Chapter Eighteen

Burning House

(Five Days Ago)

Gage

I stand at the window, overlooking the city while waiting for Xavier’s brother-in-law’s, Kean and Keller Patrick, to bring Garrett to me. They found him in a fucking whorehouse in Vegas, drunk and coked up.

I look back when I see Grayson’s reflection in the window.

“Morning,” he mumbles.

“Morning,” I say back. “Coffee’s hot.”

“They here yet?” he asks as he walks into the kitchen.

“No, but they should be soon.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and check for a message. Nothing new.

“How soon?” he asks

I turn around and look at him. He looks as much a mess as I feel on the inside. Like he wants to crawl out of his own fucking skin.

“You think you need that coffee?”

He nods. “I think I need more than coffee.”

“I’m sure we both do, but that’s probably not in the best interest of this”—I dig really fucking deep to say a word that feels a hell of a lot more like a curse than a blessing—“family.”

He drinks down his coffee like he’s doing a shot then sets the cup in the sink. “I’m going to shower.”

I nod, turning back toward the window to watch, to wait, to try to remain calm.

Calm.

The Landing.

Mags.

Brand.

Phoenix.

I open my messenger and look to see when the last time I sent her a message was. Three days.

It wasn’t fucking right to add her to the list of those I depend on to keep my shit straight. It was fucking selfish. It wasn’t right that when I found out Garrett was Brand’s father, I took it out on her. It wasn’t and I knew it. I’m better than that.

But the morning after the first time I fucked her hard, when she was sliding out of my bed, I couldn’t let her go.

Nearly three days she took it. Nearly three days I used her because it felt so fucking good to be inside her. Add the exorbitant amount of alcohol I consumed and the realization of the actual hell I was pulled into, I needed her.

I have never needed a fucking thing in my life as much as I needed her.

Now...now I need to stay the fuck away, because what I am facing, what Gray told me, what our mother kept from us, what I kept from them, a promise to a brother so many fucking years ago, was brought from the dark and into the light so that Brand, the boy who has been my fucking son yet is my nephew. How the fuck do you make that okay for a boy his age? How do you make it okay without fucking him up as bad as everyone around him?

My wish, dream, prayer is that someday that little man can look at his father the way he looks at me. That wish, dream, prayer is also the heaviest of burdens I have ever felt in my entire life, and my road has been long and dusty since day one.

Christ, what a fucking mess. A mess that little firecracker certainly didn’t need to be dragged into.

Staying away has not been easy. In fact, it’s been hell.

I lean against the glass and type out a message I have typed a fucking thousand times.

- You good?

And I delete it because, needing to know she is, wanting her to know I’m thinking about her, and not just her fucking pussy but her fight, her determination, that little woman who has the strength of a thousand men, I could easily suck it out of her. Drain her. Consume her. But, in the end, I can’t do what has been done to me all my fucking life.

I’m a better man.

Therefore, I send Mags a text.

- Everything good?

- Making jam with our girl. She found the berries before the deer got them.

Our girl...Fuck.

- Wish I was there to help you out.

- I’m in good hands.

I know damn well she is. Fuck. Reality is, I’m fucking glad they have each other. The other reality is, I shouldn’t be.

- Talk soon

- We’ve got the Landing. You do what you need, my boy.

My messenger lights up. Patrick Security

- We’re here.

I look up as Gray walks out in a pair of sweats, toweling off his hair.

“He’s here.”

He lets out a slow, deep breath. “Gage, please hold it together.”

I nod. “No stones to throw here, man.”

“Wish I never told you I saw that.”

“I wish a lot of things. Wishes aren’t gonna change a damn thing. We are what we are.”

“But, it can get better, right?”

He needs me to tell him yes. He fucking needs it, but I’m no liar.

“It’s gonna get worse before that happens. And that happening depends on all of us, so Gray, I have no fucking clue.”

I turn back toward the window and look down fourteen floors, seeing three men getting out of a car.

My blood boils, and my fist clench.

Think of Brand, think of Brand, I repeat, but it’s not calming me. Not one fucking bit.

I hear the elevator door open, and then I can fucking hear the sound of my blood rushing.

“Well, I’m fuckin’ here. Now what, big brother?” Garrett snarls.

Three steps; that’s all it takes for me to cross the room until I’m on him, fists flying—his and mine.

“You fucking piece of shit!” I hit him again in the face.

“You fucking meddling bastard!” he says, hitting back.

Our bodies are ripped apart from each other, both of us trying to get at each other.

“Stop! Fucking stop this shit now!” Gray yells, stepping between us. “That’s enough! You’re goddamn brothers!”

“He’s no fucking brother to me,” Garrett yells as he tries to pull away from one of Patrick’s men.

“You have no fucking clue how much I wish that was true!” I yell back. “But I have raised—” I stop. Saying your son is too fucking hard.

“The boy. You raised a boy who is no more my son than you are my fucking brother. Your shit, and he—”

Rage.

I pull away and nail him three times in the fucking jaw before I’m pulled back by Gray and the other one.

