Magni
“Anyone who knew my father feared him. If they didn’t, they were fools. He was ruthless, strong, domineering, and often cruel,” I told Mila and Laura, who were both on the bed looking at me with their eyes wide open.
“I was my father’s favorite son, and it’s because of him that I grew to be the best fighter in this country at an early age. My father was relentless, and would push both me and Khan to an extreme. With Khan being his firstborn, it was always worse on him. I suppose my father was like every ruler before him; he wanted to secure his legacy. Khan and I wished there had been more of us sons to share the burden of his impossible expectations.
“Breeding heirs to the throne was of high priority to him and from the moment Khan and I turned eighteen, he obsessed about us marrying and having children of our own.
“Khan didn’t show any interest in tournaments. Maybe it was his own way of rebelling, but he paid a heavy price. Our father did everything to pressure him, accused him of being a homosexual and humiliated him at any opportunity.
“It wasn’t much better for me, but we both withstood his pressure until I was twenty-three and Khan was twenty-eight. By then our father had become more irrational and unpredictable than ever. He’d started threatening to kill Khan if he didn’t follow orders. To take the pressure off Khan, I agreed to fight for Laila Michelle that year.” I paused and locked eyes with Laura. “On my way to my first fight, I saw you.” In my mind’s eye, I remembered the fourteen-year-old version of Laura who had stared at me with such longing.
“The memory of you being nine and telling me to wait for you wouldn’t go away. I never confirmed that I would wait, but seeing you that morning did something to me. There was such hurt and disappointment in your eyes, as if we had made a pact and I was letting you down.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t do that.”
Laura and Mila were both staring at me, soaking up every word I said.
“My father went ballistic when I told him I was backing out of the tournament. He ordered Khan to fight instead of me, and when Khan refused, the two of them got in a physical fight.” I folded and unfolded my hands, while forcing myself to continue telling about the secret I’d kept for so long.
“Again, our father threatened to kill Khan. At first, I didn’t think he was serious because he had threatened to kill him so many times. This time, however, my father pulled out a knife from his boot and jabbed it in Khan’s direction. Khan was stunned and didn’t move back fast enough when our father slashed the knife again. The second time he cut Khan, his white shirt turned red. I acted on instinct, making a high kick to get the knife away from my father, but that only made him turn on me. When he attacked, I saw red. He’d already tried to kill my brother, and now he was coming for me.”
“What did you do?” Mila whispered.
“At first, I defended myself and kept at a distance, trying to talk him down. But he kept shouting about all the ways he would kill us for not following his orders. I made sure that he could never harm us again.”
Mila gasped. “You killed your father?”
“No, I injured him enough that he wouldn’t be a danger to us.”
“Was that why he was in his bed for the last three years of his life?” Laura asked.
“Yes, officially he had a heart attack that caused him to fall and injure himself. Only Khan, Finn, and I knew the truth.”
“Wow.” Laura held a hand to her mouth.
Mila frowned. “What does all that have to do with you loving Laura?”
I blinked a few times. “Ehm, well, because you asked when I knew that I loved her, and it was my loyalty to her that made me rebel against my father and refuse to fight for Laila Michelle.”
Mila turned her head to look at Laura. “Is loyalty the same as love?”
Laura’s eyebrows drew close. “I’m not sure.”
“To me it is,” I said. “Words are cheap. I don’t need people to tell me they love me. I’d rather that they show it by being loyal and staying with me through thick and thin.”
Laura gave me an incredulous look. “Says the man who’s talking about moving to Alaska.”
“You’re moving?” Mila exclaimed with a gasp.
I brushed my hair back. “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have told you the story; I’m sorry. How are you feeling, Mila? Still hurting?”
The girl ignored my attempt to change the topic. “Are you moving?”
When I looked down, Mila knew it was true. Her loud sniffle made me look up to see tears well up in her eyes.
“Oh, fuck! Sweetie, I was going to talk to you about it.”
The same expression of hurt and disappointment that had been on Laura’s face on the morning of Laila Michelle’s tournament now met me again.
“But you said you would be my dad.” Mila’s golden hair and teary blue eyes made her look like a sad angel.
“And I meant it.”
“Then why did you say that love is loyalty and that it’s about staying together through thick and thin? If you move away that must mean you don’t love me.”
“I do love you.” It was the first time I spoke those words.
Mila hid in Laura’s arms, crying.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I got up and paced the small cabin. “Laura, I told you I was bad at talking about emotions. Look how I fucked it up.” It came out accusatory, as if it was Laura’s fault for making me express my feelings.
“Then make it right,” Laura said. “Tell her that you’re not going to Alaska.”
I wanted to, but I was in way over my head, and did the only thing I knew how to do. Picking up my jacket, I walked out of the cabin, slamming the door, and heading for the forest to clear my head.
I had only made it to the first trees when Finn called out to me. “Hey, wait up.”
I didn’t slow down, but he caught up anyway. “What’s going on?”
“Something is wrong with me.” My voice was raw from emotion.
“Wrong? What are you talking about?”
“All I know how to do is break people. Mila is in my cabin sobbing her eyes out because of me.”
Finn looked from me to the cabin and back again. “What did you say to her?”
“She knows I’m moving to Alaska.”
For a moment Finn just stood there, as if waiting for me to take it back. When I didn’t, he laughed.
I punched him hard on his shoulder and walked on. “It’s not fucking funny.”
“You told Mila you were moving to Alaska?”
“I told Khan and Laura too.”
“And they believed you?”
