Page 63 of Anger Bang
“Look at her. Look at you. Look at you looking at her,” Dex practically yelled. “Are you such a self-sabotaging jackass that you’ll let your fear dictate the rest of your life even if it means losing Thea?”
The loop of them smiling at each other played over and over. He could have watched it forever, but he finally made himself glance away. “I never had her.”
“Really, asshole?” Dex threw his phone back down on the couch in disgust. “It sure doesn’t seem like that to anyone with the ability to see past their ego.”
Heat blasted through Kade. “It’s not ego.”
Dex looked like he was about to yell again, but then he let out a long sigh. His shoulders loosened. His face relaxed. The tension visibly ebbed out of him.
“You’re right. It’s not ego.” Dex shoved his fingers roughly through his hair and gave his brother a pitying smile. “It’s fear. You did what you did because you were scared of what was happening between you two. And now you’re sitting here like some asshole who can’t stop feeling sorry for himself because deep down you think if you don’t go after her then you don’t have to worry that she’ll leave you someday.”
Kade didn’t flinch. Instead, he went into lockdown mode, shoving every thought and emotion down so far that it wouldn’t break the surface for a million years. And once he was ice all the way through, breathing normally, heart rate steady, molars ground down enough that he was going to have to make an appointment with his dentist, he looked at his brother and shrugged.
“Oh my God, Kade,” Dex said, back with the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you almost yelling. “Welcome to real life, assface. Sometimes people leave. Sometimes they stay. You don’t always get exactly what you want. Grow up.”
“Like you?” Kade asked, matching the not-shouting energy. “I should become the kind of guy who gets married for work reasons?” He stepped forward, getting right in his brother’s face. “Yeah, come talk to me about my shit when yours doesn’t reek to high heaven.”
That’s when the punch should have come, and Kade was ready for it. Hell, he would have welcomed the pain and the distraction of it. But there wasn’t one.
Dex sat back down on the couch and dropped his head into his hands. “It’s not just for work.”
“What?” Kade chuckled dismissively. “You actually saying youloveJackie?”
When his brother didn’t say anything, didn’t even bother to flip him off, Kade realized what his brother had been telling him this whole time.
Dex ordering Kade to take it easy on Jackie. Dex agreeing to this absolutely batshit bizarre eighties-themed wedding. The way his brother had put everything else in his career on hold so he could get married. The fact that Dex had been insistent on having their mom here and trying to broker some kind of reconciliation.
For all of the muscled-up dude-bros Dex always ended up playing on TV, the man was a soft touch who really believed in happily ever afters.
“Holy fucking shit,” Kade said, sitting down on the couch by his brother. “You love Jackie.”
“Only for the past ten years,” he said, sitting up and grabbing his phone. He didn’t start scrolling—it was as if he just needed to have something to anchor him. “You know we dated back in the day. Well, she broke it off and said she had to concentrate on her career. I went out and got shitfaced out of my mind. Me! Can you fucking believe it?”
Kade could and he couldn’t. Yeah, neither of them drank much after watching their mom fall into bottle after bottle, but that didn’t mean Dexneverhad a drink.
“I just couldn’t function,” Dex went on, his misery apparent. “And after that night, I still couldn’t function but I had the mother of all hangovers. That went away, but I never got over how I felt about her.” He sighed and collapsed back against the couch cushions. “So when the publicist suggested this, I figured it was as close to the real thing with her as I’d ever get, so I went for it.”
And like the jerk he was, Kade had never realized. He’d left the one person in the world he was supposed to take care of alone, in spirit if not physically. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Dex.”
His brother let loose with a sad excuse for a self-deprecating laugh. “I just know there’s no one else for me but Jackie. And if this is as much of her as I get, then I’ll take it. And maybe all of those feelings she had for me back then will return.” He shoved his hands through his hair hard enough that it was standing up. “I’m not gonna pressure her or be some kind of dickhead, but strong lifelong marriages have been built on less. We already like each other as people, we’re compatible, and we respect each other.” He glared at Kade, jabbing a finger in the air near his face. “And don’t fucking say it. I already know. I’m a fool for believing.”
“You’re an idiot,” Kade said with a shake of his head, “but not for this.”
His brother flipped him off. “Fuck you.”
“No, I mean it.” God, Kade couldn’t believe he was about to say this—seriously, his stomach was lurching—but it was the ugly, awful truth. “As someone told me today, opening yourself up to love—or even the possibility of it—is some next-level badassery.”
Kade’s fuck-you energy went down a few notches.
Dex blinked up at him. “Thea told you that?”
Kade shook his head. “Mom.”
Both sat there in silence and let that one word fill the space between them.
They were two guys with the same scar. But Kade had spent his life guarding his, picking at the scab. And eventually chose to make a living writing about tragedy and those who overcame it. Now he knew why—he wanted to understand how they’d survived, moved on from the betrayal and pain, like his brother.
Dex had cared for his scars, letting them heal and become a part of himself—but not the definition of who he was. Looking at his brother, Kade realized that while he’d taken on his role as the oldest without question, guiding and educating Dex as best he could, there were quite a few things he could probably learn from his younger brother.
