CHAPTER FIFTY
Kye
AbrUTAL WIND CUT THROUGH MY LEATHER JACKET, CHILLING me to the bone. But it had nothing on the words I could make out through the door.
“Rex Blackwood is my dad. Or he was. Kye’s my half-brother. Should’ve been, anyway. Now, he’s nothing to me. And he’s going to feel that pain. The same way I did. How it guts you when you lose everything you thought you had.”
Evan. The scared and furious-at-the-world eighteen-year-old who had shown up at my gym, ready to tag the shit out of it. But he’d turned his life around. Or so I’d thought.
Evan. Who I’d spent countless hours mentoring, helping him pull his life together so he could finish high school and take community college classes.
Evan. The boy who’d become a man on my watch. Who I’d apparently failed in the worst ways imaginable.
I moved before I could consider the wisdom of it, hauling the flimsy door open—the same door Rex and Renee had slammed more times than I could count in fits of rage.
Times when Rex would take off for months on end and leave me with Renee’s vitriol and slaps.
Times—I now knew—that he was with an entirely different family.
I slid inside the house, the pain eating me up inside.
Renee had a gash on the side of her head that told me she’d been hit with something. Hope brimmed in her dull amber eyes for a moment, then disappeared when no police came in after me.
My gaze hit Fallon, and my knees wanted to give way. Zip ties cut into her wrists and ankles, and her face was unnaturally pale, but she was still breathing. Still here. I’d make sure that remained true.
She mouthed the words, I’m okay. I love you.
My throat twisted viciously. Bound to a chair, fighting for her life, and she was still trying to take care of me.
“I guess he can listen,” Evan growled as he pointed his knife at Fallon, knowing she was the target I cared about the most. But he was standing equidistant from the two women. Likely making sure I didn’t have an unobstructed path to either of them.
I did the mental math to see if I could tackle Evan before he could make it to Renee or Fallon.
“Don’t even think about it.” Evan pulled a gun holstered at his hip. He leveled it at Fallon, moving the knife to point at Renee. “You make a single move I don’t like and I’ll shoot them both and then you.”
I took in Evan, the boy I felt I’d known forever, who was nothing but a stranger now. “You’re my brother?” I whispered.
Evan jerked his head in a staccato nod.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve wanted to know. I would’ve—”
“You’d want to know that Rex Blackwood’s DNA runs through my veins?” Evan snarled. “The man you hate more than any other human being walking this Earth? Even more than her?” Evan thrust the knife forward, making Renee squeal in terror. The sound only made Evan laugh.
“This isn’t you, Evan.” I tried to keep my voice even and calm, anything that might have a prayer of defusing the situation and buying time until Trace could get here with reinforcements.
“You don’t know me,” Evan barked. “You don’t know what I’ve lived through.
I had a mom who was only around when she was too high to get off the couch.
And a dad who only came to see me when this bitch kicked his ass out.
Even then, it was just to smack me around.
Until you got his pathetic ass thrown in jail, and he was gone altogether. ”
“I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry. Neither of us deserved that.”
“I didn’t deserve that,” Evan bellowed. “Me. I was innocent. I thought you were, too. But you’re not.
You’re selfish and greedy. Just like our dad.
Just like this bitch. If she would’ve just OD’d, none of this would’ve happened.
If she was dead, you would’ve lived with me. You would’ve protected me from him.”
“I would’ve tried, Evan. I promise you, I would’ve tried,” I rasped.
“Don’t!” He scratched the side of his skull with the gun. “Don’t mess with my head. Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying—”
“Stop it!” Evan moved so fast, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. He leveled the gun at Renee’s head and pulled the trigger.
A crack lit the air, and the force of the bullet tipped her chair over and sent it crashing to the floor.
Fallon let out a strangled noise, and Evan’s gun snapped in her direction.
“Don’t. Please, don’t,” I begged. “I’ll do anything. Hurt me. Not her. She doesn’t deserve this. All Fallon does is try to help kids like us. She’s a good person. The best.”
“Stop it, Kyler,” Fallon begged. “Stop.”
I held up both hands, slowly walking toward Evan. “Take me. My life is yours if you’ll just let her go. Please.”
Something in Evan’s eyes wavered, and I thought maybe I could get through to him.
Then, all at once, officers wearing tactical gear crashed through the front and side doors. “This is the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department. Lower your weapon.”
I recognized Gabriel’s voice, the calm command of it, but my gaze was locked on Evan. Panic lit his eyes, and the gun shifted. I knew then that the only thing he wanted was to hurt me. But not in the way I hoped.
I launched into motion. Not at Evan but for Fallon. Because it was always her. My center of gravity. My air. My everything.
I dove, praying I’d reach her in time. Halfway there, a blinding, burning pain pierced my chest. It felt as if someone had driven a hot poker straight through it. But it barely registered.
The only thing on my mind was Fallon. As the darkness closed in, she was all around me. Her scent, the feel of her, her love. As it pulled me under, I knew one thing: My life was truly lived because I loved her.