“Of course they believed me. I’m not a jokester like you; people take me seriously.”
Finn was still laughing. “That’s because they don’t know you like I do. Have you forgotten about the time we went to Alaska? We froze our asses off in that shed of a cabin, and you swore you would never set foot in that place again.”
“I enjoyed the bear hunting,” I defended myself.
“Only because you thought it was funny how fucking scared I was of actually meeting a bear.”
“Yeah, that was funny.”
“Alaska might be okay in the summer, but you wouldn’t last a winter up there.”
“I’m tough.”
“Sure you are, but when was the last time you cooked a meal for yourself?”
“I can cook.”
Finn patted my shoulder. “Magni, my friend. I love you, man, but sometimes you think with your ass.”
“You love me?”
He held up both palms. “As a brother, so don’t get any funny ideas.”
“You never told me that.”
He shrugged. “I thought it was implied.”
“It was. So why the hell do you have to go and say it? You’ve only lived in the Motherlands for a few days, and now you are expressing your love for me. If you don’t stop that shit, I’m going to call the guys together and we’ll do an intervention on you. You’d better not turn into a softie.”
“Don’t worry, it won’t happen again. From now on it will just be implied that I love you.” He spoke the words clearly and with a smile on his face, provoking me on purpose.
“Stop saying it.” I tore my hands through my hair. “I’m almost thirty years old, and I’ve never heard those words said to my face. And then in one day, I hear them from both you and Mila.” I didn’t count Laura’s talk about loving me because of my breakfast choices. That didn’t ring true to me and had to have been a story to please Mila.
“I swear, those damn Momsies are infiltrating us. This love shit is all around now.”
“You’re right. It’s a fucking slippery slope. The L word is like a gateway drug into hugging. We should be outraged.”
I spun to look at Finn. His eyes were sparkling with humor and once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop.
“It’s not funny, Finn.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I made a mess of things with Mila and Laura.”
“That’s bad.” He stopped laughing. “You might have to bring out the big guns.”
“What big guns?”
“The A word.”
I lowered my brow. “Asshole?”
“Nope, I mean A as in apology.”
Jerking back, I crossed my arms. “You’re not serious. Laura would lose all respect for me.”
He tilted his head from side to side as if weighing options. “You would think so, but in my experience, apologies have the opposite effect on women. At least with Athena.”
“Tsk, you can’t compare the two. Athena likes soft men.” When Finn frowned, I added. “Not that I’m saying you’re a full-on softie yet, but you know what I mean, right?”
“No.” Finn placed his hands on his hips and shifted his balance onto one foot. “Care to elaborate on how Athena likes soft men?”
I groaned and leaned my head back, looking up at the sky. “Fuck, I’m so bad with words.”
“No shit.”
“Which is why Alaska makes perfect sense. The wildlife won’t care if I say the wrong thing. No one’s going to be offended or cry up there.”
Finn lowered his brow. “I’ve known you since you were twelve, Magni. You’ve always been a loner, but isolating yourself is an extreme, even for you.” He paused. “And what about your hero complex? Who are you going to save up there?”
I snorted. “I’m no hero.”
“Then what do you call someone who keeps saving other people?”
I turned around, walking back toward the cabins.
“I know you don’t like to talk about it, but you can’t punish yourself forever for what happened to your sister. It wasn’t your fault.” Finn spoke the last three words slow and clear. “What happened to Dina doesn’t take away from the fact that you saved me from Mentor Johnson.”
My jaw hardened. Finn and I never talked about the monster from our past. I’d been the new student at Finn’s school when I noticed something wasn’t right. Curiosity and intuition had made me listen through the door to Mentor Johnson’s office. What I heard had made my blood boil to the point where I kicked in the door and ended the torture that Finn was suffering at the hands of that fucking sadistic mentor.
“You would’ve done the same thing,” I muttered.
“I would like to think so, but we both know that I am not the only person you’ve saved. You stood up for Khan against your father, and saved his life. Don’t think I don’t know how hard that was for you. And what about Laura?”
“What about her?” My tone was harsh because I hated the way Finn saw me as a hero when I was anything but.
“You always protected her.”
“That’s not how she sees it. She thinks I’m bossing her around and being a dick.”
“You’ve been in more fights to protect your woman than any man in this country. You could have married her when she was fifteen, but you wanted to wait for her to grow up. I always thought that was incredibly selfless of you, and that we all paid a price.”
“What do you mean, that you paid a price?”
“I had to deal with your moodiness. Remember that time when we saw Laura at the football game, just after she had turned seventeen?”
My hands ran through my hair. It was a redundant question. Finn had been there when I stopped dead in my tracks, gaping at the sight of Laura. The girl that I had last seen when she was fourteen had transformed into a breathtaking young woman with curves and a smile to die for. For years, I had felt protective of her because of the short connection we shared when she was nine. But that day I’d felt more than protective of her. I’d felt physically attracted to her too.
“And what about the pilot you saved from the burning drone, or that kid you carried for miles during the survival camp at school?”
“He broke his leg and was slowing us down. Everyone would’ve done that.”
“Maybe. But these examples are just a few of the dozens of times when you sacrificed yourself to help others. You should give yourself credit for it, and stop isolating yourself. You never had social skills, but that’s because you push people away, and never practice at it.”
I sighed. “I miss the good old days when I could fix my problems by beating up the bad guys.”
“Ahh, yes. Those were the days. You beating up bad guys, and me patching them back together. What a team we were.”
My eyes glazed over, memories assaulting me of my sister saying those exact same words to me.