Page 140 of Darling Venom
“Don’t. Don’t you dare hit me with this bullshit, Tate. He did. And in it, he told me that the manuscript is mine and he’d like me to finish it. Actually, he challenged me to finish it.”
“That’s a cute story you’ve concocted, but it’s time for bed.” I lifted my bare wrist, pretending to check the time. “I’m sure curfew’s almost up. Run along now.”
The look she shot me, of disappointment and something else, something more ferocious, rocked me. Not enough to make me relent. But enough to make me reconsider her words as truth.
Actually, at this point, I was sure she was telling the truth.
I just didn’t want to accept it.
I watched her pull something out of her pocket like you’d watch a car crash replay in slow motion.
Eyes transfixed. Heart putting in overtime. Adrenaline crackling.
My pulse ratcheted. Something like a giant boulder lodged itself in my throat. I couldn’t swallow it. Couldn’t do anything but stare at the envelope in her hand, inked with messy, bold, Kellan-shaped scribbles I instantly recognized.
After all, I’d spent half my weekends going through his shit.
Including the drawers that, up until his death, he’d never kept locked.
She parted her lips. I didn’t want her to say a single thing; I wanted her to say everything. Strung out, I could only watch her lips move.
“It was his dying wish, Tate.”
Car, meet crash.
I must have staggered back because she was past the threshold in a flash, shutting the door behind us and locking it. I kept my eyes fixed on that thing in her tiny fist. She yanked the letter back when I reached for it.
I eyed it.
Then her.
Then it again.
“Tell you what,” I began, like a sleazy used car salesman about to offer her the deal of a lifetime. “Let’s do a little trade-off. I’ll give you the manuscript if you give me the letter.”
“No.”
I raised a brow. “No?”
This is so not the time to realize you’ve never heard that word from a woman, asshole.
“No.” She had a voice of steel and the spine to match it. “Here’s how this is gonna go. You’ll give me the manuscript because it’s what Kellan wanted. And I won’t be giving you this letter because Kellan wouldn’t have wanted me to.”
She said it as if she had some ownership over Kel that I didn’t. It struck something fiercely protective inside me. Or perhaps plain stubborn.
This wasn’t only about refusing to relinquish power to Charlie. It was about refusing to relinquish power over my brother.
“It’s a little bold to be making claims about what Kellan would have wanted.” Strong words, considering my resolve dissolved by the second. Thread by fucking thread. “For someone who was ‘just friends’ with him, you sure seem to know a lot about him that his own family doesn’t.”
I set myself up.
Felt it as soon as I said it.
Kellan’s family didn’t know a thing about him because we were an awful family. Trapped in our own self-absorbed bubbles. Incapable of making time for him. In fact, it said more about Terry and me than it did about Kel and Charlie.
I knew why I said it. I hated myself for being unable to let it go. Because, in the end, no matter the fuss I put up about not giving a damn about her, it mattered to me what Charlotte Richards had been to Kel.
Charlie could have taken my sentence and run with it, but she had the decency not to. Instead, she produced a letter from an envelope.
