Chapter 41
Allison
On my drive to the office, my hands are shaking. I’m ready for whatever Luke can bring. I already have a counterpunch. That’s not the problem. It’s his words to me. They hit me harder than I want to admit.
Life has taught me to keep my face impassive when lawyers screamed at me across courtroom tables, when witnesses quarreled with me or hit me with surprise testimony, when men belittled my accomplishments or talent, when Mommy Dearest told me I was an overweight disappointment.
It taught me how to turn outrage or fear or abject sorrow into argument and reason and unrelenting determination.
It did not, however, teach me how to steady the part of me that is still a little girl who adores her big brother.
The boy who snuck food to me when Mom put me on one of her extreme diets.
Who held Dillon Teager’s head under the water at the pool until he apologized to me for stealing my rainbow cone.
Who sat on my bed one night, after I got a C+ on a sophomore comp essay, and kept me laughing with his corny jokes until I stopped crying.
I’m done with you. The words play on a loop in my head, like a verdict read aloud in a hushed courtroom. Final. Absolute.
He meant it. Or at least he thinks he did. As if our history could be wiped from the record with no notice, no appeal.
My first reaction is pure anger; how dare he walk away from the person who has always been on his side? It burns. That pain threatens to fold me, to make me softer than I need to be. For a moment, I let it.
Then I straighten my shoulders. If Luke has decided to cut me out, he’s misjudged me. I won’t beg. I won’t plead.
I will bring him to heel—not by breaking him, but by remaking the terms of our fight.
I will make him see what he’s abandoned: the steadiness I lend when everything else splinters, the clear mind that untangles chaos, the fierce stubbornness that gets us through crises.
I know him better than he knows himself.
I know his weak points, the soft places he disguises with sarcasm.
I will be unyielding, exacting, the sort of ally who will not be discarded like an inconvenient prop.
This is not petty revenge. He hurt me, yes, but only because he thinks I hurt him first. No, this is a lesson, a demonstration.
I will pull together the evidence of what I do, assemble it into a case he can’t ignore.
Then I will stand there and watch him realize the truth: he needs me.
When that recognition comes—when his jaw goes slack and whatever pride he’s clung to finally yields—I’ll be ready.
Not because I want him groveling, but because we are family, and you don’t split with family. You keep them close.
He’s not done with me. I love my brother, and he loves me back. I’ll prove him wrong. I’ve never lost a case.