Sweet Ache

“Can’t be too clean since Dad’s dead, right choirboy?”

We circle like caged dogs waiting for the chance to rip each other apart. We’re purposely trying to hurt each other, and it’s going to do nothing good for our relationship but fuck if it doesn’t feel good to let it all out right now. To hurt someone else for a change rather than sit back and take it.

“Clean is something you know nothing about,” I grate the words out. “What’s your drug of choice now? Coke? What’s next? Heroin, so you can really fuck up our lives?”

“People are going to hear you. Calm the fuck down—”

“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down when it’s my goddamn ass on the line! Let them hear me!” I yell at the top of my lungs. “You afraid for them to find out? Huh? Are you?” I goad him. “Then do what you fucking promised. Clean yourself up! I’m taking the fall for you this one time, Hunt, but no more. I’m done. You’re my own flesh and blood, man, but this is bullshit.”

“Figures. You get all high-and-mighty this year with your recording contracts and your whores … think you’ve proven yourself to the world and yet the only thing you’ve proven to me is that you’re a selfish bastard just like he was. Like father, like son.”

His words cross the short distance between us and slam into me like a battering ram. In that split second I don’t register that I know he’s just taking a potshot to shut me up from calling his bullshit on the carpet. I don’t process anything except my fist cocked back and the rage screaming through me to take the shot, do the one thing I want so badly but know will do nothing to ease the pain in my soul.

Make me be just like him.

“Can’t do it, can you?” He taunts me, wants me to hit him so that he has something else to hold over my head.

My arm trembles with the rage I feel inside. At him. At Dad. At Mom. At Quinlan for looking at me with those eyes that I don’t deserve looking at me. At fucking everything.

I see a flicker of regret glance through Hunter’s eyes. And that tiny show of our connected DNA pulls me back from the brink because I fear that I have so much rage pent up inside me, if I hit him I won’t be able to stop.

And you can’t undo harm you’ve done to your family. I know this because I’m living proof. I can’t undo what our dad did; I can only try to make it better.

Goddamn higher road. Taking it is bullshit when some days I’d rather drive off the edge.

My heart’s pounding with rage and my head doesn’t want to be filled with regret I can’t take back, so I lower my arm. I’ve gotta get out of here. Got to get some fresh air and have a few beers to calm the fuck down. And then call Quinlan to try to explain why I said what I said.

“We’re done here, Hunt.” I put my hands out in front of me to tell him I don’t want to do this anymore because I still sense his rage.

“I haven’t used since that night.” His voice is quiet, resigned, and laced with the only apology I think I’ll ever get from him.

I nod my head in acceptance of his confession, but know that with Hunter his regret is fleeting and it’s only a matter of time before he moves on to resent something else. Time and again he’s proven this truth so I take what I can get when I can get it.

“She’s waiting for me,” I say with a lift of my chin toward the exit, keeping pretenses up. “I’ve got to go.”

We’ve been arguing for so long, she might not still be there. I glance down at my phone to see how long it’s been.

Oh fuck. The texts read urgent from Westbrook. I turn to Hunter.

“It’s Mom.”

Chapter 20

QUINLAN

“I don’t need your shit, Colton.” I roll my eyes and flop back on the couch, phone still at my ear when all I want to do is pretend I have a bad connection and hang up. I love my brother dearly but on top of the crap day I’ve had, I don’t need his two cents over him finding out about my date with Luke.

I ignore my line beeping another incoming call from Hawkin for what feels like the hundredth time since I left the seminar today. I opened up and he shut me down. I don’t want to think about it or the sting from my dashed hopes and the emotions I sat thinking about during the damn lecture while all the while he was thinking about Delta Sig girl. My eyes burn with tears I refuse to shed because this is on me and ignoring my damn mandate for casual only.

“Q, you’re obviously upset, you won’t tell me why, which means it’s over a guy, and to top it off I find out you actually went on a date with the dickwad? I mean two and two—”

“Does not equal four,” I say, exasperated. “It’s nothing. No one. I’ve already moved on.” Like hell I have but he doesn’t need to go into big-brother mode more than he already has.

“Fucking women,” he mutters, causing me to laugh. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

The sincerity in his tone makes me smile softly at that side very few get to see to his hard-assed demeanor. “Yes. I promise,” I tell my brother.

“You’d tell me if it wasn’t, right? I don’t need an excuse to kick Luke’s ass but it wouldn’t hurt either.”

Testosterone much? Jeez. “Colton! He was nothing but a gentleman.”

“Okay, okay. Just tell me one thing,” he says. “Is the asshole you’re upset over a racer?”

The laugh comes freely now at his relentless and inherent dislike of Luke Mason. Hawkin’s voice fills my mind despite the pang it causes. Rocker trumps racer. “No. A musician,” I deadpan.