Page 70 of Between Brothers

“Ma,” Roy repeated.

Her gaze flicked to him apologetically and she opened her mouth. Quickly, before she could look away, he picked up a dry erase marker and scribbled without regard for her many events and reminders. The sloppy, thick, black print marking out some of the times and places, and no doubt leaving her on the verge of scolding him, until she read it.

Is my dad with him?

When the words seemed to catch her attention, he frantically followed it with a second line.

You have no way of knowing.

“Wh–? What was that you said…? Just a moment ago… Did you say…?” She suddenly seemed incapable of stringing a complete sentence together, and her lower lip quivered a bit.

“Damn it. I said my son is fucking dead. I don’t have time for the gossip mill, Penny. Just– Just fucking tell Roy to have his brother get at me. Now!”

All of the feel-good haze was sucked out of me, and I was plunged into a place that was far too icy to be the numbness that most people described when it came to shock.

I stood there, incapable of thought; my body immobile, while those words repeated and twisted in my mind until they became a solid, deafening sound.

The sound became a pain that ripped down my throat and poured from my eyes. I’d say the floor was sucked out from under me, but that’s not true. It caught me soundly. I failed, unable to escape the paralyzing uncertainty of whether or not I’d played right into their coup.

Roy had done everything short of swearing that Paxton would be okay, and yet…

He didn’t look surprised. It was his face that burned into my mind as I heard those words.

The guilt and regret.

He couldn’t fucking hide it. My body went limp, and I surrendered to the arms of a man that I no longer trusted.

I was desperate to let it all out. God help me, I wanted to cry my heart out on his shoulder and figure out a way to settle the score.

I wanted to make his brother and his father pay, but I was terrified that leaning on Roy was exactly what my father’s aspiring assassins wanted.

And if I was meant as some final knife in my father’s back, I had no way of knowing it.

I had no way of knowing who was real and who wasn’t anymore.

The only thing I knew was that I had to get away from Roy as soon as humanly possible. I had to get my phone out of my stash spot on the side of the passenger seat of that car.

I sucked in a shuddery breath and purposefully rubbed my arms while bringing my blurry, tear-riddled gaze to Roy. I widened my eyes all of a sudden and latched my fingers loosely around my wrist.

“No,” I exclaimed, allowing all my bottled emotion to fly out on a sob. I shot past him so violently it knocked him aside and scrambled for the shed. Thankfully it wasn’t locked.

“Kennedy,” I heard him on the stairs of the porch.

I didn’t stop, I ran to the car and snatched my phone, shoving it into the waistband of his jogging pants, before I let the tears flow and shoved my hand into the space between the backrest and the seat on the passenger side.

“What the fuck?” he breathily asked.

He was barefoot, still clad in only his boxers.

“I lost it,” I sobbed.

“Lost what?” He rushed forward.

“My bracelet. I was wearing my bracelet that Paxton gave me for my birthday last year.”

His mother’s sympathetic gaze might have made me feel bad, if the situation weren’t what it was.

“It’s okay. It’s just a bracelet,” I heaved, wiping my face with my hands. “I– I just need a minute. I’m gonna go wash my face.”