Page 179 of Indecent Lies

“You had no direction, that’s the point. He was holding your place at the firm.”

“I told him, I told everyone I didn’t want to be an accountant and the ultimatum was if I didn’t, then I was no longer a Hunt.”

Oh, he was allowed back, occasionally. When his parents wanted to parade their Hunt boys around, to fake the proud platitudes and one-up their friends.

But he was never their son again.

“You left,” Mal bit through his teeth. Eyes so like his own were stormy. “You wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone, how do you think I felt about it?”

“I think you felt just fine, Mal. You didn’t support me. You stood with dad. I was your twin and you backed up every word he said.”

“Aremy twin. You are my twin, Tait, that shit doesn’t just disappear because you do.”

“I don’t think we’ve been brothers in a long time.”

The silence rippled and churned between them. The bar was busy, but it was as if the Hunt boys were the only two men there in a fraught stare off.

“Addy,” Mal announced and Tait felt the weight of that one name. “That’s when it changed between us.”

“Ancient history.”

“But it’s not though is it, brother? Not from your phone call last year, or recently.”

“So which is it, your wife the problem or you screwing over every MC in your path because I dared to go out on my own and not take you with me?”

He’d hit the nail dead on when Mal’s jaw tightened.

That was it, wasn’t it? Oh, he was so sure Addison was top of that fucked up list too, she’d been coming between them forever, but it was also because Texas had done something Malachai never could and that was standing up to their father.

He’d gone into the police force because their father said it was a respected status to hold. Mal then worked his balls off to get to a rank in the ATF, all to please daddy dearest. And the kicker was, their old man was rarely proud of anyone other than his own ego.

He was probably in a job he loathed, all for nothing.

A fist hit the table in a rare form of temper his brother usually kept under control. “Brothers, Tait. We are brothers and you left just like that.”

“You wouldn’t have come with me. You were too far under dad’s authority to think for yourself.”

“Oh, fuck you. And you’re sayingthislife is better than the one you had?”

“Damn right it is. I do what I want, when I want and with who I want, Mal. You wouldn’t have walked through the door with me even if I had asked.” The biggest reason was not their father. “You were already engaged by then, talking wedding menus and honeymoons.”

“You left long before you walked through the door.”

That was true.

He’d mentally checked out of that whole shitshow when he stopped allowing Addison to play him off against Malachai.

“Wow, you really are cleaning the cobwebs, brother,” Texas half smiled, taking the bottle to his lips.

He learned a lot from the Renegade Souls, not least of all to recognize when a person had an agenda, even when they went around the whole block first to get there.

This conversation had been a long time in coming between them.

Perhaps then they could finally move forward.

Texas didn’t want this weighing him down for the rest of his life.

For more than a decade, a divide parted them down the middle.