Cooper

I can hear them taunting him before I even round the building. I know what I’m going to find. It’s the same thing that I found last week after Coop came home from school with a black eye. He looked terrible, which really isn’t that hard for us.

Coop started high school this year, and I knew it would be bad. It was bad for me too—until I taught those bully shits what taunting me will get them. I had to fight for my respect, but no one messes with me now. I might not be wearing name-brand clothes. I can’t even buy my own lunch without government assistance. And I will never be a kid in this school who drives a brand-new BMW. But I will demand respect that, at even fifteen, I know means more than any name-brand item I could ever own.

Coop and I don’t have nice things. Hell, we don’t even have kind of nice things. We have shit. We have filth. We have nothing.

But we have each other, and we will always have each other. My piece-of-shit excuse for a mother doesn’t even try to take her hands to Coop anymore. Not since the last time I scared her so bad she pissed all over herself. I tower over the woman who gave birth to us. She tried to take a shovel to Coop last year when I had snuck him a piece of cake I’d stolen from a local baker. She came home, saw us laughing and eating real food, and went nuts. All it took was my getting in her face and threatening to flush all of her pills. She took one look at me, big for my age, vibrating with years of hate, and backed down.

These days, she is gone more than home, thank Christ.

I can still hear them when I finish the remaining steps that will take me to what I know will end in a lot of fists flying and blood spraying.

It’s time to teach these motherfuckers that they don’t touch my brother.

My gut clenches when I see him, my brother, curled into his small self. He’s small for his age, but then again, when you lack the proper nutrition needed to actually grow, I guess that’s normal. His bony arms are wrapped around his head. His head is tucked into his bent legs, and he is rocking back and forth.

And it breaks my heart.

I wish I could take all of the pain and all of the hurt away from him. I wish that I could make it so that he never suffered. I wish I could save him from the world.

“Get the hell away from my brother!” I roar.

All five of the bullies who are walking circles around my brother’s huddled form turn their heads at my voice. When I see the evil gleam in their eyes, I know that there is no way I’m going to walk away from this fight without feeling it.

“Come on, shitheads. You want to pick on someone, then pick on someone your own size.”

“Oh we will be happy to,” Dillon Sharpton grunts.

“My pleasure, fucker,” Drew Cardy snarls.

I hear the others chime in, but I only have eyes for Coop. I see him peek through his folded arms and I mouth the only thing I can before ten fists are flying towards me.

“Run.”

I know this won’t be pretty. I know I’m going to feel every second of this. But I’m going to fight these jackasses until I can’t fight anymore.

I watch Coop struggle to his feet, giving me one more look of fear before he runs as fast as he can around the way I came.

Safe.

And then…I fight.

“Wake the hell up,” I hear, followed by a hard kick to my ass.

Before I can stop my body, I’m rolling over the side of the guest bed in Maddox’s apartment and landing hard on the wood floor.

“What the fuck!” I slowly climb off the floor because every damn inch of my body is screaming in protest.

“Yeah, what the fuck would be a good question, seeing as my whole fucking apartment looks like a tornado came through here. Not to mention how you look.”

I look up and meet the pitch-black depths of Maddox Locke’s cold, hard stare.

“What are you doing here?” I question, trying to wake myself up.

“Uh, news flash—I live here.”

“Oh, right.”

“Yeah, oh right. What the fuck, Asher? I ask you to stay here and watch the damn cat. Watch. The. Cat. Did I say to make yourself comfortable and re-fucking-model while you were here?”

I’ll be the first one to admit that I’ve spent the better part of the last…I’m not sure how long…stuffed in the bottom of whatever bottle I can find, but I honestly have no damn clue what the hell he’s talking about.

Maddox called me last week—that much I remember—and asked me to come stay at his apartment and keep his cat fed and shit. But the rest of that… Nope, no idea. And clearly with how hard his stare is getting, he knows I’m clueless right now.

“You need to lay off the booze, brother. I understand you. Trust me, I do. But you can’t keep drinking away your grief. Scream, yell, fuck it out, but do not sit here and drink yourself into a grave right next to Coop. You know damn fucking well he wouldn’t want that for you.”

He looks at me for a few more beats before he walks away from where I’m standing, mouth gaping, and shuts the door with a loud click echoing throughout the otherwise silent room.

He has no fucking clue—none of them do. No one knows what it’s like to lose the other part of your goddamn life. No one. They all look at me with pity and it makes me sick. My brother was my reason for living. For as long as I can remember, he was the reason I woke up, and now that he’s gone, I have no clue how to move on from this darkness I’ve been drowning in. Every time I close my eyes, I see his smile and it kills me to know that I wasn’t there to save him when he needed me.

For the first time that I can remember, I let him down.

And I have no idea how to move on from that.

***

After taking a scalding-hot shower, I’m finally feeling human enough to join Maddox. Judging by the noises coming from the living room, that’s where I’m going to find him.

Coming around the corner, I feel my mouth drop. What the hell happened to this place? He wasn’t wrong; it looks like a tornado came through. Hell, there might have been an earthquake as well.

Maddox isn’t big on the whole decoration shit, but then again, being a single guy myself, I completely get it. There’s no need for accents and shit when it’s just going to be you looking at the shit. It isn’t barren, which my old apartment was, but it damn sure is lacking anything personal. Just white walls and black furniture. It’s pretty much your typical bachelor pad. The only thing making it a step up from college dorm life is the lack of naked women posted on the walls with thumbtacks. It’s not much of a step, but at least there’s that.