Chapter 31
Trips
Nothing but waves and my brother’s curses exist for me, but the ringing in my ears is louder. Throwing my body backwards against the guard behind me, I bowl him over, rolling and snatching a boot knife from the guard beside him.
A moment later, my arms are free, the sting of my hasty use of the blade hardly registering. What is unbearably real is Clara’s desperate dolphin kick across the pool, the longest way to the edge, likely unable to see the shorter path to her left.
The guards still on their feet come at me, and I know that every moment I spend fighting them is a moment Clara needs me.
Using every bit of skill RJ taught me, honed by the hours in the gym with Falk and my superior mass, I break free, unable to worry about what kind of damage I did to the men who tried to stop me.
All but Falk and the new guard were men I’d sworn I’d hurt their enjoyment of Clara’s humiliating visit with the doctor this fall.
A few broken bones are hardly payment, but I’ll take them. For now.
Diving in, I’m halfway across the pool when the waves calm enough to see that Clara and Trevor have vanished. Another moment I don’t have passes until I spy Trevor struggling to keep Clara pinned at the bottom of the deep end.
A splash sounds behind me, but I ignore it.
Not when Clara’s thrashing, bubbles escaping her mouth much too quickly.
I gulp down air and dive, my eyes burning as I watch Clara’s fight fade, her body going limp in my half-brother’s arms. The idiot finally realizes he’s fucked up, pushing off the bottom, dragging Clara behind him as he struggles to reach the surface.
Twisting, I stroke to them, the knife in my hand slicing his arm.
He drops Clara, and I grab her before she sinks farther, kicking with everything I have to get her out of the pool.
To get her away from him.
But when we get to the surface, she doesn’t move, and I kick to the opposite side of the pool from Trevor, hauling her to the tiles, tilting her on her side, the knife still tight in one palm, terror grasping my heart in two fists and squeezing tight.
Not again.
Not fucking again.
A shadow pulls itself from the pool beside me, and I swipe out, only to find it’s Falk barking something at me, not Trevor, but I can’t hear, not while Clara still isn’t moving.
I pound on her back, so hard I’m scared I’ll break something, and some water trickles from her mouth, but it’s not enough.
So I lay her awkwardly on her back, her arms still stuck behind her, my lips pressing to her chilled ones as I breathe for her.
Nothing happens.
I press my fingers against her neck, needing to feel the beat of her heart, water and tears mixing as my hands shake.
Her pulse is reedy, but there.
I press my lips to hers again, and on the second breath, she contracts and coughs, water and mucus and who the fuck knows what coming up, but it doesn’t matter. It can’t.
She does.
And as she doubles over, spewing on the imported Moroccan tiles, I let loose a sob of relief, sweeping out with the knife when another shadow approaches, the yelp familiar, the blood red enough to taste.
“Stay the fuck away from her,” I whisper, not turning away from her huddled lump on the tile, unable to look at the threat when she’s more important. So much more important.
“She’s mine to punish,” Trevor says, his cough and whine enough to make the carefully tamped edges of my rage break free.
Clara turns, her dark eyes hazy, but there’s anger there. I have her permission.
She wondered how badly I could hurt my brother before there were consequences.
I’ve wondered what would happen if I killed him.
Trusting her to decide if or when I need to pull back, I figure it’s time to find out.
Years of pain twisted to violence, of secrets and silence and knowing I’ll never be enough, grief for my mother, for the innocent kid I once was, one who believed in wishes and hope and laughter and other impossible things, all of it winds into something uncontrollable, unbearable, and deadly: me.
I drop the knife, not wanting distance, needing to feel him break under me.
By the time I’ve rolled from my crouch to standing, Trevor sees the danger.
He sees the fists Father taught me to use, scarred from years of abuse that the golden boy never experienced.
He sees the inches I have on him, the dozens of pounds.
And most importantly, he sees that I’m in total control—of my body, and of a mind that he’s consistently underestimated.
Three quick moves and I’ve got him in a lock that’s impossible for him to break free of, but it’s not enough. It can’t be.
