Page 13 of Brazen Defiance (Brazen Boys #4)

Trips

M idday orgies should be banned. I just wanted a damn sandwich, but the sounds echoing down the hallway ruined my appetite.

Either that or my guilt did.

The movie paused in the living room tells me a little more about what they’ve been up to. But they obviously abandoned it for a better activity.

Lucky bastards.

I slump back upstairs, at a loss for what to do. How the fuck can I fix this?

I can’t. I know that. And it’s fucking me up inside. Outside too, probably.

She almost died.

And my dad has his claws in her. In us all.

My face aches from where RJ decked me. Jansen didn’t talk to me the entire run yesterday. I can’t close my right fist, the swelling not helped by the exercise, and I know I broke something, the ache too familiar.

Walker will probably never talk to me again.

And Clara.

I can’t even look at her without seeing her blue in my arms. Her pulse nothing but a flutter at her throat. Unresponsive.

Almost gone.

And even then, I made the wrong choice.

My goddamn fear of my father endangering her further.

She almost died.

And I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t keep her safe. I did the exact opposite.

Always such a fucking failure.

The ring box is still on the coffee table, none of us willing to touch it. Poison. It’s all poison.

It’s all my goddamn poison.

Staring at my heavy bag in the corner of my room, all I want is to lose myself in mindless movement, but my swollen hands tell me how stupid that’d be. I couldn’t even hold on to my damn breakfast without a tray and a balancing act.

Stupid. Nothing but a pair of fists, and even those are useless right now.

I need to go to the doctor. I’ll probably have to have the bone set based on the way it burns beneath my skin. But Clara’s demanded we go two by two, like little toy elephants onto Noah’s Ark, and the only thing I have going for me right now is my promise that I’ll follow her damn rules.

I need to find another way to deal.

To not lose myself.

To learn to think with my goddamn head instead of whatever the fuck happens to my brain when I’m back at the Westerhouse estate. When I’m back in my father’s grasp.

If only those requests were simple, I might be able to do them.

But they’re not.

I set an alarm for an hour from now to go back downstairs and ask someone to go with me to the hospital.

Jealousy flares, but I tamp it down. I have no fucking right to be jealous that they’re down there with her and I’m up here alone.

Not one of them would have ever gotten within a goddamn mile of the level of fuck-up I did.

They can keep their damn heads, at least well enough to not kill the fucking woman they love.

Groaning, I flop back into my bed, my hand screaming when it’s jostled.

I deserve the pain. Because that thought is so damn bitter in its truth.

I was falling for her. Hard.

And I’ve ruined it.

I’d leave my hand busted if I could.

But even as a fucked-up, broken pair of fists, she needs me. She needs me to protect her, even if I’m shit at it.

My goddamn fists have always been my strength. The way I first tasted freedom from my father. The way I’ve protected women I don’t even know.

I’ll need them in one piece if I stand a chance at protecting the one I actually care about.

The one I might even love.

If only I hadn’t fucked it up so completely.