Chapter 24
A brOTHER’S BOND CAN NEVER BE brOKEN
NATE
Mornings after big events always feel wrong to me, they’re too quiet, too honest. Like the world hasn’t put its armor back on yet.
This house is no exception.
It looks like a florist exploded in the middle of the night. White petals are everywhere—on the hardwood like snowdrifts, caught in the grooves of the stairs, crushed into the rug like they tried to hold on and failed. There’s a strange beauty to it, if I’m being generous.
A kind of soft, tragic aftermath.
Last night was joy and lights and music. This morning is everything that’s left when the performance ends.
But that’s not why I’m awake at seven in the morning, wandering through a dying garden someone forgot to clean up.
I’m looking for Jake.
Because the things he said last night didn’t just stick—they sank. They’ve been looping through my head in a slow, relentless drag that feels like trying to swim through cement.
His voice cracking.
The shame in his eyes.
The quiet, desperate way he said he didn’t know what to do anymore.
Hope is a dangerous thing in this house. It’s cost me more than I ever got back. But some part of me—the part that taught Jake how to ollie on a skateboard, the part that used to give him my half of the blanket because he hated sleeping cold—that part hasn’t let go.
I step over a trail of petals leading up the stairs. They stick to the bottom of my foot, soft and damp.
Jake’s door is closed. But still, something feels off.
I knock lightly. “Jake?”
No answer.
I try again, louder this time.
“Jake, you awake?”
Nothing.
A pulse of dread thuds behind my ribs.
Fuck it.
I open the door.
His bed looks like he fought someone in it—covers twisted, pillows thrown. The room’s empty, but the window’s open, curtains shifting in the morning breeze like they’re keeping time with someone’s ragged breath.
And then I see him.
Sitting on the roof outside, silhouette framed by the early light. Shoulders hunched and head bowed slightly. Watching the sunrise like he’s waiting for it to tell him something important. My chest tightens so sharply it feels like a fist around my heart.
He looks young sitting there like that. Somehow, he looks like the kid I swore I’d protect from everything—especially from the man who raised us.
I move to the window.
“Cool if I join you?”
He doesn’t look over but he nods, the tiniest movement.
“Sure.”
The path out the window is pure muscle memory—hand on the frame, right foot on the solid tile, left foot skimming past the one that always shifts. I’ve done this climb more times than I can count. Nights slipping away from our father’s temper, afternoons hiding from Moira’s venom.
And mornings like this they always pull me back to when it was just us up here, on this roof, believing the only place we could breathe was ten feet above the world.
The roof is cool under my palms when I settle next to him, close enough to feel the trembling he probably thinks he’s hiding. Our shoulders almost touch, like they used to, like they remember even when we forget.
Sunrises always hit different than sunsets because sunrises feel like you’re being handed a blank page whether you want it or not.
Jake needs a blank page and so do I.
We sit in silence for a long moment. I can hear him trying to breathe evenly. Trying not to break, trying to pretend he hasn’t already.
“Remember when we used to come up here and throw water balloons at Ollie?” Jake asks, voice so soft it barely makes it to me.
I’d forgotten about that, that’s when the memories start to hit. Childhood summers, secret missions, hours spent talking about everything and nothing. Back when the roof was our hideout, our headquarters, our sanctuary.
Before we knew what real danger was.
“Yeah,” I say. My voice comes out rough. “You had terrible aim.”
“Did not.”
“You hit the neighbour's cat more than Ollie.”
He huffs a laugh—and it’s a sound I’d forgotten about too. Because that’s my brother, the real one.
Not the version Scott shaped.
Not the version I lost.
Just Jake.
“That cat hated me.”
“Well yeah, I wonder why.”
The laughter dies too quickly, though, and the silence that follows is heavier. Full of the things he’s afraid to say. Full of the weight he’s been carrying alone.
“What do I do, Nate?” he whispers.
The protective instinct slams into me so hard I almost sway. He’s my little brother and I would burn the world down to keep him safe.
“You tell me everything,” I say, voice steady even though I feel like I’m balancing on the edge of a knife. “Everything he made you do. Everything he made you hide. Everything he twisted to make you feel like you owed him.”
“Nate…” His voice shakes. “If he finds out—”
That fear—Scott’s fear—sets something dark and ancient simmering under my skin.
I put a hand on Jake’s shoulder, grounding him.
Grounding myself.
“He won’t. Not until we’re ready. And this? None of this is your fault.”
He shakes his head hard, like he can’t believe that. But I look him in the eyes, and I tell him the truth anyway.
“Jake, the only mistake you made was wanting your father to love you.”
And oh, I know that lesson.
Carved it into my bones long before Jake ever got the chance.
He nods, trembling.
Not convinced, but willing to try and that’s enough.
“We’re fixing this,” I say. “Together.”
The sunlight hits him then—soft, golden, gentle. It makes him look a little less broken.
“Start from the beginning.”
And he does.
Word by word.
Wound by wound.
Truth by truth.
And for the first time in years, as the sun climbs higher and the petals below us catch the light, I think—I might actually get my brother back.