28. Colson
TWENTY-EIGHT
COLSON
I thought tonight couldn’t get any worse, but then Finn walks into the room and knocks me into the past. Back to thoughts of my life revolving around Murphy’s Law, and the whole idea if something can go wrong, it will.
I want the comfort of being close to Violet and the peace she brings me, but my body betrays that, and it’s because of him. My hands fist at my sides, and I take one more glance at the oversized sweatshirt draped over her lithe body and know it belongs to him.
To Finn.
To my goddamn half brother.
Disgust coils in my stomach, putting a mean spin on a ride of teacups I rode once when Sebastian and I were kids and Aunt Bess took us to an amusement park an hour away. My head rages with the onset of a headache from my match. I want nothing more than to drag Finn out into the center of that room and not let up until he’s the one on the floor with his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. Give him a little bit of what he gave me all those weeks ago.
I’m not the same person I was when Finn and Clyde had me by the balls and held Mom’s debt over my head. I owe them nothing, which is the reason I lunge forward and give Finn no time to react. I crush him against the wall faster than it takes him to blink, my forearm pressed against his tattooed throat.
Long gone are the days where I fall in line to his every word. I’m not his puppet anymore, and if I knew I could get away with it, I’d press just a little harder and watch the familiar war that raged in my eyes not long ago spark to life in his.
He wheezes, his lips quirking into a smirk despite me constricting his airway, “Good to see you too, Brother.”
Brother.
The urge to cut his tongue out and douse it in kerosene hits strong. It’s so much darker than the thoughts I’m used to thinking. I tack it to the wall of my mind as a red flag but pay it no mind as I sneer, “Don’t call me that.”
“It’s what we are, isn’t it?”
I don’t let up on my grip but bear down on his throat more.
Violet shouts out in an uncompromising tone I’ve only ever heard when I had Sebastian in a similar position. “Let him go, Colson.”
Finn holds a hand up to Violet at her demand. She quiets, and I wonder, what the fuck has been going on behind my back for him to have that kind of control over her when, a minute ago, she put up a fight with me.
She wouldn’t let me get an inch with her—granted, I didn’t deserve it—but now she’s letting him call the fucking shots? What makes him any more deserving than me?
“You and I are nothing to each other,” I grit out, my voice harsh and unrelenting.
He squints one of his eyes in thought as a garbled noise leaves his throat, and all I see are all the moments he tore me down. Him forcing me to pay Mom’s debt because she was too weak to do it herself. Ambushing me in that alleyway and standing there while Nic gave me a bloody lip and bruised my ribs. My broken finger. The threats, mental abuse, and emotional stress.
And that’s not even getting into his dad being the biggest piece of shit in the world. The person who fed my mom’s addiction and waited for her to go just one step too far so he could claim everything she left behind. He stood there beside him every step of the way. Never once challenging how goddamn wrong it was.
I remove my forearm from his throat and grip his shirt. I shake him until his back thuds off the wall. He lets me. Allows me to turn him into a ragdoll. Outside of me headbutting him the night near the battery plant in Harrison Heights, this is the only other time I’ve put my hands on him. To be honest, it’s marvelous. “Why did you bring her here?”
“Why did I…” He chuckles, low and deep and then suddenly stops. A line forms between his brows. He shoves me so hard that I fall back a step, then smooths a hand down his shirt, fixing the wrinkles. He clears his throat, freeing it from the strain I put on it a second ago. “Because you’re out of your fucking mind. You pulled Janie out of her shitty dealings, and for what, if you’re going to end up doing the same stupid shit?”
Violet pipes up, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” I don’t need to glance over to know her eyes are burning holes into me.
“Fuck you and your brotherly act,” I spit at Finn. “You didn’t care about me then and you don’t now. You enjoyed making me bleed—in more ways than one—and knocking me down every chance you could. And now you’re using her to get to me?”
Finn’s face falls, but he picks it up almost immediately. “Everyone fucks up, Moore.”