“Get him out of here, Kean,” the one I now know is Keller, who has my arms jacked back, yells.

“Don’t you fucking dare. We’ve just fucking started.”

“You gonna chill the fuck out, then? This isn’t part of what we do. We’re not fucking referees for grown men who need to settle a fucking problem.”

Grayson walks over with a wad of wet paper towels and rips them in half, handing me a pile before doing the same to Garrett.

“I wanna know my nephew. I want this fucking fixed. I am so damn sick of the lies, the secrets, the fucking pain. I’m sick of running!” Grayson’s voice is that of which I have never heard. It shocks me.

“Gray...” I start.

“No, Gage! No! You have shit, too. You know—”

“Enough!” I yell as I give him the look I hope he gets, one of warning to keep his mouth shut, as I pull away from Keller.

“We’ve got this. Thank you,” I tell Keller.

“You sure about that, man?” he asks.

“I’m sure.”

He looks at Grayson as he walks toward him with a card in hand. “Shit gets ugly, call us. We’ll be around.”

“Thank you,” Grayson says, taking the card.

Kean releases Garrett, who is laughing.

“Fucking joke. What a fucking joke.”

“It’s no joke, Garrett. It’s gotta end,” Grayson says before walking to the kitchen.

“Sit,” I tell him, pointing at the couch.

“I’m not your fucking dog or a kid you hold power over,” he sneers.

I hold my temper as he walks to the couch, seeing his eyes fix on a picture of Brand, and they stay locked on him.

I need to get the fuck out of here.

“Here,” Grayson says, handing me a cup of coffee, and another to Garrett. “Everything inside me says fucking run. Fucking run away from you two, from Mom, for the damn business, from goddamn life.”

“Don’t do that. This son of a bitch will drag you right back to hell,” Garrett hisses.

Watching him talk, just seeing him, makes me fucking want to do the same, with that little boy who owns my goddamn heart.

God, he looks just fucking like him.

Just like him!

“I need a minute.” I set my cup on the coffee table and walk into my room and into the bathroom to look in the fucking mirror, hoping to see something in me, something that looks more like Brand.

I see not a damn thing that stands out more than the fucking similarities. Fuck, not even similarities. They could be goddamn twins. How the fuck did I never see that? How!

I punch the fucking mirror, shattering it.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!” I scream at it. “Fuck. You!”

The bathroom door opens, and Gray and Garrett are both standing there, looking at me like I’m fucking crazy.

And I might just be.

“I said I need a fucking minute,” I snap at them.

I see Gray’s eyes cloud over and Garrett’s goddamn pain. They don’t move, not one fucking inch. They are looking at me like they always have, like I can fix something.

“I don’t know if I can this time. I have no fucking clue if I can.” I push past them and out to the living room, where I grab my keys before heading to the elevator. “I’ll be back. Don’t either of you fucking leave, or I swear I will fucking let everything go right to hell with me, and then the two of you can kiss your fucking free ride goodbye, you and your parents.”

“You can’t just leave. You brought us here. Now let’s get shit sorted, or at least try, Gage,” Gray says.

I look at Garrett. “I can’t look at you without seeing him. I’ll never be able to look at him without seeing you.”

“Welcome to my fucking party, man,” Garrett says, throwing his hands in the air.

“You could have done something to stop me from being manipulated by that cunt,” I snap.

His face tightens as he narrows his eyes. “You took her away from me. You took her that goddamn night because, in your eyes, I will never be good enough. You took her from me. You did that!”

“I didn’t know she was yours, Garrett! You were having one of your fucking spells. I got her away from you for you, not me!”

“Bullshit! Bullshit! You thought I couldn’t be a father! You thought I was so fucked up from what happened.” He stops immediately and closes his eyes tight.

At this moment, he looks just like Brand. So much fucking like him when I told him he was going to stay with his mom for a few weeks.

It fucking wrecks me.

He looks just like the little boy he was that day in Portugal when...when...FUCK!

“No. No, goddamn it, Garrett, I had no fucking clue!”

“She told me she was pregnant. She told me that night. Don’t you lie to me. Don’t you fucking lie!”

“Jesus Christ, Garrett. She didn’t say a word to me, not one fucking word. I’m the same fucking person I’ve always been. Tell me when I’ve ever fucking lied to you!”

“Get off your damn high horse, Gage! You lied for years! You lied for all of us. You lied so I wouldn’t tarnish this family! You, Gage fucking Kelly, lied because you had to be perfect so no one looked at you like you didn’t belong!” He uses my biological father’s last name to hurt me. It doesn’t. Not one bit.

“Do you hear yourself, Garrett? Do you hear what you’re saying to him?”

“Shut the fuck up, Grayson! You’re a pussy. You cried yourself to bed for years because we left and came back here. You have no clue what struggles are. You’ve always been the weak link!”

I grab Grayson as he lunges at Garrett. “That’s fucking enough! This is a fucking mess! A fucking mess and not one of us are going to make things any better for Brandon like this! Sit, both of you, sit!”

