30. Accumulation
Accumulation
Sara
I freeze at Tom’s voice. My lips are pressed to Finn’s. My whole body is pressed against Finn’s. Oh, fuck.
“Tom, we can discuss this later.” Dante rises and steps away from me. Coldness fills in the space he left behind. His voice is more solid than I feel at the moment. Tom sees me. With them.
Oh, fuck!
That unlocks me. But when I try to climb off Finn’s lap, he holds me against him. I glare at him but he’s not focused on me. I turn so I can see what’s happening.
“That’s my sister!” Tom gestures to me. His face is almost as red as his hair. He keeps coming closer.
My throat chokes off any words that want to get out. Feelings of shame and guilt collide with the anger at what Tom did to his friends and to me, making me a mess inside.
“And she’s a grown adult who can make her own decisions.” Dante straightens but he’s ready.
Every muscle taut and ready to explode. He’s so much bigger than Tom. My heart flutters.
Dante glares at him. “You need to go calm down and then we’ll talk.”
“Fuck you! I asked you to protect her, not fuck her.” Tom charges forward and shoves Dante, pushing him back a little, but only because Dante lets him.
“You don’t want to do this, Tom.” Fury lingers in every syllable of Dante’s words. Now worry takes over every other emotion. Worry for Tom and worry for Dante.
“I’m not going to let you hurt my sister.” Tom steps back and takes a swing at Dante.
When it connects with Dante’s side, I suck in a burst of air. Finn’s hands tighten on me. I didn’t even realize I was trying to get to Dante, to do what? I have no idea.
Dante doesn’t even stumble before he lifts his fist and hits Tom. When Tom staggers backward and falls onto the grass, Finn releases me and I scramble over to Tom.
I drop to kneel beside him and check his pulse. He’s still breathing, but he’s knocked out cold.
I brush his hair away from his face and sigh. “I didn’t want him to find out like this.”
“He never would have taken it well, flower.” Finn steps behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. I slide my hand over his, needing his strength. “There was no gentle way to break it to him.”
Tom knows. He saw me kissing Finn and probably Dante. We aren’t that close to the house. Which means he could have been watching for a while. I close my eyes and lean my head back against Finn’s legs.
It would have been hard to tell him. He doesn’t know about Wyatt, and he’s never going to know that they were my firsts. I’ll let him assume what the guys did, that some previous boyfriend had that privilege.
I knew this might hurt him, but I never thought he’d go after his friends. Like they did something I didn’t want. I blow out a breath and look at Tom’s face as he starts to wake up. It doesn’t excuse everything that happened to me because of him.
Dante holds his hand down to me. He helps me stand and I lean against him, because I need him. My hands shake. I’m still so fucking mad at Tom. He did a lot of fucked-up stuff to get to this point.
“Fuck.” Tom rubs his jaw, but he doesn’t open his eyes or move yet. “We’re supposed to be friends. The minute I turn my back—”
“Really, Tom?” Finn’s laugh is dry. “The minute? Fuck you. You abandoned her. Left her to deal with your wife’s father, who you knew would come after her. You didn’t even tell us so we could properly protect her.”
“We didn’t know your parents were gone.” Dante wraps his arm around me, drawing me in tight against him as Tom sits up.
“We left her in that townhome alone for days. I let her stay there because I thought it would be best to not put her and Wyatt in the same space. Because I wasn’t aware of the danger she was in. ”
“And then you two fucked her?” He gestures to the two of them standing close to me.
That anger that had been suppressed by the worry of him being knocked out begins to take over. Stepping away from Dante’s warmth, I put my hands on my hips as I glare at my brother.
“I’m old enough to make my own decisions.” I kick at the sole of his shoe.
His eyes narrow.
“Do you honestly think I can be seduced into doing something I don’t want to do?” My laugh is brittle. “You know what? Fuck you, Tom. I’m in love with all of them and I don’t give a fuck who knows about it.”
He sits up and then rises to his feet so he towers over me.
His look is blank as he searches my eyes. “All of them?”
I draw in a breath, even as everything in me trembles a little. “All of them. Dante, Finn, Drew, and Wyatt.”
Tom flinches like I punched him again. There’s anger but also pain in his eyes. “You don’t even know who any of these guys are.”
“What doesn’t she know, Tom?” Dante steps up behind me and draws me back against his chest, making Tom lift his glare to Dante.
“That you had me keep her away from Wyatt? That Finn buried his feelings in other women because the one woman he truly wanted was his best friend’s sister? That none of us really deserve her?”
Tom’s nostrils flare.
“Or maybe it’s that you’re such a shitty friend that you let your best friend drown in guilt for something you had to know wasn’t his fault.” Dante’s words rain like bombs on Tom.
Tom staggers back a step.
“You kept him away from her because you didn’t want him with her.
You didn’t want any of us with her because you didn’t think your friends would be worthy of your sister.
Oh, we were good enough to be your friends and to build a future with.
And good enough to protect her when you felt the need to run away, but we could never be good enough to love her. ”
Tom is pale when Dante finishes speaking.
