Chapter 8 Brody
brODY
I’m a bad person. A bad, terrible, awful human being.
The whole hour-and-a-half drive home is torture. Not because of the traffic, or the fact that I’m exhausted, or because my gas tank is hovering closer to empty than I’d like.
But because of what I did. Because of how I reacted. Because the image of Lincoln Beckett—cornered, flushed, trembling under my hold—keeps replaying in my mind until my grip on the steering wheel goes numb.
I don’t know what possessed me. Honestly, I don’t know where that version of myself even came from.
That wasn’t usual behavior for me. I’m really not like that.
I’m not violent, I don’t manhandle people, and I certainly don’t hold them down, make them strip, and degrade them in the off chance they might get off on it. That’s not my thing.
Or at least, I didn’t think it was. But the second I touched him, the moment I felt him react like that, something primal and ugly and hungry lit up inside me. A fuse I didn’t know existed sparked and burned straight down a line I never intended on crossing.
I shift in my seat, grimacing, once again cursing the rub of denim over my bare dick. Thank you, Lincoln Beckett, for your very creative hazing traditions.
Maybe there’s a chance the pranks will quiet down now that I’ve put Beckett in his place? I run a hand over my face, exhaling hard.
I can’t even think that way.
I need to apologize. No way around it. He crossed lines with me, sure. But what I did back there was… not okay.
I’ll talk to him when I get back. After fall break.
Definitely before I hand him the bill for the tires. Because holy hell—almost five hundred dollars when you add the extra fees they charge for someone to come out and change two tires in a parking lot, plus the cost of two brand new tires to replace the ones that were both definitely slashed.
I should have just filed a report to get my revenge, not… whatever I just did.
Should I apologize before or after demanding compensation?
Probably before. Definitely before. Maybe. I don’t know.
What if he won't talk to me about it? What if I actually made the whole thing worse and he punishes me for showing his weakness to that extent, because I’m sure that’s how he sees it.
I really don’t know what I think of it all, other than I’m twisted up about it.
By the time I roll into my mom’s driveway, it’s dark and quiet. The wind swishes leaves all over the un-raked yard and rattles the fence someone left open. The house sits quiet and a little lopsided in the glow of the porch light, exactly the same and somehow worse than I left it.
The place needs help. A lot of it. The siding I patched over the summer is peeling again. The porch railing’s loose. A few shingles are missing from the roofline.
I make a list in my head, even though I don’t have the time, money, or bandwidth to actually accomplish half of it this weekend. Especially now that I’m a day late and five hundred dollars short.
Inside, the house smells like the lemon cleaner Mom uses at work and the vanilla plug-ins she uses to cover the musty smell of old carpet. The house is falling apart, but Mom does her best with what she has, and it’s always clean and homey inside.
The kitchen shows evidence of a meal cooked that no one was around to enjoy. There’s a plate wrapped in foil waiting in the fridge with a note stuck to the top that Mom got tired and will see me in the morning. My chest tightens.
I shove the plate in the microwave thankfully, not having eaten since breakfast this morning. I’d originally planned to grab something on the road, but by the time I left campus, I was late, several hundred dollars poorer, and too jittery about what I’d done to eat anything.
I shovel Mom’s tuna noodle casserole in my mouth, listening to the silence settle around me. Mom is sleeping. Davis probably is too. As tired as I am, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to sleep anytime soon. I can’t get my brain to stop working overtime. And I want to see Davis with my own two eyes.
I clean up my plate and wash the few dishes in the sink while I’m at it before padding quietly down the hall. I pause when I get to Davis’ door, thinking I heard something.
I knock softly and a muffled sound answers me.
I push the door open a sliver and peek inside, seeing Davis awake.
Sort of. He looks like he might be only half conscious, or like he’s close to falling asleep.
He’s sweaty and his eyes are sunken in. He’s lost weight since I last saw him, and he didn’t have much to lose as it was.
He’s lying on his side, controller in hand, TV glow flickering across a face that looks years older than me instead of a mere eighteen months.
“Hey,” he rasps, eyes barely tracking me.
“Hey.” I toe off my shoes and ease myself onto the bed beside him. The mattress dips under my weight. He hands me the second controller without looking away from the screen.
We play silently. It feels like being twelve again. Except this time, neither of us is really putting forth any effort to win or taunting the other.
After a long while, he mumbles, “How’s school? That fancy place treating you alright?”