They both do.

“This goes no fucking further than this room, regardless of what the fucking outcome is. It goes no fucking further because all of us have a lot to lose. Brand being the most important.”

I sit down in the chair opposite the couch and look at them. On the tip of my tongue is what the hell happened to us. I know.

I know everything.

“Garrett was, what? Ten?” I ask, looking at him.

He runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. “Eleven when you saw him...when you saw him...” He stops. He can’t go on. And fuck if I don’t want him to, either.

I look at Grayson. “Old man Afanso hurt Garrett.”

“What? When?” Grayson asks.

“He just did, Gray, okay? He just fucking did,” Garrett says with the urgency of a child wanting something to end immediately.

Grayson nods his head up and down fast, no doubt wanting Garrett to calm down.

“He hurt him. I saw it, stopped it, and Garrett made me promise not to tell anyone. For weeks, I wanted to tell. I wanted to, and I told the old fuck to leave, or I would. He just kept coming back to work—”

“And then he got his,” Garrett continues, talking over me. “He fell and hit his head on that hammer, and he fucking died. But you could never look at me like I was a man again. You saw me as weak. I’m not fucking weak, Gage. I’m not!

“But that’s not fucking true,” Gray cuts in. Him being the one to see what happened. “He didn’t hit his head on a hammer. Gage threw a rock...Gage threw a rock and hit him in the head. Then he died. Gage threw a rock at him, and he fucking fell and died.”

When Garrett looks at me, I can’t distinguish the look. Is it hurt? Hurt that he didn’t know? Anger? Rage because he didn’t get to throw the fucking rock?

“You killed him?” Garrett’s voice is eerily calm, though his eyes are anything but.

“Not intentionally. I wanted the fucker to leave, to not come back. I wanted him gone.”

They both continue looking at me, expecting more, so I give it to them.

“I was glad he died. I was glad he hit his fucking head on the hammer. I was so fucking glad because I thought you’d stop having those nightmares, and we’d stop fighting. Then Gray started waking up screaming. It didn’t end it. He died and nothing changed. It just got worse.”

“Everything changed,” Gray says. “Everything changed and nothing’s ever been the same.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I never stopped throwing shit because I hit a sweet spot on accident. I just got better, practiced; made sure I could hit what I was aiming for.”

“That’s why you played ball,” Garrett says quietly.

“You bet your ass it is.”

“MVP in high school and college.” Grayson nods.

“I didn’t fuck up again, and it didn’t stop me from throwing stones or any other thing I wanted. I just got fucking better at it.”

“You killed a man,” Garrett says with his head in his hands.

“I killed a piece of shit, and I’d do it again,” I tell him as I set my coffee cup down and stand up, needing a fucking break.

Looking out the window with my back to them, I sigh. “What a fucking mess.”

“But we can fix it now. The three of us can fix it, right?” Gray asks hurriedly.

“They can’t know. No one can,” Garrett tells him.

I take a deep breath and turn around. “No one has to know if you get your shit together. My boy...” I stop. He’s not fucking mine. “Your son needs you to be a man, and a man faces his fucking demons and throws every fucking stone he has to, to keep the people he loves safe.”

Neither of them say a word.

“You need to sober the fuck up. You need to forgive me for the shit you thought, and God help me, I need to forgive you for fucking up my goddamn life.”

“If, by some chance, any of those things happen, what the fuck do we tell Brandon? And...” He stops and stands. “I can’t fucking do this. He’ll look at me the same way you did. He’ll think I’m a fucking pussy.”

“You sure have a lot to learn about that boy and kids in general. He never needs to know what fucked you up. He just needs to see you as a man. And Garrett, you need to know, I’m not walking away from that boy ever.”

“So why the fuck am I even here? So I can watch him call you Daddy? No, fuck that.”

“You’re here to learn how to be one, so when we figure out how to tell him, it doesn’t fuck him up.”

“You plan on making Juliana the villain?” Garrett asks.

“She’s earned that title, the fucking cunt.”

“She didn’t do it alone, Gage,” Garrett says with a look of protectiveness in his eyes.

“You may think you know her, but she’s a cold and cruel bitch,” I tell him.

His jaw tightens. “You’re gonna forgive me, but not her?”

“The bitch is lucky she has Mother on her side, or she would never see him again.”

“He’s her son, Gage,” Grayson says.

“She has three years of making up to do for all she did to wrong him.”

“And I have years, too, yet you’re willing to give me a fucking chance. Fuck, you’re not even giving me a choice. And Gage, I’m not even going to pretend that I’m gonna be okay with any of this.”

“I’ll give you time, but you have no choice, Garrett. It’s time to man the fuck up.”

“God, you are such a fucking—”

I hold up my hand and cut him off. “I’m done with this conversation tonight. But one last thing; our mother has done really well enabling you both, so much so that you forgot how to be fucking men. I’m not her bitch, and you two better make the same fucking choice.”

“You blame Mom?” Grayson asks as if she’s not to blame.

“You bet your ass I do.”