53. Off leash – Seven
53
OFF LEASH
SEVEN
“W hat do you mean you fucked up?”
The blood in my veins turns to fucking battery acid, corrosive and leaking so much poison into my bloodstream that I can taste metal on my tongue.
I shake him again, trying to rattle him back to the present moment when he looks like he’s a million miles from here.
“Atticus, what the fuck did you do!?”
He shrugs hard to get out of my grip, whirling to kick the already broken bust of Aristotle into the wall.
“ Fuck ,” he hisses, gripping either side of his head like he wants to rip his hair out, knocking the barrel of his gun into his temple. “I thought she was a mole, man.”
I gape at him openly. “What?”
“It didn’t make sense,” he rushes to say, pacing three steps away and back again. “It didn’t make fucking sense that we just found her, and she was perfect for the role of Ambrose’s daughter, and she had the right history and no real ties to anyone, save for one asshole ex-boyfriend and…and then the text message and I just?—”
“You’re not making sense,” I growl, trying to find the end to the fuse that set him off because my own is growing shorter by the second. “Slow the fuck down.”
He gestures wildly at me, his eyes wide like I haven’t seen them in years. “The text message,” he snaps. “She got this fucking text from ‘Chris’ and it just said, ‘Did you get in?’ Did you get in? Just that, and I knew she’d been deleting messages, and I thought maybe Chris wasn’t Chris, you know?”
No, I fucking don’t.
“And then?—”
“Atticus, stop talking .”
“No, you don’t get it. I was wrong, man. Fuck, I got it all wrong and?—”
“You think?” I bellow, and mercifully for us both, he shuts the hell up.
Why couldn’t he have waited to have a paranoid freak-out until we got home?
Fuck.
I force a slow inhale, trying to remember how Ro looked before she ran off. I didn’t see any wounds, did I? I don’t want to accuse Atticus of something he didn’t do, because if he did…
I would protect my brother from any enemy, but that doesn’t mean I won’t kick his fucking ass if he deserves it.
Her neck, I remember. There was something on her neck. A mark. A bruise?
I level Atticus with a venomous stare, waiting for him to see it. To see me . And to understand that I am not fucking around.
“I’m only going to ask you this once. Did you hurt her?”
His lips part, and there’s a knot between his brows that tells me he’s disgusted by my question, but then why the hell isn’t he answering it? Dread sinks in my gut like an anvil.
“Brother, I told myself I’d kill any man who tried to hurt that woman.” I gesture out the door, my chest getting hot, my skin itchy. “Don’t fucking put me in this position.”
“No, man.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t hurt her, but I was…rough. Rougher than I needed to be.”
So help me…
“ How rough?”
“I said I didn’t fucking hurt her, Sev. Jesus, do you really think I would?”
Right now, I’m really not sure, and I hate that I’m not.
I wave to the offensive weapon still gripped tightly in his hand. “What about that? Please fucking tell me you did not pull that on her.”
He adjusts his grip on it and lifts his chin. “I did what I had to, to get the answers I need?—”
I punch him so hard in the face that blood splatters over his carpet as he staggers sideways and falls to a knee. I have him disarmed in the next instant, but I can’t keep the gun. I can’t be trusted with a weapon right now. Not when my own fucking brother is the cause of the rage burning in my blood.
“Fuck!” I shout, chucking the gun into his music room and kicking the door shut after it, flexing and clenching my hands to get the feeling back to my extremities.
It’s Atticus.
It’s Atticus.
I shudder.
“ Why , man?” I whisper-shout because I don’t trust myself not to scream, and I don’t want Ro to be any more afraid than she might be already.
“I was trying to protect us!”
I give him a sarcastic, slow clap that has the intended effect. “Well, good fucking job, Atty.”
I lift my arms, gesturing to the wonderful ambiance in this room. “Look how much safer we are. I feel safe. Do you feel safe?”
He shouldn’t.
“You don’t get it.”
No. I don’t .
I hope she held her own. I hope she told the fucker exactly where to go and how to get there. Did he think at all before he jumped to a thousand conclusions and pulled the gun from the safe in his office?
“ Christ man, she saved Eli! Did you forget that? She fucking…”
I trail off, hating the sick feeling in my stomach, unable to say another word, or something might come out that I can’t take back.
Atticus spits bloody saliva onto the carpet, reaching into his mouth to pull out a tooth.
