Page 264 of Silver Sweet

He must have, but I check anyway. I turn the knob and pull the door open quickly.

Then I seehim. My heart collapses through the bottom of my chest. My hand falls to my side, the pizza sliding onto the floor.

Birdie has a foot planted on the toilet lid, his boxer-briefs rolled up to his groin. His Zippo lighter out, a flame licks the inside of his bare thigh. His eyes shoot to me in panic. “Get the fuck out,” he chokes, shoving a hand at me.

It dawns on me he’s not even attempting to close the goddamn lighter.

“Birdie.Stop.Fucking stop.” I push my way farther into the bathroom and start wrestling him for the lighter.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” He’s screaming. We’re elbowing. Shoving. Emotional agony infiltrates the sharp angles of his face. “Phoenix!”

“No, Bird…” We pull each other to the ground, halfway out of the tiny bathroom. The lighter slips through my fingers and skitters across the floor. But it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re all soft fury and jagged pain. Our fight moves to the hall, and we wrestle, choke, pin, and slam.

He’s kicking me in the kidney, and I finally force him into a headlock. When I pull his shirt over his head, he just collapses forward against me. A sob rumbles through his body, and I wrap my arms around my little brother. Tears scald my eyes.

He clutches tight to my back like he’s holding on, and then after a second, he shoves a hand at my chest, pushing me away. He tugs down his shirt, his mop of hair grown out to be unrulynow, and he ignores the messed strands to smear two hands down his face. “Great talk,” he says sharply. “You can go now.”

“We didn’t talk, asshole,” I snap.

He works his jaw, trying not to cry. His shoulders lift into a shrug, his nose flares, but he doesn’t break eye contact from me. “You don’t think I hear you in my head?” His voice cracks. “My big brother, pulling me into his arms,beggingme to stop hurting myself. Man, I hear you. I see you. You’re seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Same story, different day.”

My chest hurts with the pressure compounding. My muscles stiff. My heart shattering. “Birdie,” I choke. “Let’s try to change the story.”

He laughs as his face cracks. “Okay.” It’s a weak, helpless, defeatedokay. He waves a hand at me as tears slip out the corners of his eyes. “And are you changingyourstory? Or are you still sleeping the same amount as a newborn baby?”

I sniff hard, trying to stop the emotion from barreling into me. “I get it. I’m a hypocrite?—”

“A big one.”

I glare at him. “Don’t fucking turn this on me. You’reburningyourself.”

My gaze falls to his inner thighs. He pulls down his boxer-briefs, realizing they’re still rolled up. Scars mar his skin. Some pale, others brown, and the new one is a nice deep red. I’d kill the person who hurt him, and it terrorizes me that I can’t. That I could never.

Birdie can’t stop crying now. He keeps running his hands over and over his face. His skin turns redder. His eyes more swollen.

I want to bring him into my arms, but I know he’ll shove me away.

It’s beensolong since he’s done this. The last time was years ago after the collapse of Sophomore Summer, when our dreamswere shattered by my violent act. He’d hated that I refused to be in a band again, but I promised I’d be by his side as crew. I promised I’d always be with him.

Our dreams have been the same since we were teenagers in a garage, letting rock sew up the torn pieces of our souls.

In my head, if we ever got big, we’d do it together. Our parents would have no choice but to be happy for both of us. But then I quit Nothing Personal’s crew. I joined The Carraways. And the fact that they gave me approval and withheld it from Birdie in the very same fucking breath—I know it’s messed him up.Bad.

How do I fix this?

I need to fix this.

“Just fucking talk to me, man,” I beg. “If the Klonopin isn’t working anymore?—”

“I had to stop taking it.”

My heart quits beating. “You what?”

He wipes his runny nose with his shirt. “I was doubling my dosage, Phoenix. What the fuck do you want me to do? It’s a benzo. I’m not getting addicted to that shit.”

“So get on a different med.”

“No,” he growls angrily. “Youknowhow long it took me to find something that didn’t wreck me with side effects. I’m not going through that torture again. I’m taking a break from the Klonopin so I don’t get hooked, and then I’ll get back on it.”