“No. Some people fuck up. Others choose to be fuck-ups. Pretty sure that’s the category you fit in, Finn.”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about the way I grew up, about the choices I had and still have to make. About the things I choose and don’t choose, or the categories I belong in.”
“If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you’re no different than the tree you fell from. I told you when I paid Mom’s debt off that I was done with you, and I meant it. Finding out we share DNA doesn’t change that for me.”
Finn rolls his cavernous eyes. Almost like he’s bored with me. “Very metaphoric of you.”
I give him my middle finger, because as far as I’m concerned, he can fuck right off. Also, it’s better than punching him in the throat, and my urge to do just that is growing by the second.
Violet completely strips the thought from my mind when she speaks up behind me. “Wait. What debt?”
My ears buzz with static noise. For a split second, I want to run from the truth of my connection with Finn, but I’ve kept it hidden long enough. Violet needs to know who I really am. That I’m not all the good she thinks she sees when she looks at me. That my upbringing and Harrison Heights are sewn into me with no plans of ever leaving.
I used to think I was better than Finn, but now…it’s never been clearer how similar we are in that sense that this town is a part of who we are. It shouldn’t, but it defines us.
If she wants to be involved in the drama…well, consider yourself involved, beautiful . Because I don’t have it in me to keep it a secret anymore.
“Yeah, Finn,” I jut out my bottom lip and sweep my hand in her direction, “you want to clue Violet in on how we knew each other before the brother thing came out or should I?”
Violet’s attention ricochets between the two of us. “What are you talking about?” I don't know who the question is meant for. I’ve spent months keeping my business with Finn under wraps, but they got exploited in that stupid fucking conference room with Stewart. The same is happening now. The only one who gets the protection of lying about it at this point are the Lincolns, and I’ve about had it with them thinking they can do whatever they please.
No more lying.
No more secrets.
Only truths.
She needs to know that the person who brought her here tonight isn’t who he’s trying to portray himself as—a brotherly hero who supposedly cares.
And it wouldn’t hurt for her to know that the guy she’s spent the last few months falling for isn’t as honest as he’s made himself out to be. We all have secrets and lies that we hold close, and she’s about to find out both of ours.
Finn’s tongue sweeps across his bottom lip. Violet steps closer. My heart races like it’s in a marathon and breaks are off limits. She glances at Finn, but it’s me her eyes ultimately end up on. The truth hits harder with me. I see it in her eyes.
“Colson, what debt?” she pleads, voice strong, but I sense the waver in her words. She used to tell me that it didn’t bother her when I didn’t give every single detail on a matter, but those things mostly revolved around my connection with the guy who waited for me outside of Spring Meadows and the reason behind my bloody lip and bruised ribs.
Now, she’s tired of my shit and wants answers.
She’s fed up with the go around, and I can’t say I blame her.
If we were any other people in this world, she would’ve known by now.
A staggering breath rolls out of me, and I clamp my hands on my hips. I decide it’s better to just come out and say it because what good is delaying the inevitable? My heart is already broken, seeing hers shatter in front of me won’t hurt that much more, right?
“Finn and his dad sold drugs to my mom.” My eyes remain on him. He stares back at me, no emotion on his face. “A few times, I had to pay off money that she owed them, but a few months ago, she ended up cutting a deal bigger than all the others. They gave her product to move, but she fucked around with it instead. Their dumb asses trusted an addict with ten thousand dollars worth of supply—which we now know is because his dad wanted her dead so he could claim the inheritance she left behind when she finally kicked the bucket—and guess who had to pay it back?”
Her eyes scan my face. They drop down to my feet, then blink back up to my mouth while she points at Finn. “You paid him ten thousand dollars because your mom took drugs from them?” Her face pales. I’m sick over it, too. Fucking wrecked.