“Good,” I say automatically. Then, quieter, “Mostly.”
His eyes flick towards me, dull and unfocused, but still edged with the concern of a caring older sibling. If nothing else, at least I can say I saw proof that my brother is still in there somewhere. “Mostly?”
I let out a breath that sinks deep in my chest. “Yeah. Mostly.”
Davis raises an eyebrow and gives me a look that reminds me of our dad. It’s heavy-lidded and exhausted but still present enough to be big-brotherly. “What happened?”
I scrub a hand over my face. I really, really shouldn’t say this out loud. Not to him. Not to anyone. But I’m tired and confused and on edge in a way that weeks of torment, guilt, two slashed tires, and whatever the hell happened in that stairwell all mix into one big fuck it.
“I, uh… might’ve accidentally sexually assaulted my team captain who hates me.”
Davis’ eyes sharpen for the first time all night. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Not like that,” I hiss. Then wince. “Okay. Kind of like that. But not… like that.”
He turns fully towards me, brows lifting. “Brody.”
I flop back against the headboard with a groan.
“He hates me. Like, actually, really hates me. For no good reason other than I beat him once when we were in high school and maybe, possibly felt him get hard. I never told anyone. But he’s been such a dick to me and there’s all this bullshit with Pierce Jamison, and I just—snapped.
I shoved him and he shoved me and then…” I cover my face with my hands.
“I don’t even know. It escalated. I held him against a wall, and said some things.
And then he… reacted. And I reacted to him reacting, and now my brain is a fucking pretzel. ”
Davis stares. Then, unexpectedly, he huffs a laugh. A small, broken one, but real. “Jesus Christ. So, what exactly did you do to him? Because my brain isn’t exactly firing on all cylinders and I’m pretty sure this is the most I’ve tried to process since before rehab.”
I sigh. “I… sort of… um… Overpowered him and said some weird, humiliating type stuff about him being hard. And then I made him come. But in a mean way.”
There’s a long beat of silence where I stare at the ceiling and pretend I can rewind time and never open my mouth. Or maybe never do that to Beckett in the first place? But if I’m being honest with myself I didn’t hate it, but only because he seemed to like it.
He arches a brow. “You need a drink?”
“Not funny.”
“Too soon?”
“Fuck you, Davis.”
My brother chuckles, which, considering I haven’t heard him talk this much or laugh at all in a very long time, means that maybe there’s a silver lining to this awkwardness.
“So, he liked it?”
My face burns. “I… don’t know. Maybe. Yes? I mean, he came. But does that really mean anything? And he also might have been crying? I don’t know. No? Fuck, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
“Probably not,” he says, grimacing, “but here we are.” He nudges my shoulder with the controller. “Have you checked on the guy?”
“What?”
“You know, if you think he liked it but you’re feeling guilty, maybe you should call him or send him a text or something. Check in on him.”
I bark out a humorless laugh. “What would I even say? ‘Hey man, sorry I humiliated you into coming all over yourself’?”
Davis snorts. “Why not?”
“Well for one, I don’t have his number,” I say. “And I don’t think he’d appreciate me asking anyone else for it. He’s the worst kind of closet case.”
He smirks faintly, the closest thing to his old self I’ve seen since he got out of the hospital. “Fine. But Brody? Guys like that don’t just… take it like that. I’m sure if he hated it, he would’ve swung. Hard.”
I huff out a heavy breath. “Maybe.”
The knot in my stomach doesn’t loosen. Not even a little.
“Did I hear you mention Pierce Jamison?”
“Yeah. I think his older brother Levi was in your grade. Pierce is a year under me.”
Davis nods unhappily. “I hated that guy. He’s giving you shit?”
I sigh. “Just more of the same crap from grade school. Leaving empty cans around, calling me Miller Time, making stupid jokes. Annoying, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“That’s bullshit,” he mutters, voice slurring around the edges with exhaustion. He goes quiet again. Too quiet. I wish I hadn’t said anything.
Davis struggled with the bullying a lot more than I did. Whereas I was able to find a way and laugh things off to redirect the attention, Davis sank into it. He was sensitive and would lash out. He’s always felt things so much bigger than I did.
His hands are shaking.
“You okay?” I ask gently.
He flinches like I slapped him. “I wish everybody would stop asking me that.” He sounds sharp, but the strength behind it is threadbare.