Page 5 of Brazen Defiance (Brazen Boys #4)

Clara

G etting ready for breakfast is a new torture.

My fingers regained some of their dexterity after my bath, but one glance at my makeup kit and I know I’ll look like a clown if I try.

Trips watches this, then sends a voice message.

Three minutes later, Mattie’s throwing herself at me, her eyes glassy.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispers, somehow knowing that we’re staying quiet in here.

Looking over her shoulder, I meet Trips’ eye. His nostrils flare, and he picks up the puffer I found myself in. “I owe you a new coat, Sparkles,” he says, the blood-streaked parka like a dead animal in his hands.

“Whatever. Do you need help getting ready?”

I hold up my swollen hands. “I’m alive, but my hands haven’t gotten the memo yet.”

Mattie blinks fast, then looks over her shoulders at Trips. “You have secrets to share, middle-est brother mine. You spill, I’ll do Clara’s makeup and hair.”

She has me sit on the counter and gets to work, Trips leaning against the door jamb, the position so painfully ordinary my breath catches in my chest. Even if he’s wearing dark gray slacks and a pale blue sweater, something fancier than he’d ever wear at home, his posture aches in its normality.

But things aren’t normal. They’re anything but.

“I was fifteen,” Trips says, staring at the tape across his knuckles, tugging at the end of the wrapping. “I’d just gotten big enough to fight back.”

He doesn’t clarify. He doesn’t need to. Mattie and I wear matching masks of indifference, wanting the story without losing Trips.

“I thought I was invincible. I thought I was finally free. But it turns out that a backhand was just the easiest way to control me. Convenient. Always on hand. Pun intended, as Father would say. So, one night, I stayed out with friends. Just lived. No curfew. No rules. No consequences. Or so I thought.”

Mattie has me blot my lips, her mouth pressed in a thin line.

“When I got back, all the doors were locked. I couldn’t get into the garage.

Into the house. The pool house. The boathouse.

Everyone had been instructed to ignore me.

To pretend I wasn’t there. The windows were locked, too.

I yelled. I pounded on door after door, window after window, but nothing happened.

Walking down to the cottage felt like overstepping, but I was freezing.

And even there, no one would let me in.”

Mattie leaves the room, coming back with the chair and motioning me to sit in it sideways so she can do my hair. Trips waits until we’re settled to continue with his story.

“I was only wearing a sweatshirt. It was February. Brutal wind. And with every try at getting inside, I got colder and colder. I reached out to my friends, hoping someone could come get me, but they were all already asleep. I didn’t hear from them until the next morning.

Mary found me on the step of the back door.

You know how she used to work at that resort up north?

She’d had to deal with hypothermia cases, keeping people stable until the ambulance could get to them.

So she knew what to do. And we both knew not to go to the hospital.

Father was smug for the rest of the week.

I didn’t push him again after that, at least for a while.

I was lucky I didn’t die. Honestly, he’d probably have been happy to be rid of me. ”

Mattie yanks out last night’s pins from my hair and they catch on my curls. “Father was always the worst to you. Trevor too, but always you. I don’t understand why I’ve been fine.”

“I think your mom has something on him. She was nice to me in the beginning. But then she withdrew after she had you. Both of you have been a lot safer than I was. Than my mom or Trevor were.”

Mattie sighs. “I figured it was something like that. But you don’t think it will hold until I’m an adult, do you?”

“Has he had you join him for any of his business meetings?”

“Yeah. A bunch of creepy old men and me. Sometimes their creepy sons, too.”

Trips just looks at Mattie and she groans behind me. “Fine. I get it.”

“You can’t fall off the wagon, Mattie. Not yet. You’ve got to get out of here first. No trouble, nothing for Father to hold over you. I fucked up. But you don’t have to.”

“What about Clara? I don’t see you giving her the same warnings.”

I clear my throat, not wanting to be tossed in the middle. But she needs to know. “I already fucked up. He’s got things to hold over me.”

Mattie’s search for pins halts. “What kind of hold?”

Trips reaches into his pocket, tossing the ring box to Mattie. But he’s watching me. His eyes are a dreary gray, no light shining from within. No fight. No nothing. The fire isn’t banked. It’s simply gone.

More tears—the leaky faucet kind—threaten, but I hold them back as Mattie gasps behind me. Her arms are heavy against my exhausted body as she holds me tight. “Oh my God. Wait, but Father did this?”

She pulls back, glancing between Trips and me. “You didn’t choose this.” Her shoulders slump, and for the first time, she looks like a girl, not a force of nature. A devastated girl, hands twisting in her skirt.

“No. We didn’t,” Trips says.

“If he can do this to you…”

“Then he can do it to you, Mattie. No mistakes. Make something of yourself. Escape.”

She tilts her head back, staring at the ceiling, blinking fast. “You promised we’d both get out,” she hisses, her fingers tracing the underside of her eyes, keeping her makeup from running.

“We can’t always get what we want, Sparkles.”

She whips around, charging Trips, slamming her fist into his face.

He could have dodged. He could have caught her hand.

I’ve seen him fight before. I’ve trained with him, I suppose.

But he doesn’t flinch, just lets her fist knock him in the jaw, his eyes closing for a moment.

Just a moment to hide from the pain before him, before forcing them open again.

Like he needs to see his penance. See his mistakes.

“You promised,” she whispers, looking up at him. And he folds her into a hug, holding her tight. I feel like I shouldn’t be here. Like I’m seeing something private. Something Trips would never want known outside of this random guest bathroom on his father’s estate.

He cares. So much. And there’s fuck all he can do about it.

His father had been a specter before. A monster in the night. A lever I tried to pull this fall to get Trips free from jail.

I released this monster when I thought I was making a bargain with a strict but reasonable man.

Two monsters set upon the people I care about most. One fully mine. One shared.

Both willing to tear us apart, however they can.

Trips meets my eyes over his sister’s shoulder. There’s no hope there. None.

He’s as good as told his sister that he’s given up. He belongs to the monster now.

I shift my weight, and the ring box brushes against my thigh. Picking it up, the setting flashy and girlish, I realize I belong to the monster now, too.

How do we escape a trap built just for us?

What am I going to tell Walker, RJ, and Jansen?

How can we break free when Trips has given up? When the fighter has ceded victory? When the stakes are so damn high?

How the hell do I fix this?