She puts it together so fast. “That’s why he was at the apartment that day, isn’t it?” she questions. “He’s the one that beat you up. That hurt you and had you bruised and bleeding a-and…”
She rubs her hands over her face and cinches Finn’s sweatshirt tighter around her body. She turns to him. “And then you…you gave Janie drugs when you knew she was deep in her addiction?”
Finn meets her head on, and why wouldn’t he? He’s not ashamed of the things he’s done, of the deals he’s orchestrated alongside his father. Of the people he’s harmed in the process. “It’s not like that. It’s just business.”
“Business ? ” she scoffs, disgust sliding underneath each syllable.
“It wasn’t personal, at least not for me. If it weren’t Janie, it would have been someone else.”
They fed her addiction. Put it right in her hands when she was weak and needed help. They took advantage of her, and all it gave her was a one-way ticket to the afterlife. “And that’s not even the best part,” I add on. “His dad got drugs into Harrison County Jail through some contact he knew when she was an inmate. Kept her addiction going behind bars. He’s the one who killed her.”
Violet takes a step back.
Finally, she realizes that she’s in a room with two people she doesn’t know, and her lips part to say something. But nothing comes out. She’s speechless, and if I know my girl at all, she’s questioning why the hell she came with Finn in the first place. Why she’s fighting for a man she’s not sure she knows. We’re all a little too fucked up to be fixed.
The angel on my shoulder wants me to reach out and curl my hand into hers and convince her that I’m not the person she’s making me out to be in her head. That despite saving my mom and working with Finn to get her out of the hole she ended up in, I’m a good person.
“Those things happened, but it’s not everything we are,” Finn claims. He doesn’t stop trying to convince us that it isn’t as bad as it sounds. He can eat dog shit. “Our dirty laundry is in the past.”
“What?” I ask. “Don’t like the smell of yours? Can’t bear to talk about it?”
His gaze narrows on me. “I don’t give a shit what you say about me or who you say it to. I won’t apologize for the shit I’ve done, for the deals, for the way I make my ends meet. We both know you didn’t tell her because you didn’t want her seeing you in a different light. She’s not here because she trusts me. She came for you , but you want her to believe you don’t deserve each other. For fucking what? Who the fuck cares about what happened in the past?”
“If it doesn’t matter then why the hell are you here?” I challenge.
I’d ask how he gained access to the warehouse. How he even knew I was fighting and where to find me, but we all know Finn. He either tailed me or knows someone who knows someone.
His jaw clenches. “To save my idiot brother.”
It’s almost laughable. Really. He came to save me. Now that’s something.
“Where was the hero act when you pressed that cigarette into my neck or when you broke my finger?”
“Oh, my God,” Violet murmurs. “You told me the bandage on your neck was from cardboard and…and your finger was because you didn’t use your gloves.”
It turns my stomach knowing it’s all hitting her at once when I had the advantage of dealing with it as it came.
“I don’t want your goddamn help, nor do I need it,” I tell Finn. “In fact, I want nothing to do with you. How many times must I say it?”
“I was there, too,” he says as Violet turns on her heel and runs her hands over her face again. She’s gone mostly quiet since we dropped our truths, distancing herself, and I know why. She’s having a hard time wrapping her mind around the lies and secrets and omissions. I get it because I’ve been there. I am there.
Finn continues to yammer on. I look at him, but my focus is leaned more toward the girl on the other side of the room.
Fuck, does she even know how beautiful she is?
Even now, like this, I want to run my hands through her hair and bruise her lips with mine.
“I had no fucking clue that he was hiding his marriage to your mom or that we’re brothers. The asshole never said a goddamn word.” He grimaces like he’s working through his own internal conflict. “I wouldn’t have?—”
“Save it,” I quip.
“Don’t punish me for his fuck-ups.”
A dry laugh comes from me. “Oh, believe me. I’m not. I’m punishing you for your fuck-ups. The ones you apparently want to forget exist. Didn’t take you for the kind of person who doesn’t want to take accountability for his actions, then again, you are a piece of shit, so I’m not surprised.”
