Page 77 of Burn For Me

“It’s your energy.”

I raised an eyebrow at my eleven-year-old brother. Where the hell did he learn this crap? My energy? Please, spare me. My energy was just fine.

“You’ve been hanging around Mrs. Giltbert and her lady friends too much, bro.”

He rolled his eyes at me like I was the one being unreasonable, but his face softened as he looked down at the dirt floor of the barn.

“I can’t lose you, D. You’re all I have. We are all that each other has, and I know you want to go after mum and dad. I hear you mumble about how much you want them to die in your sleep.”

I stood up straight. I hadn’t realized I talked in my sleep, let alone about our parents.

“What do I say?”

Asher shrugged his shoulders, doing that thing where he didn’t really say anything.

“Just stuff. You say they need to go, that dad needs to pay.” Asher shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “And then you started acting all weird at the store, and I just know you’re not going to let this go.”

“How can you expect me to let what they did to us go?” I stepped away from my brother, my anger boiling to the point where I had to haul off and punch the wooden post that supported the rafters. The immediate bite of pain gave me a sliver of relief from the anger and pain churning in my chest.

“We’re living out of a barn, Asher. Look around. We are in constant fear that they will find us, and you know that will not go well. Look at my face.” I pointed to the ragged scar that lined the right side of my face and officially classified me as a freak. “It’s been two years since this happened, and the pain in my face is still like it just happened. I can’t take the chance of ending up back there, Asher. I just can’t. This spot may not be fancy, but we have food and a roof and a little bit of money.”

“But, that’s my point. If you run off and punish mum and dad, something could happen to you. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want us to be separated. The Giltberts are nice. I don’t want to leave.”

Walking forward, I placed my hands on Asher’s shoulders.

“That’s not going to happen, Ash. We have too much unfinished business.”

* * *

The wind picked up, and somewhere, a wind chime tingled softly. I slowly lifted my head, not sure where I’d walked to until my eyes landed on my childhood home. I stood in the shadows of the large tree in the front yard, my eyes fixed on the warm glow coming from the window. The home had been re-built and looked brand new with its fresh paint job and the flowers hanging from baskets over the small stoop, but all I saw when I looked at it was the hell it had been and the charred skeleton it had become.

My nose flared as I pictured my father stomping across the living room floor, his hand cracking my mother across her face as I ran into the room screaming to try and stop him. All I’d ever wanted was to protect myself and my brother, but I’d loved my mother until I was old enough to understand that she chose to stay. She chose to remain in that fucking hell even though my father hurt me in front of her. After realizing that, I could no longer find love for her. Maybe that was unfair, maybe she’d been too scared. Fuck, for all I knew, maybe she even tried to leave, but her unsuccessful attempts didn’t stop the broken bones and the sleepless nights. It certainly didn’t stop the crack of my father’s belt or…. I touched the side of my face that was the visible reminder of the scars that marred my soul. No, she got what she deserved.

Asher was the only person that meant everything to me, and he’d turned me in to the cops. He had me arrested and carted away for looking out for him. Why didn’t he just stay in the barn like he was told? Why did he have to follow me? Why did he fucking care what I did to them? How many times had I protected him from being turned into the same kind of punching bag that I’d been? They were evil people, and they deserved worse than what I’d given them. My hand balled into a fist, and my knuckles cracked with the force of the squeeze.

The breeze picked up again, and a fluttering piece of newspaper rolling along the sidewalk tumbled toward me before fluttering straight into my leg. I stared down at the large page as it clung to my leg before reaching down to pull it off so it could continue on its way, but as I did, a glimpse of an image caught my attention.

Standing up straight with the black and white paper in my hand, I stared at the full-page picture of one of the warehouse fires. The fire was in full burn, the flames reaching up into the sky, caught like that for all time by the photographer that had snapped the shot. It was beautiful.

However, it was the back of a man wearing a firefighter’s jacket in the foreground that drew my attention. The man was pointing toward the flame, his face mostly hidden from the camera, but the jacket clearly read ‘A. West.’ My heart pounded hard in my chest as I took in everything about the man and knew with certainty that it was my brother. It struck me as ironic that I’d set that fire, and here he was putting it out.

Still trying to stop me, little brother?

Maybe Dora was right. Maybe it was time for me to arrange a little family reunion. My gaze found the yellow front door of the home that used to be my personal hell and then looked back down at the image of Asher. Folding the piece of paper, I put it in my pocket.

Yes, a reunion was in order, but I didn’t think it was going to be what Dora had intended.

Tick Tock, the mouse ran up the clock. It had taken more time than I’d ever imagined it would to find my younger brother. He didn’t have a listed number or address, and I’d resorted to starting small fires to see where he’d show up in the Miami area. My luck changed a month after the fires Chase had commissioned. Over a hundred had died in those fires, and they were calling it the worst tragedy the city had ever seen. It was only second to the asylum fire in casualties.

I’d followed the fire truck back to the station where he worked, and now I had nothing to do but patiently sit along a side street and watch. I wanted to know everything about him—what he ate, and where, who his friends were, where he lived, and even who he fucked. The key to hurting him the way he’d hurt me was not simply killing him but ripping everything he loved out from underneath him.

I wanted to create a fault line in his world and rip out his heart like he’d so callously done to me. He was my brother, yet for nine years, he never even came to see me. He wrote me off like a terrible secret and moved on with his perfect life. Here he was now, a firefighter focused on once more destroying the thing I loved. I could almost imagine the pained wails of the flames as the water crushed them out, and if it was even possible, I hated him a little more at the thought.

He emerged from the fire station, his golden hair picture-perfect even after a long shift. Was there anything my brother couldn’t do? The old annoyances from our childhood surfaced with a vengeance as he got into a fancy pickup truck that glistened a bright cherry red in the late afternoon sun. As Asher pulled out of the parking lot, I crept the old truck out from the shade of the side street I’d been waiting in to follow along.

The game of cat and mouse was about to begin. There was some business you couldn’t leave unfinished.