Rone
Judging from the way Jay pulled up in front of his house, left his truck running and the door flung wide open, he didn’t plan on staying long. He marched up the driveway like a bull ready to charge, chest heaving, blue eyes wide and wild, long, sandy blonde hair raked back, as though he’d shoved it back, away from his forehead a hundred times in distraction.
He didn’t bother with knocking. Not unless you counted the way a raised fist slammed into the front door hard enough to break it down.
Rone gave Jay a minute out there, hoping the physical violence done to his door would take some of the steam out of his friend. Not likely. He knew he should never have got involved with Heather. He’d kept himself in check for so long. For too long. His thin shred of self-control only lasted so long before it was torn away completely leaving him vulnerable and exposed. The fact that she felt the same way… they were both adults. They shouldn’t have to hide just because of Jay.
“I know you’re here, Rone! Let me inside, you bastard!”
With a long sigh, Rone finally opened up the front door. Time to face up to the music. He already knew how this was going to go. He just wasn’t sure if he’d walk away with one black eye or two.
He turned the door handle and stepped back. Jay rushed into the house with the force of a hurricane. His rage was so out of control that the veins on his forehead stood out. He was breathing raggedly, like he’d just run a marathon. The force of his anger hit Rone full blast. He took an unsteady step back.
“You know, we can talk about this rationally. We’re all adults here.”
“Rationally?” Jay snorted in disbelief. “You motherfucker!” His face screwed up further, his eyes narrowing to slits. “No, that isn’t right. You sisterfucker. How could you do it? The one person on earth I always told you was off limits!”
“Come on, Jay. This isn’t like what you think it is. I didn’t do this to fucking spite you or something.” Rone put out his hands in self defense and took a step back. “Let’s just grab a beer and go outside into the back yard and talk about things without all this rage. It’s making you distort the situation. You probably can’t even think clearly.”
“I don’t want a damn beer! I don’t want anything from you. You’re a liar. A betrayer. You took our friendship and you fucked it into the ground.”
“I’ve known you for twenty-one years. I never wanted to throw that away. You’ve always had my back. I don’t want that to change.”
“Then why the hell did you lay a hand on Heather? She’s my sister!”
“I’m well aware of who she is.”
“She said that she’s loved you since she was twelve years old! Were you touching her then too?”
“Of course not!”
“But you wanted to! I saw the way you looked at her, when she was older. You and every other guy out there. Predators all of you! It was my job to keep her safe, especially from people like you.” Jay’s eyes blackened dangerously.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Rone braced himself for the fight he knew was coming. If it came right down to it, he wasn’t going to hit Jay. It wouldn’t be right. You didn’t fight fire with fire or throw a match on gasoline. Maybe in his younger years he would have given as good as he got, but not now. Jay was equally matched. Just as tall and stocky and jacked as he was. Maybe after a few blows landed and weren’t returned, he’d get the hint and let up, but Rone wasn’t holding out hope.
“I’m going to make you pay and you’re going to stay the hell away from my sister. Our friendship is done. Done. If I see you at work again, it’s not going to be pretty.”
Rage choked up Rone’s throat. His stomach and chest caved in, as though Jay just landed a blow there. “I work there. We both do. I’m not just going to quit because you tell me I can’t come back. You’re not the damn owner.”
“I’ll tell everyone what you did. How you stab a man in the back. No one will want you there after.”
“Thanks. Much appreciated, Jay. Shows what a true friend you really are as well. But how would you know what it means to love someone? You’ve spent your entire life a coward, running from feeling anything, skipping from one chick to the next, moving on when things get real.”
“Fuck you, Rone.” Jay raised a fist, ready to strike and Rone knew he’d hit pretty damn close to the mark.
“What I did with Heather isn’t any of your business. She told you because she respects you, not because she had to. You’re not her keeper any longer. You don’t need to protect her from me. I would never, ever hurt her. Never.”
“You’ve already hurt her! Just by looking at her! You’ve already soiled her!”
And as if things couldn’t get any worse, right on cue, Heather burst through the door. She looked between the two of them frantically, breathing just as hard as her brother. Her eyes widened in a similar fashion and her nostrils flared as though she scented the rage thick in the air.
“Oh, this is just perfect!” She slowly crossed her arms as she composed herself. “A pissing contest right in the living room. Pretty much what I figured I’d walk into.”
Jay whipped around to face his sister. He looked like he was debating taking her arm and dragging her out of there before he came back to finish Rone off. Rone almost hoped he would. At least Heather would be safe then. He didn’t want her to have to witness either of them hurting the other.
Jay’s whole demeanor changed then. He sensed a new kind of warfare, one much more potent, had just been handed to him. Rone stepped back a pace, his heart clenching hard in his chest, bile splashing up into the back of his throat.