His jaw tenses. “You know what, fine. You want nothing to do with me…” He raises his hands in surrender but then they come down hard at his sides. “Heard you loud and fucking clear, but just so you’re aware , your boss out there?”
I cross my arms. “Tommy?”
“Yeah, you think paying us back was bad? He’s going to get you for a lot more. You think you’re going to be able to show up for a few fights and then,” he brushes his palms together as if he’s wiping crumbs off them, “that’s it? When you want out, he’s not going to let you leave unless you give him what he wants. He’ll cinch that rope around your neck and hang you for every cent you have. And if you don’t have the money, he’s not the kind of guy who’s opposed to taking something a whole lot more precious.”
Violet whips around at the sound of that. “Please tell me you’re just joking and saying that to get under his skin.”
He levels her with a look, his eyes narrowing and his lips pursing. “Why do you think I brought you here? For shits and giggles? I told you he was getting himself into some serious shit.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him. Tommy may be a particular kind of guy, but I doubt he’d string me up like a pi?ata if things went sideways. Not so long as he got his money.
“You sure about that, Moore? Last time I checked, I was the alleged criminal, and you were the goody two-shoes trying to fight for his druggie mom.”
My hands curl into fists. It’s hard to tell if he’s just being himself or if the dig is intentional. I decide to let it go for the time being because what he says about Tommy picks at my brain in a weird way that I don’t have an answer to.
If the day comes when I’m done, all Tommy will care about is the fact that I made him a shitload of cash. He’ll let me walk.
You enter the mouth of the beast, he won’t spit you out, and if you’re one of the lucky few he doesn’t want, it still won’t matter. You won’t be whole by the end of it.
Finn watches me with rapt attention. It’s like he’s inside my head and can hear my thoughts. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “See things how you want, but remember which one of us is meeting up in a dingy, broke-down-as-fuck warehouse on the outskirts of Harrison Heights nightly. You’re not much better than me now, are you, Colson?”
“Fuck you.”
“Right back atcha. Violet, you want a ride home, then let’s go.”
She nibbles her lower lip. I’d give anything to make it my teeth there. To be the one biting down on that pink, pillowy lip and sucking it into my mouth. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“You got three minutes, then I’m gone.”
She nods, and he walks out into the shadowed hallway.
“I know you two don’t see eye to eye,” she starts. “And a lot of messed up things have happ?—”
“Why the hell would you let him take you anywhere?”
She rears back, offended, then makes a dig at me. “You could’ve easily made sure this never happened if you would have told me the truth from the start, but you chose to keep it hidden and lie.” Hurt laces her words. “You could have trusted me,” she adds, her voice dropping. “Like I trusted you with what I was going through but I guess…well, it’s clear you didn’t.”
Doesn’t she get it? “I couldn’t tell you at the time. I needed you to just trust me.” My adrenaline is beginning to wear, and my damn knuckles hurt. I want to get out of here, back to my car, and go home.
“And I did.” She takes a step closer, but I can tell with how her shoulders are set back that there’s no way I can touch her right now. “But how would you feel if you found out that I was slinging large amounts of money at drug dealers and…and fighting a bunch of dudes in this underground world of aggression and stupidity? I’m so fucking confused and hurt because I thought I knew you, and now…”
My heart blazes with pain as if it’s been twisted between two hands. My throat rolls, wanting the anecdote to make it go away but there isn’t one. There’s nothing that would make Violet’s disappointment in me hurt less. “You do know me.”
She shakes her head, flicking my promise away like a pesky gnat. “I came with Finn willingly because he said you needed help. I just didn’t…”
I clear my throat, forcing it to work despite my entire body flaming with the need to close this distance and get down on my knees in front of her. She’s looking at me like I’m a stranger. Like we haven’t spent time twining our hearts together over the challenges we faced. “You shouldn’t trust him,” is what I choose to say instead.
