going to fucking scare her; she’s already been plenty traumatized by me—then maybe I could tell someone else.
And fuck, it’s relieving.
It’s a fucking relief. The soothing feeling under my skin is relief, isn’t it?
Although I have no right to feel it because I confessed my crime to the last person I should have: my big brother. Who’s had to take all our shit for so long so he doesn’t need mine.
Who also doesn’t believe me. “You’re like who?”
I know he heard me, and he understood me. But he’s confirming, so I give him what he wants. “Dad.”
Again, he chooses to watch me impassively for a few seconds. “Sit.”
“I’m not?—”
“Sit the fuck down.”
My brother doesn’t know the danger he is in. He truly does not or he wouldn’t have asked me to move from my spot. I had deliberately kept myself glued to it, my feet firmly rooted on the floor and my back firmly plastered on the wooden door.
Because I know if I moved, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself or pull myself back from the things I don’t want to do. It’s like you’re afraid of going too fast so you stand still.
But I do it.
I very carefully place one foot in front of the other as if I’m carrying explosives in the pit of my stomach and take a seat.
Conrad does the same.
“Explain to me how you’re like him.”
I’ve never done this before.
Never imagined doing this.
I don’t know how to start. What to say. So I pick the most obvious one, to me at least. “I get angry.”
A few moments of silence before, “The whole world gets angry.”
“I’m a little different than the world.”
“In what way?”
“In the way that I want to burn it down.”
He moves his jaw back and forth. “Are you saying… that you’re like Ledger?”
Ledger, our youngest brother, has issues with anger. He’s always had issues with it. Growing up, he’d get into fights at school, at the playground. He’d be constantly suspended, threatened to be expelled. It was always either me or Conrad who had to go and clean up his mess.
Every time I was called in for the duty, I wanted to tell him. I wanted to share that I am like him. That maybe we could deal with it together; I could teach him like I’d taught myself. But something always held me back.
Something like the fact that we weren’t—aren’t—the same.
I’m worse than him.
So I did what I could. Without blurting my secret out. Even last season when he was suspended from the games, I tried to reach out to him, explain to him how important it is that he gets help. We even forced him into going to anger management classes, which drove a wedge between us, but still.
“No,” I tell Conrad. “I’m not like him.”
“I don’t?—”
“I’m worse than him,” I state.
“You’re worse.”
“Yes, the guy he punched last season, for which he got benched,” I explain, my eyes locked with my brother’s. “I would’ve put him in a coma.”
I would have.
It was a guy from a rival team and Ledger had punched him during a live game because he was spewing bullshit about Ledger and the fact that he comes from soccer royalty, shocking everyone and earning him severe displeasure from the team and higher-ups on the board.
I was one of them, the people who were displeased.
Not because I am this good guy who doesn’t believe in violence—I absolutely believe in it; I just don’t give in to it—but because I knew how it must have felt and I wish I were there to help him through it.
So the displeasure was for myself.
Not for my younger brother.
“All this time… I…” He shakes his head. “You …”
Conrad is one of those men who measures his words and speaks only when there’s an absolute need to. In this way, yes, we are alike. Although I guess his inclination for keeping quiet is natural while mine is fabricated to keep me under leash, like everything else in my life.
In any case, he may be quiet, but I’ve never seen him speechless.
It doesn’t feel good that I’m responsible for it.
“I never saw it,” he says simply.
“No one did,” I begin. “Because I kept a lid on it. I kept a very tight fucking lid on my anger, my issues.” Then, “And I never told anyone about them because I didn’t want to burden anyone. You, specifically. We already had a father who was a monster, who’d beat his wife. Who’d beat his son.” Conrad goes still. “Yeah, I saw him hit you one time, when you were protecting Mom. It made me so angry. So fucking angry and I wanted to…” I grit my teeth. “I wanted to do something… bad. I wanted to hit him back even though I was just a kid. I wanted to hit and smack and fucking punch everything and everyone I could find. So I did the opposite. I always did the opposite. I pushed it down and focused elsewhere. I did chores. I did homework. I followed all the rules, every rule, all the time. I ran all the errands. I played soccer. I ran track. I was in the swim club. I was in the math club, science club, all the fucking clubs. I did everything I could to push my anger down because I did not want to be like him. I didn’t want to do the things he did.
“And then there was Ledger, his anger, his reckless behavior. So we already had two people in our family who were similar on top of every other thing that went wrong with us. Dad’s leaving, Mom’s sickness. You did everything you could for us. You left your career, your dreams, the girl you loved, to deal with us. I didn’t want to be one of the things you had to deal with as well.”
Yeah, there was a girl he loved.
Back when he was in high school. I never liked her, and she never made him happy; I could see that. But I wanted him to come to that conclusion by himself rather than fucking fate taking that choice away from him and causing them to break up because of Mom’s illness and his increased responsibilities.
“So I was taking care of it myself,” I finish.
And I was.
I am.
I’ve read books. I’ve done research. That’s how I know what a grounding object is. I know all the breathing exercises and tips to recognizing your triggers. Staying away from those triggers. Distancing yourself from them.
Which is why again, today is not a good day.
Besides I didn’t think I deserved any help. Not after what I am.
“Do you call that taking care of it?” Conrad asks after a while. “What happened out there?”