“Tell her,” Jay said menacingly, his voice deadly calm. “Tell her that you’re ruined. Tell her that you’re a wreck. Disgusting. Weak. Tell her that you’ve soiled her just by looking at her. Tell her that your filth rubbed off on her and she’s never going to be clean again.”
Heather’s arms tightened around her chest, as if to ward off the harsh words. Her face changed as she looked first at Rone, who must have looked like an absolute disaster at that point, and back to her brother, seething with rage. He looked like he was completely out of control. The vengeful side of him wasn’t anything Rone had ever seen before. It was ugly and frightening and even Heather stared at her brother like she didn’t know him.
“Jay, stop it,” Heather hissed. “Let’s just go. Right now.”
“Not until he tells you. Say it! Tell her what she doesn’t know! Tell her why you’re the one man she should never have been with!”
“Jay!” Heather’s voice had a pleading note in it. She stepped forward and tried to take her brother’s hand, but he shoved her away as though she was nothing but an annoying fly buzzing around his face.
“Tell her!” Jay screamed. His face turned an angry shade of red and his eyes nearly bulged out.
Rone was frozen in place, trapped between the horror of the past and the pain of the present. He wanted Heather in his future and the chances of that happening were growing increasingly slim. Everything he’d tried so hard to bury and forget, to lock away within the darkest part of himself, to move past, rose to the surface in a damn tidal wave. The pain sucked him under, hit him everywhere at once. The same, the anguish, the terror of the memories. The nightmares, the therapy sessions, the doctors he’d seen, it all came roaring back. It hit him straight in the gut and for a minute he thought he really was going to vomit, right there on the floor.
“Rone?” Heather slowly lifted her eyes and their gazes locked. He held his breath, anticipating utter disgust. The tenderness there nearly broke him.
“Not here,” he finally said thickly.
Jay shook his head. “If you won’t tell her, I will.” He turned to his sister, who began to tremble. Rone would have done anything to protect her and keep her safe. From him. From his past. “Do you know why Rone really stayed at our house for a month that summer? Why he was always around, always sleeping over? I’ll tell you, since he won’t. You deserve to know the truth. You should know who he really is, since you claim to care so much about him.”
“Stop it! Jay, let’s just go,” Heather pleaded. She reached for Jay’s hand again, but he pulled it out of her grasp.
“No. You need to know. Now.”
“It’s not your place to tell me, whatever it is. Rone said not now and it’s his past, whatever you’re going to talk about. So just stop. And walk out that door. Now.”
Rone had never heard such a commanding tone from Heather before. She might be tiny, but she was tough. Fiery, just like her brother, but in a completely different way. There she was, doing battle for him, standing up to her brother’s irrational rage. Rone was almost proud for a second, before Jay dashed that all away.
“His mother was a whore. Is a whore, I should say. She spread her legs for every man passing by.”
“Jay! That’s enough!” Heather snapped. It didn’t help. Nothing stopped the deluge of words.
“She dated guys that would beat the shit out of her. What did she care? She was always too doped up to care. Always drunk. Most of the time she wouldn’t even have food in the house. She didn’t give a shit that she had a kid. And that summer- the summer that Rone stayed for a month? It was because his mother was dating a fucking guy who liked to sneak into Rone’s room at night and-”
“I said that’s enough!” Though her brother had a good foot on her, Heather’s aim was direct. She somehow reached up and over and socked her brother right in the mouth that refused to shut up.
Jay let out a cry of outrage. He stared at his sister in shock, lower lip already swelling. Heather shook out her hand, which had to ache like hell and stared fiercely back. “Get out of here, Jay. Right. Now.”
She might as well have been talking to a brick wall. Her punch might have shut Jay up, but it ignited a whole hell of a lot of whatever had been keeping him back.
He went ballistic. Rone wasn’t prepared for that brick wall to come at him, charge right at him. One minute Jay was standing there, shoulders heaving, lip puffy and red, face distorted, and the next he was hurtling across the room.
His shoulder hit Rone right in the gut. Rone couldn’t have protected himself if he wanted to. He was caught completely off guard and was totally disarmed by everything Jay had just said.
He went down hard, crumpling under the force of Jay’s weight and momentum. Jay landed on top of him and didn’t miss a beat. He started swinging. Blow after blow. It was all Rone could do to get his hands out from under him to protect his face.
The punches landed, some off their mark, some savage and right on target. Rone didn’t even feel the pain, the adrenaline pumping inside of him was so strong. He shoved Jay off after a minute, rolling on the ground with him, trying to stop the tirade without actually having to land a punch himself.
Jay tore at him, swung and missed, swung and hit. Rone felt the blows, but he didn’t truly feel the pain. He heard the crunch of bone, tasted the acrid, metallic tang of blood in his mouth. They rolled and grappled and then Jay was on top again, landing another series of blows. Rone finally caught one of those flying fists and gripped it in his hand, twisting the wrist back so that Jay cried out.
