Page 43 of Enter if you Dare: Part Two

I start the engine again and turn onto the road, as this is getting us nowhere fast. We sit in silence for half an hour, and when he speaks, he says something I’ve been expecting.

“I need money.”

My stomach sinks; it’s always about money.

“How much?”

“A few thousand would get me started.”

I inhale and close my eyes for a second. Just one.

“Started with what?” I ask out of morbid curiosity.

“Find somewhere to live, clothes, food.”

“And drugs?”

His head jerks toward me. “Fuck you. But no.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then why bother saving me?” he says.

I have to ask myself that same question, but it boils down to the same thing every fucking time. “Because you’re my brother.”

He gives me half a smile. “Thought sharing blood didn’t make us family.”

“It doesn’t, but I also needed you to know that I wasn’t the kind of person to leave someone locked in a cage when I had the power to open it.” His smile disappears. “I didn’t save you because I have forgotten what you’ve done, or because I trust you, and I didn’t do it because I want you back in my life. I did it because your life was in my hands, and I needed to make a choice I could live with. That is the sole reason you being my brother saved you, and I can live with that.”

“So this is all about you?”

I nod. “For once, yes.”

He sinks further into his seat, with nothing more to say because there is nothing he can ask from me he hasn’t already taken. The bus station is almost empty when we arrive. A cleaner pushes a mop across the tiled entrance, and a man sleeps curled up on a bench seat. The departure board flickers above the ticket window, with the first bus of the morning scheduled for a couple hours from now.

Rowan peers through the windscreen. “This is where you’re leaving me?”

I open the glove box and pull out my emergency cash, which is tucked into an envelope. There is a little over six hundred dollars, so I separate five hundred and hold it out to him.

His gaze drops. “That’s it?”

My final thread of patience snaps, and I pull the money back, Rowan’s hand following automatically.

“Valli, come on.”

“No,” I say firmly.

His hand drops. “What?” he asks in confusion.

“I was going to give you five hundred dollars, and the first thing that comes out of your mouth is that it isn’t enough.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. But I have nothing.”

“You have more than you deserve.”

His face darkens, but it isn’t like I wasn’t expecting it. This always happens when he doesn’t get his way.

“Don’t act like you’re better than me,” Rowan snaps.