Dante guides me to the side and when someone takes me into their arms, I look up into Drew’s warm brown eyes. I turn and see Wyatt next to him, glaring at Tom.
“You four need to deal with your issues.” Drew turns me toward the house. “I’ll keep the women entertained inside. Just keep the blood to a minimum.”
“What?” I ask, worried at the mention of blood.
Wyatt touches my face. “Go on, Sara. You’ll get your chance to talk to Tom when he’s calmed down.”
Tom growls but Wyatt ignores him. His eyes remain soft on me, steadying me.
Drew leads me toward the house. I glance over my shoulder at my brother and his three friends. These guys have been inseparable for as long as I can remember. But I have to remember I’m not the one who tore them apart.
No. Tom’s been working on that forever. It’s just time for my guys to open their eyes and make sure Tom understands where they stand.
* * *
Wyatt
As Drew takes Sara back to the house, I never take my eyes off them.
Natasha steps outside and looks concerned until Drew says something to her.
Her worried gaze goes to Tom. For a heartbeat, I think she’s going to storm over here and drag him away.
But Drew keeps talking to her until she finally nods and returns to the house with the others.
Sighing, I sit on the bench. I thought I’d be angrier, but I’m just done. I’m done hiding everything. I’m done lying about how I feel. It’s time to sort this out and see where our pieces land. If this is the end of Tom and us, so be it.
“Is this where you all use me as a punching bag?” Tom rubs his jaw, but he’s on the defensive. He’s braced like we’re going to fight.
Finn laughs but he’s angry. “We ought to. Do you know if anything happened to Natasha, Peter promised Sara he’d do the same to her? Do you even know what kind of family you married into?”
“The same as yours,” Tom pops off.
Fuck, this isn’t going to go well if we all just yell at each other.
I never thought I’d be the voice of reason when it came to Sara, but here we are.
Dante and Finn are livid for reasons beyond Sara being kidnapped.
Reasons we have to sort through if we want to continue to have a relationship.
And for Sara’s sake, we’ll have to sort something out.
“Sit down. All of you.” I glance at Finn and Dante. “We’re not going to fight any more. We all got our hits in.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tom spits out. “You should have never touched Sara.”
Dante closes the distance between him and Tom.
“We could take her away from you entirely, Tom.” His voice is cold and harsher than I’ve ever heard him.
“Us four have a lot of history and a business, but if push comes to shove, if I have to pick you or her, it’s always going to be her.
Every fucking time. You fucked up. You put her in danger and knew it. Don’t fucking tell me you didn’t.”
“We would have been back before Peter should have done anything. Natasha’s disappeared before.” Tom looks down and looks back up as anger fills him again. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you fucking my sister.”
“That’s not really what we’re talking about.” Finn steps beside Dante. Their anger radiates off them and this will only get worse, but if I step in, it will fester. “We’re talking about how we aren’t good enough for your sister. Or are you just scared that you’ll lose us as friends?”
A flash of panic lights Tom’s eyes, but he hides it.
“You jeopardized everything with your actions.” Dante looks like he wants to hit him again but he’s holding himself back. “Sara, our business, our friendship. For what?”
“Don’t say it.” Tom’s voice is low and threatening.
I stand and step between them. “Don’t say it, Dante.”
“What about what he did to you, Wyatt? Or is that just water under the bridge?” Finn shakes his head. “You’re one fucked-up friend, Tom.”
I release a breath. “Tom, you and I have stuff to talk about. Go wait over there for me.”
“What the fuck—”
I push him back a little. “If these two stay here, you’ll get punched. Is that what you want? Or do you want to sit and talk about where we’re at and see if we can salvage any part of our friendship?”
His green eyes search mine. I’m open, but I’ve struggled with all this for years. They just found out recently.
“Fine.” He steps off to the side.
I turn back to Finn and Dante and hold up my hands. “I know you want your piece of him, but let me talk to him about all this. You two need to go cool down. I understand how angry you are—”
“Why aren’t you just as angry?” Finn glares at Tom. “What he did to you was fucked-up. What he did to us.”
I shrug. “It’s no longer a secret. He can’t hold it over my head.”
It was Tom and my secret, but he weaponized it. So I disarmed part of it. Sara is mine. As long as I have her and the guys, I’m good.
“Go check on Sara. Make sure she’s not spiraling more than she should. She’s angry too, but Tom finding out that way has to be hard.”
Dante puts his hand on my shoulder. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
“He’s my best friend and I have to believe there’s something here to salvage.” Or why would I have fought so hard to keep him all these years?
“If you need us, we’ll be close.” Finn follows Dante across the yard.
I watch them go and wonder if I’m trying to recover something that might have only been in my head. But then I turn and see the concern in Tom’s eyes before he hides it again. Maybe we don’t have much to save, but we’ll need to find a way to go forward.
When I sit across from Tom, I meet his green eyes, so like Sara’s. “I told them everything. I’m in love with Sara. And like Dante said, if you make us choose, it won’t be you, man. So let’s find out if we can make this work going forward.”