He tried to kill her.
Like before, she was cold and unresponsive, flurries of white billowing down. This time, it wasn’t me, though. It was him. He was purposeful. Petty. Cruel. Action taken to control a woman who can’t be controlled, won’t be kept down.
A woman built to fight, to break free of her cage, not to feather her nest in a gilded one.
A woman meant to stand beside me, to guard my back while I guard hers.
Sure enough, one glance shows her crouched and coughing, Falk with her handcuffs in his hands, as she reaches for the discarded knife.
She swings it with the grace of the dancer she should have been, still half-doubled over, but keeping the guards I hadn’t taken out yet away from the fight between me and Trevor.
I pull tighter against his joints, my not-brother’s frantic shouts echoing off the tiles. He offered her no mercy. He’ll reap what he’s sown.
He yells as I wrench his shoulder from its joint, and it’s not enough, even as I see Clara wincing slightly in remembered pain. What Clara survived with barely a whimper has my brother screaming at me, but the echoes turn his hate into a haze of sound.
Coughing, Clara gets to her feet, swiping at Trevor’s pet guard when he rushes me, a thin trail of blood scattering from the blade, the ruby splotches turning black on the blue tiles.
I wrench farther, and the snap of Trevor’s elbow dislocating has a smile twitching at my lips.
With care and focus, I pop his thumb out of joint too, then his pinky.
His whimpers fade as I feel myself retreating from the moment, watching Clara slice across the front of Trevor’s guard in the beginning of a haze, the slash shallow but long, more blood landing on the tiles, mixing with the water across her hands, coating her in red.
She always looks good in red.
Then she turns to me, her gaze locked on Trevor’s limp fingers in my grip.
With a move proving how sharp that guard keeps his knife, she lops off his pointer and middle fingers, her face grim.
He screams, high pitched in terror and pain, but Clara leans low, her voice soft enough that only the three of us could hear it.
“Now you can’t put those fingers where they don’t belong,” she hisses.
I thought I was angry before. But rage blankets my consciousness with her words, a violation I hadn’t known she’d lived through clear in her statement.
Trevor is going to die tonight.
Falk says something, but wherever I go when it’s too much begs to take over, muffling his voice. I don’t want to come back. Diving into the rage frees me to do what I must without regret.
But Clara’s dark eyes catch mine, just for a moment, before she spins to fend off another guard trying to break up the fight. There’s trust there. So much goddamn trust that I desperately want to deserve. Even more than I want my brother’s last breaths coating my soaking skin.
So I do the impossible. I count the three fingers on Trevor’s hand that are still attached, two of them dangling free from their joints.
I sniff, the sting of chlorine mixing with the copper of blood that hits my nose.
Counting the spots of blood on the blue tiles and every swipe of the blade Clara waves, giving me time to gain control again, I reach for calm. I wrestle myself back to reality.
And then I hear one sound that shouldn’t be here—a voice I’ve always listened to, someone who should never see me like this.
“Archie, stop!”
Mattie.
Not Mattie.
I force my gaze up in time to see her sprint around the pool, her sandals slapping against the tiles, her eyes wide as she takes in the handful of guards nursing broken bones on one side of the pool, while the rest of us huddle together on the other side, drenched, Clara with a knife, covered in blood, and Trevor writhing and begging beneath me, two stubs where his fingers should be spurting blood across the tiles.
Her mom and I sheltered her from this part of our lives as best as we could manage.
She should never have seen something like this.
“Stop,” she repeats, the guards stepping back as I release Trevor, Clara holding the knife loosely in her hand. Another cough racks through her, shaking her so hard she folds in half.
I wrap my arm around her, wishing I could take on some, any, all the pain she’s feeling, but I keep my gaze trained on Mattie. On my baby sister’s shattered and terrified face.
Falk and Trevor’s pet guard both rush to her trying to explain what’s going on, but after a moment, she waves them away.
“Somebody call an ambulance. I, I just,” she stops, words failing her, her eyes full of pain and confusion as she looks at Trevor, at Clara, at me.