“Jay! Stop!” Heather’s frantic cries echoed around him. Strangely enough, despite all the physical pain that was raining down on him, Rone felt none of it. What he did feel was horror. The horror that came from having his darkest secret bared so cruelly by a man he thought he could trust with his life.
Jay kept pounding. The blows landed over and over. He opened himself up, again and again, for Rone to land punches of his own, but he refused to do it. Not in front of Heather. Had she not been there, he still wouldn’t have done it. He and Jay once swore one of those oaths to each other, the kind ten year old boys take seriously, that they were brothers. They’d cut their thumbs with a jackknife and pressed the blood together.
Rone blinked past the blood trickling into his eyes. A shadowy form moved behind Jay. An angel? He couldn’t tell. Shit was getting real black real fast. The shadow grew larger and out of nowhere there was a crashing sound, a dull crack.
He wasn’t sure what had happened, but Jay rolled away. The sound of harsh breaths reached Rone’s ears, but he couldn’t be sure whether it was his or Jay’s or maybe even Heather’s.
The groan that came from his right was definitely Jay’s. There was a flash of movement as the other man slowly gained his feet.
“Did you just- hit me with a- lamp?” He asked his sister, incredulously.
Rone would have laughed if he could. He would have applauded Heather. Fearless. She was absolutely fearless. That’s the woman I love.
“Yes. Now get out, before I find something else to use on you. Jesus, Jay, look at what you’ve done! Rone is like a brother to you! He’s your friend! It looks like you’ve nearly killed him! Over what? This?” Her voice reached a hysterical pitch at the end that was nearly a scream. Rone couldn’t be sure, but he figured Heather was pointing at herself.
“I was just trying to protect you,” Jay panted.
“I never asked you to do that! I’m not a child anymore. I love you, Jay, I swear I do. You’re my brother, but right now, god, if I never saw you again, I’d be perfectly fine with that.”
Something, either Heather’s painful words or the brutal beating he’d laid out on Rone, finally took the wind out of Jay’s vengeful sails. He muttered something under his breath and stomped out of the room. The sound of the door slamming shut echoed through the house a few seconds later.
Move. Get up. It’s not as bad as it looks. Tell her. Rone groaned. He tried to roll over onto his side, to push himself upright. His back was screaming and it took him a minute to remember that he had a fresh tattoo back there which wasn’t taking kindly to the grinding it had taken into the hardwood floor.
Everything hurt. The adrenaline was wearing off far too damn fast and his entire body screamed in protest every time he even took a breath. He did a mental assessment of his ribs, his face, his chest, his arms, checking to see if anything was broken. He wasn’t sure about his nose or his cheekbones or even his jaw, but he figured his chest was probably just bruised.
When Rone tried to sway himself onto his side, blackness closed in on the edges of his already gray vision. He groaned again, trying to swallow back the rising tide of nausea that washed over him. God, even his toes hurt.
There was a movement around him and suddenly cool hands cradled his face. Heather’s delicate fingers slid under his hair and neck, supporting him.
“Oh god, Rone,” she whispered. “This is really bad.”
He tried to speak, but the only sound that came out was another long low moan. He swallowed and tried again. “I swear- it wasn’t- I never- let him do anything to me…”
Something wet hit his forehead. Wet and warm. Blood? His own? It wasn’t falling from the right angle though… And then, cutting through the confusion, the pain, the blackness, was the sound of Heather’s broken sobs. She was crying. Crying, for him. Her tears were falling on his face.
He wished he could open his eyes, but he couldn’t. They were rapidly swelling shut and the haze of gray refused to lift.
“Just stay here. I’ll get a wet cloth. There is so much blood in your eyes. Rone… god…”
He could tell Heather was starting to panic. He didn’t want that. He never wanted her to experience any kind of worry or sadness over him. He never wanted to hurt her. Ever.
Though it required a massive amount of effort, more effort than he had left in him, Rone finally shifted onto his side. He got his arm under himself and pushed up. Somehow, by some miracle, he ended upright, kneeling. The world tilted crazily and the blackness never left his vision.
Small hands curled around his aching shoulder. Heather. She was stronger than she looked, as she helped pull him to a standing position. Luckily they were in his living room and there was a couch nearby. She helped him stagger over to it. He sunk down heavily, feeling marginally better now that he’d been scraped off the floor.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to get a cloth and some ice. Just stay here.” Light footsteps beat a hasty retreat out of the room.
Rone leaned back into the soft leather couch. He let it take all his weight, let his aching body fall into it like a bed of clouds. The blackness was closing in fast and hard, but he fought it. Fought to stay awake, fought to stay conscious. He’d done enough for one day. He’d pull his shit together and not give Heather yet another reason to worry.
He knew it was going to be bad, but he never imagined just how bad. Being with her wasn’t a mistake. He’d waited his entire life for her. He’d take a hundred more beatings just like this one if it meant that he could be with her even one more minute. He just hoped like hell that she wasn’t regretting her decision. That she wasn’t regretting him.