Page 195 of Darling Venom
Tell me you had no idea Kellan wanted to kill himself years before it happened.
Tell me you weren’t careless enough to say nothing.
Something in me couldn’t chance unearthing the truth.
I swung the door open. “Congrats on the promotion, Charlie.”
I left, slamming it shut behind me.
It was pouring. One of those hot, sticky summer rains that wet everything from head-to-toe, outside-in.
I looked down at my feet. At the pair of shoes I’d grabbed in my rush. Slides. And now my socks were soaked on top of the shit show that was today.
I sat on my front porch once I realized I hadn’t grabbed my car keys in my rush out of the house. Walking in this weather, even a block away to a busier area to hail a cab, would be asking to slip and crack my head open.
A lovely prospect, but I needed to be on call for two of my patients in the last stretch of their pregnancies.
My mind drifted to Kellan.
The first time I realized my brother had a serious problem, it’d manifested in a blowout fight. I filled the toilet with enough drugs to take down an elephant. Kellan came home in time to witness me flushing his contraband down the porcelain throne in his en-suite bathroom.
He punched me.
I took the swing like a champ.
I could’ve brought him down, easy. He was tall and lanky; I was taller and built.
But I didn’t.
I let him take everything out on me. His very own living, breathing punching bag. Mostly because I deserved it for allowing him to develop a goddamn drug habit under my own roof.
I didn’t, however, take into account how wired he’d be. Pupils so dilated, black eclipsed the white, blue, and gray.
Kellan never stopped. Even when I began to resemble the Brundlefly. It finished when I fought back for once.
And I never fought with Kel.
Not like this.
I used my words. Underhanded methods. Overhanded methods. Revoked his allowance. Gave him a curfew. Issued a bedtime. Hired a shady-as-hell hacker in Bushwick to place a tracker on his phone.
You name it.
But I never, ever laid hands on him.
Until that night.
I wrapped my arms across his shoulder and chest, hugging him like a seatbelt. Then, I lifted him, dropped him to his knees, and hovered above him from behind until he stopped thrashing.
Hannah returned home from work to a symphony of thumps and ran into the bathroom screaming.
I ended up in the ER for stitches.
Nine of them, to be exact.
Still have a scar just past my hairline as a shiny trophy.
And Hannah became obsessed with the idea of shipping my little brother off to military school. She wanted to wash her hands of him.