Guilt and satisfaction face off in my chest, and I shove down the former. He’s lucky I only hit him once. Depending on what he says next, I’m not writing off the possibility of knocking out a couple more of his perfect teeth.
No one gets to hurt Ro. And no one gets to scare her. Least of all my fucking brother.
I hope he sees the line I am drawing in the sand here because if he ever crosses it again, I don’t know what I’ll do.
“You don’t have to tell me how badly I fucked up,” he says. “I know, okay? I know. ”
“A lot of good that does us now.”
It doesn’t fucking matter now. What’s done is done. There’s no taking it back.
What if Ro leaves because of this? What if she never comes back? My guts twist and my chest hollows. I wanted her to stay from that morning she bared her soul to me at the shed, and now I just want her.
But what if she doesn’t want us anymore after this?
“She said yes.”
“ What? ” I snap.
He looks up, and I feel no sympathy when I find the guilt and sorrow in his broken expression.
“She said yes to helping us.”
“Of course she said yes. She was always going to say yes, you fucking idiot.”
He drops his head in a nod. “And after she agreed, we…”
I find her panties on the floor again, and I think I can fucking guess.
“So let me get this straight. You fucked her…and then you threatened her. Is that right?”
When he doesn’t answer me, I see red, and my breaths come in hot pants.
“Seven…”
“Don’t you fucking come near me, Atticus!”
I corner myself into the wall, bending over my knees to try to lower my heart rate before I fucking kill him.
“I let her in, Sev. I didn’t even realize it, but I did. I just… fuck, and then this morning, when I saw the message, I thought…”
“Not everyone is out to get us, Atticus!” I growl at him, lifting my head. “Not everyone that isn’t us is bad. You fucking get that, right?”
We were all fucked up after Ambrose showed us where trust could get you, but that didn’t mean we could never trust anyone again. And Ro? She’s perfect. She’s fucking perfect for us.
Why can’t he see that?
He nods to himself, the spot on his lower left jaw already swelling and turning red.
My stomach turns.
“I can understand not fully trusting her,” I grit out. “But don’t you trust us? Don’t you trust our judgment?”
“Of course I do.”
“But you just proved that you don’t.”
His jaw flexes. “I’m sorry, Sev. You know I?—”
“It’s not me you owe an apology to.”
He sags, roughly shoving his hair from his face. “She won’t want it.”
“Do you fucking blame her?”
He’s silent for a minute and I’m able to collect the still seething parts of myself and push them back into the black box just beneath my rib cage.
Atticus’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “I like her, Sev.”
I laugh. Actually laugh. “That’s fucking rich.”
His cheekbones flare. “I’m serious.”
“You might like her, Atty, but you don’t care about her. If you did, you never would have pulled that weapon on her.”
He has nothing to say to that and halle- fucking- lujah because if he tried to rationalize it, I might’ve had to open that box back up and knock out another few teeth.
“I know it scares you,” I push the words out, trying to listen to the tiny part of my mind that’ll always be in his corner no matter what, even when it’s being drowned out by the full stadium of hell beasts feral with the urge to protect their queen. “That she might… fit here, with us. It would mean things change. It would mean you have to change. But she’s already changing Eli, and it’s a damn good thing for him. She’s changing me, and I think I’m pretty fantastic as I am.”
He lets out a short, hollow laugh.
“You don’t like change, and I know that,” I add. “But not all change is bad.”
He nods like he understands, but I’m not sure he does.
“ I like her,” I tell him. “I more than like her, man. That girl belongs here. She belongs with us. And if you ruined that…”
“I can fix this.”
I give him a look that says he’s done enough.
“ I can ,” he presses.
“There’s no way she’s going to help us anymore if that’s what you mean,” I scoff. “I’d be surprised if she isn’t already packing her damn bags to leave.”
And fuck if it doesn’t feel like she’s ripping my guts out to take with her.
Atticus shakes his head and gets unsteadily to his feet. “No. It’s not about that. This is my mistake, I won’t let it mess shit up for Eli, or you. I can fix it. I can make this right.”
His expression hardens when I say nothing. He might feel confident in his ability to do that, but I sure as hell don’t.
“I promise you, I’ll fix it.”
I sigh, already turning to leave. I’m done in this room. I’m done hearing him make promises he has no way of knowing he can keep.
“For your sake, Atty, I really hope you can.”
Because I don’t want to live with the alternative.