Then she turns, her legs shaky as she strides from the poolroom, head held high.
Oh Mattie.
Trevor’s guard helps him to his feet, his shirt jammed against his bloody hand, while a second guard ties his arm into a makeshift sling. “I think you just lost the hero worship she always had for you,” he hisses.
Instead of answering, I scoop up Clara, wanting her as far away from Trevor as possible.
I can deal with Mattie later. I’ll have to.
Kicking off my one remaining shoe, I leave, trailing water up to Clara’s room. Falk stays one step behind us, Clara’s coughs both a blessing and a curse, her growing trembles too much of a reminder of last winter for my frayed temper.
Once we’re in the blue room, I draw a bath, not knowing what else to do. But when I carry her to the bathroom, she shrinks away from the water, and I feel like an idiot.
Of course she’s not going to want to dive into a tub right after being drowned.
“Shit. Sorry. I just want to warm you up. Can you handle the shower? Otherwise, we can cuddle under the covers.”
Her nose presses against my chest, and I can practically see her pulling bravery from somewhere deep-seated. A well so unfathomably deep it consistently surprises me. “No. The tub. I won’t let him take that from me.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods against my chest. But then she tilts her chin up, meeting my gaze. “Come in with me?”
I hide my rage, my sympathy. She doesn’t need either. Instead, I force a small smile, my best attempt at being supportive. “Of course.”
The water is just shy of scalding as I step in, both of us fully clothed, her trembling slowing the longer we stay pressed together in the hot water, the scent of chlorine stuck to her hair.
I unravel her braid, carefully washing the heavy curls until they smell like whatever expensive shampoo she has here.
The scent seeps into my wet clothes as well, the chlorine sting in my nose finally dispersing.
“Trips?”
“Yeah?”
Clara doesn’t look at me, doesn’t shift her weight in my lap, does nothing but let her whispered words loose in the steam of the small room.
“I trust you.”
I close my eyes, my heart freezing solid in my chest. “Clara—”
“No. You fought to stay present, Trips. I almost died, but you’re here, taking care of me, protecting me. I trust you. And you don’t get to take that away.”
“I almost lost it.”
“But you didn’t.”
I rub my chin against the back of her head, hair catching on the sharp edges of my scruff. “You shouldn’t forgive me.”
“I never said I did. You made a mistake. A big one. But I asked you to work on yourself, to prove you could change. You’ve proven yourself to me. And I’m willing to move forward, to build on the trust you’ve earned. I just thought you should know.”
Closing my eyes, I war with myself over her words. I want her trust, need it. But part of me wants her forgiveness, too. The little boy who still sits in my heart, wanting everything to be okay, for the slate to be wiped clean.
Only, when it comes down to it, I couldn’t accept her forgiveness, even if she’d offered it. She’s strong, capable, and finally able to set expectations for the people around her that are as high as she deserves. I can’t be a barrier to her growth, the same as she’s been nothing but a help to mine.
My voice cracks as my whispered question leaves me. “Blank slate going forward?”
“Wiped clean.”
If there were anyone here to ask, I’d tell them the steam from the tub collects on my eyelashes. It’s a lie. Because, for the first time, she’s offering me a fresh start, and for the first time, both of us have grown into the kind of people who stand a chance to make good on that fresh start.
I won’t lose it when she needs me most. And she won’t accept a weak apology with no plan to be better.
“Thank you,” I whisper, rocking her body closer to me in the water, small waves rolling over us, drenching the fabric weighed down between us once again.
She says nothing, but she twists, pressing her nose to my neck.
I almost lost this tonight. Lost her. Because my not-brother can’t handle a woman telling him no. That’s unacceptable. And the longer we lay in the tub, my fingers growing pruned, the angrier I become.
My not-brother just made an enemy of a man he’s constantly underestimated. And I’ve learned new tricks he’ll never see coming.
He’ll pay for almost taking her from me. And I can’t wait to watch him crumble.