Sweet Ache

“What are you, Vince? My goddamn shrink?” I’m a little irritated and a lot annoyed. I don’t like having my hand forced, especially not in this arena … and he knows that so why is he trying to use a bulldozer to push home his point?

“Nope. Just looking forward to you getting that tat.”

“Not gonna happen. I keep my goddamn word—every fucking time—so don’t you go start questioning my integrity now.” Or what Q is beginning to mean to me. Fuck. Why did I agree to this bullshit bet?

“Oh so this thing with Quin is really all just about the bet then? Seems to me like things might have changed on your end.”

“No. Yes. Sure. You’ll get your proof at the party, then you can get the fuck out of my business, got it?” I shove up out of my chair, pissed and done with this conversation.

“Stubborn asshole, you’re missing the point!” he yells to my back as I walk out of the kitchen only to find Hunter sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. His presence stops me dead in my tracks, but it’s the smug look on his face, the twisting of his lips, and the amusement in his eyes that I need to worry about. They tell me that he heard way too much of our conversation. Fuck.

“So Quin was just a game, huh? One of your stupid band bets?” He doesn’t hide his thrill over the opportunity that just presented itself, and I hate myself for giving it to him. “I’m sure she’d love to hear about that.”

“Nah. Vince was just fucking with me,” I lie to my twin, knowing if I let on how much I don’t want that to happen, it’ll only spur him on to tell her. My mind starts rifling back over the rest of our conversation trying to figure out just how much Hunter heard. Goddamn it. The front door wasn’t Giz after all, it was Hunter and that means he might have heard everything.

“Yeah, right. Did you forget we have that twin thing going on?”

“Not very smart to bite the hand that feeds you, right, Hunt?” Vince says, stepping up behind me.

And fuck yes he says what I want to but sometimes it’s a helluva lot easier to just shut the hell up than to make Hunter go on one of his little tirades and fuck up my life some more. Sometimes it takes more of a man to turn the other cheek and appear to be a pussy than it does to plow my fist in his face and tell him I’m done.

But fuck if that time’s not coming sooner rather than later. A man can handle shit dealt to him over and over, swallow his pride and bite his tongue, but involve that man’s woman, and it’s on.

And I just called her my woman. FUCK! Can anything be more of a mess right now than my head? I scrub my hands over my face as Hunter finally answers Vince.

“Not biting anything,” he muses, smirk still in place. “Just making an observation is all.”

We all stare at one another, the animosity vibrating between the three of us and just once I want to see my brother and be happy. Just once I don’t want to question his appearance and try to figure out what he wants from me, how he’s trying to stab the knife in my back while reaching his hand out with the other.

When I step closer, I can see red in the whites of his eyes, notice the delayed response of his tracking, and bite back the reprimand on my tongue. “You high?” He stares at me like he’s offended I asked. Is he fucking serious? “Answer me,” I demand through gritted teeth.

“So a party, huh?” he says, ignoring my question and ratcheting up the tension. “That ought to be fun.”

“You using, Hunter?” I ask again, the straw slowly breaking. My hands fist at my sides and I’m a millisecond from grabbing the front of his shirt and throwing him the fuck out of the house.

“Naw, man. Just drunk and wanting to party a bit myself, but I seem to be outta cash. Can you help a brother out?”

“Fucking unbelievable.” Vince snorts behind me.

“Don’t you have somewhere else you need to be right now, Vinny?” Hunter sneers at him.

“Nope. He lives here. You don’t,” I say to cut off his power play as well as his drunk tough-guy routine. “How’d you get here, Hunt?” I ask, emotion roiling inside me as I see his keys on the floor by his feet.

“Can’t a guy just visit his brother when he wants?” He laughs and it grates on every nerve I have right down to the very last one.

“You drove, didn’t you?” It seems we’re on the repeat-each-question-twice routine here and my patience is done.

He just throws his head back and laughs. “What’s so fucking funny, Hunter? A DUI?” Vince growls as my brother keeps laughing.

“It’s okay,” he says, holding a hand to his gut. “My brother will take the rap for me.”

And I snap. Every pent-up emotion I’ve had over the past few years, every ounce of hatred, resentment, guilt, balls up in my clenched fist and is the driving force behind it as it connects with my brother’s face in an unsatisfying crunch.

He goes down for the count with my first hit. His drunk ass is sprawled on the stairs and I’m so angry, so pumped full of hatred that I want him to wake the fuck back up so that I can keep going. My body is vibrating and my mind is a constant slide show of the years and all of the shit I’ve let him hold over me.

“It’s about fucking time,” Vince murmurs.

I rock back and forth on my heels before looking over my shoulder to find him wide-eyed and staring at me, asking me with the look if I’m all right with what I just did. And fuck yes, I am, and hell no, I’m not, all in the same damn breath. “I gotta get out of here,” I tell him, suddenly restless, unsettled that I’ve just gone against everything I’ve ever told myself I couldn’t do.