Page 82 of Sweet Ache (Driven 6)
“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.
But fuck does it feel good.
“I’ll take care of him,” he says. And I know he will; it’s just that I feel guilty for making him. Fuck that, Hawke. Fuck the guilt. It’s not on you.
Well, shit. Guess there’s not going to be any calm before the next storm. I look at my brother and sigh.
I hit the road, drive for what feels like hours. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m looking to find, but as long as I keep moving, my past can’t catch up to me.
At least it’s a good idea in theory because I can’t outrun this shit. The stuff I want to and the stuff I don’t want to.
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I end up the one place I used to go to be alone, to think, and as I stare at the Hollywood sign from my seat on the grass at the Griffith Park Observatory, I love the feeling that I’m this little person in this big world. The idea comforts me some. The notion that on the grand scale of things my problems are minute. Someone out there has it way worse.
And no one expects a rock star to be here so with my hat pulled low on my head, I’m able to disappear.
I stare down below to the city where as a little boy, scared and traumatized, I wondered how all of the dreams inside my head could ever see the light of day when I felt like I had the responsibility of the world on my small shoulders. But I did. And I made it.
So why do I feel like I’m still not enough? For my brother? To make my mother better? For Quinlan to even want me beyond the killer sex we have? For the fans who scream and sing my lyrics like they live them when they have no fucking clue the meaning behind those words and the damage within from them.
I scrub my hands over my face, needing a drink, craving an ice-cream cone, and wanting the feeling of Quinlan’s arms wrapped around me as she silently sits there and just is with me.
My mind veers to Hunter. To the look on his face as I threw my punch. I push the guilt away, hold on to my gut-check rationalization that he deserved it, and realize that’s the trouble I’m having here. Going with my gut versus going with the bullshit promises I’ve lived by forever.
My stomach churns and my head feels like Gizmo’s banging the hell out of it with his sticks. I shove up off the grass, needing to get the fuck out of here, my heart and head in conflict, and for the first time in forever I dare to think what could happen if my heart finally won for once.