“To be honest, I’m kind of having a hard time trusting you after what I heard. I asked you about him and your injuries, and I understand why you wanted to keep it to yourself, it’s…a lot. But I thought we were closer than that, Colson. I thought we could trust each other with anything. I told you what happened with my dad. I confided in you, and you just…I don’t even know.”
I hate that she’s right.
I should’ve told her.
Not for help, but because she is someone I can trust. Her being here is proof of that. “I didn’t ask you to divulge that information to me.”
“No, but I did because I felt…” She trails off again, and it’s like it’s all she can seem to do. Like her thoughts are taking time to catch up to what’s going on. Like she has the beginning of them but not the end.
I take a meager step closer, breaching her bubble. I could really use her warmth right now. Or that jasmine-like scent that clings to her flawless skin. “I know what you felt,” I murmur, my earlier irritation over seeing Finn fading quickly. Nothing else matters when I’m alone with her. I wish I could pick up her heart and piece it back together. “I felt it, too.”
“No…” She points at me, and I don’t dare take another step toward her. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to make your voice all soft and push into my space and touch me and try to make this seem better than it is. You lied to me for months. There were so many opportunities to come clean, to confide in me.”
My emotion bubbles, because fuck, I hate this.
She shakes her head. “You lied out of omission. That might not be the same in your book, but it is in mine, Colson. I spent months lying for my own father and you made a fool of me by letting me lean on you when you were doing the same in return.”
I turn on my heel and bring my fist down on the desk. A few old, dusty papers float to the floor. “Do you think I don’t know that?” I’m not looking at Violet to see if she flinches. “I do trust you, but it was too much. A separate part of my life than where you took up shop. I wasn’t going to bring you into it and taint what we had. You were already going through the shit with your family. It would’ve been messed up to pile it on you.”
Something crunches. It’s not until I feel a hand on my side, right along my rib cage, that I realize it’s Violet’s shoes making the noise. Her voice is like the gentle stroke of fingertips running over my bare skin. “It sucks knowing that I came to you with my deepest secret, and you kept all of yours to yourself. I wish you didn’t have to go through any of this, but I’ve been here. There were so many times you could’ve turned to me, but I’m beginning to realize that I wasn’t enough for the simple decency of honesty.”
Fuck.
She was never not enough.
Always more than.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force down the emotions.
I lost Mom, and even though it felt like I lost Violet before, this feels even more permanent. Before, she may have been gone, but a part of me still felt like I had her. But now…it’s like trying to catch steam or smoke in your palm. It just scurries around your fingers, impossible to catch. She’s fading before me, turning into a pigment of my imagination where I’ll only have the memory of her all because I shoved down my truths and buried myself beneath the lies.
My heart, having had enough with the twisting and burning, splits in half. It’s a chunk of wood and Violet’s words are the ax that bears down on them.
A pressure forms at my back. I quickly realize it’s Violet resting her head there. I focus on the fact that she’s touching me and how it’ll probably be the last time. I know that if I turned around and tilted her chin up, her eyes would glisten in the glow of the lantern. “She wouldn’t want you doing this. No parent wants to see their child this low. The truest version of herself wouldn't want to see her son in this much agony.”
It’s incredible seeing how wrecked Violet is over what’s gone down, and yet she still finds kind, uplifting words to give me. I don’t know how she does it.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know the first thing to do to get rid of it,” I admit in defeat.
“The first thing to do is to feel it, Colson. You’ll never make it to your destination if you keep taking detours. You always have to go through. Out of everyone, you should know that the most.”
I miss her touch when she lifts her forehead off me. I hear the click and creak of a departure I’m not ready for. I despise how she’s leaving with Finn, but it’s so hard to speak up. To say…
Come back to me, Violet.
I’m so fucking sorry for everything.
I’m ready to rise above it all.
To get the help I know I need.
But more than all that I want to tell her something even heavier. That I love her. And I don’t think that love will ever run out.