I stiffen in my seat. “That was different.”
He watches me with shrewd eyes. “Are you saying that you didn’t want to beat the shit out of your twin brother?” Then, “Because I’ve seen you with him. I know he tests your patience. He tests everybody’s patience. It was nothing different. But somehow you were. Somehow I’ve never seen you this close to breaking.”
My fists clench. “He’s not doing it right.”
“Doing what right?”
“Taking care of her.”
It’s true, isn’t it?
What the fuck was he doing last night when she needed his help? Why the fuck was he flirting with those girls when he should’ve been there for her? Why the fuck was he flirting in the first place when he has a fucking fiancée?
How in the world can he look at someone else when he has her to look at?
How in the fucking world does he look away from her in the first place?
How the fuck is he engaged to her in the first place?
When I asked him to take care of her, I didn’t mean fucking marry her. I didn’t mean that he fucking make her his wife.
His…
I tighten my fists. Just the thought makes me want to get up, grab her from him, and fucking run away somewhere. I wouldn’t even waste time beating him up as long as I have her with me.
As long as I get to protect her.
Cherish her, fucking worship her like he should be doing right now.
Rather than letting her almost get attacked by other men and bump her fucking head on the door.
I mean, fucking Christ.
He should be beside her, at all times.
He should be holding her hand, steering her away from danger. He should be laying out fucking flowers and stars and clouds in her path. Actually, no, he should be carrying her everywhere she goes because there’s a chance she might slip on a cloud or get her heel caught up in the petals of a flower.
“So then”—Conrad shifts in the chair—“are you saying that you know how to take care of her?”
“No,” I say instantly.
Because I can’t give her what she wants from me: love. Even if I set aside the fact that I have this giant fucking beast inside of me that demands my absolute control every second of every day, I wouldn’t even know how to love her.
I never learned.
In fact, I’ve spent my entire life unlearning any emotions, burying them deep inside of me. Besides, she said that I didn’t know how to care for her the right way and she’s right. Even if she’s forgotten her anger at me, I haven’t. I remember.
“You know they’re engaged, don’t you? You know that means they’re going to get married.” Then, leaning forward, “You know that I told you that you should get away. Do you remember that?”
I do.
In one of my weakest moments, I confessed my feelings to Conrad. He himself was going through a crisis of his own—relating to Wyn, his now fiancée—and I ended up telling him about my crisis to make him feel better. He told me to get away from them. To get away from all the misery that was in store for me.
Of course I didn’t.
I couldn’t have, now that I think about it.
Even if there was a slightest chance to see her, to be near her, I would’ve taken it.
“She loves me,” I tell him.
“What?” he bites out.
“I’m fixing it.”
“You’re fixing it.”
“Yes.”
He shifts in his seat again. “Explain to me one more time what you mean by that.”
“It means”—I take a deep breath—“she’ll marry Shepard. Because Shepard is the right guy for her. They both suit each other.”
You’d think that after saying this same set of words so many times, I’d be more used to it, and it wouldn’t taste bitter. You’d think that days after that fucking engagement, I wouldn’t want to simultaneously obliterate my twin and vomit my guts out at the thought of them tied together for the rest of their lives.
But I do.
These words taste bitter.
In fact, after days of watching them together, days of watching her wear his ring, they taste like poison now.
Poison that burns, that gives third degree burns.
The only thing, the only fucking thing, that gives me relief right now, as hollow as it might be, is the fact that I have that ring in my pocket. It’s sitting heavy and hot, but at least it’s not on her finger.
“And what of the little fact that she loves you?”
I thrust my hand down my pocket and fist the ring. “As I just said, I’m fixing it. I’m helping her move on.”
“From you.”
I press my thumb against the diamond. “Yes.”
“You do know how insane that sounds, don’t you?”
I realize that.
To an outsider, it does sound insane. To an outsider, it looks like I’m stealing my twin brother’s bride-to-be. But the world doesn’t know what we have.
The world doesn’t know what this is all about.
I’m trying to make her happy. I’m trying to give her what she wants—love—the only way I can. By getting her to move on from me and marry the man who loves her.
When she sees that I’m not the man she thinks I am; when she realizes the things she wants from me, vulnerability, intimacy, emotions are not something I’m capable of giving, she’ll lose interest.
She’ll move on.
It’ll hurt, but she’ll be better for it in the long run.
But I’d be lying if I said I’m doing this solely for selfless reasons, no. I’m also doing this for me. I’m doing this because while she’s falling out of love with a man like me, I could get to be with a girl like her.
Even if for a little while.
Because I may not be her destiny, but she is mine.
Taking a deep breath, I look at my brother to find him steadily watching me. “Are you”—I swallow, my chest tight—“disappointed?”
“With what?”
“With the fact that I’m like the man we hate the most.”
Conrad takes his time answering the question and in the seconds that pass, I regret asking it. I regret telling him the truth about me. No matter how strangely relieved I feel at having shared the burden, it still wasn’t a very good idea.
“We do hate him the most,” he says finally. “He was a deadbeat dad. He fucked around on Mom; he beat her, abused her. He left us when we needed him the most, when Callie needed him the most and she didn’t even know it. So yeah, he deserves to be hated. But you’re not like him.”