Page 73 of The Way We Dance

Ty

This was what I got for always turning my head where my brother was concerned. The day I decided to not be a part of his shady side of life, I should have turned away from him completely. Trying to hold on to a relationship with him was hard, but I continued to do so because he was all I had.

Even as the detective came to question me, I waffled on whether or not to out Mike’s role in the evening, or if I could let the gunman be hung by himself. It was just that brotherly instinct that had kicked in the second they asked me what I knew.

My gut said that Mike was depending on that side of me shining. As evil as his words were to me, we had connected and shared a moment before it all went to shit. Even if it was fake to him, it was real to me.

If his intent was to scare me, then he succeeded.

The only thing I don’t think he realized, though, was how deep it ran for me and Giselle. Hell, I hadn’t even realized it until that moment. When I looked across that street at him, holding up a second phone that clearly worked, he had no idea that I would have shot him myself if it meant saving her.

So I told the detective the truth.

Luckily, he was the same detective Giselle and I called the night Mike made his way into Brisé for the second time. He knew she and I were close and knew I had been with her when the second break in happened. I even told him about Mike trying to enter Brisé the day Giselle had been late and that while he told me he was there because he was crushing on Giselle, I now suspected he was trying to collect whatever he left there the first time.

Still, the detective seemed stoic and angry.

At me.

Fuck, I guess I couldn’t blame him, I was angry at me too.

For a moment, I had been so worried about my brother that I let my guard down where Giselle was concerned. I sent her hired guard away, I left her alone, and in the end, she was hurt because I sat out there laughing with my brother too long.

“I need to know if she’s ok,” I pleaded, tired of talking about it and wanting to know more about how she was.

“She was shot,” the detective snapped. “How the hell do you think she’s doing?”

The blood drained from my face because until he said that, I had hoped the gun shot was a scare tactic. I had hoped the other officer was wrong. I had hoped that the other person in there was a woman and Giselle had overpowered her.

I had hoped for anything other than what was so glaringly obvious and so overwhelmingly painful.

“Is she alive?” I yelled. If he told me, “No,” then Mike and whoever he had working with him now was dead.

I would kill them myself.

Maybe they thought I wasn't capable of their level of sin because I didn't involve myself after going off to college. Maybe they thought I was soft. True, I had hid behind football and the expectations that Coach had for me to stay on the right side of the law. Football motivated me.

In the blink of an eye, that was no longer my motivation.

It was Giselle.

And if she lost her life at the hands of someone I was capable of confronting, then that poor bastard had no idea what was coming.

“She is alive and responsive,” he assured me.

“I’m headed to the hospital,” I shoved passed the detective on the sidewalk, not far from where I had been talking to Mike before all of this happened. There were too many emergency vehicles to see Brisé but I knew an ambulance had left with her before the detective had shown up to talk to me.

“Just one problem with that,” the detective called, making me stop and turn back to look at him. “She asked us to keep you away. So we cannot allow you near her.”

“What?” I yelled, louder than I had been before. I stomped back toward the detective and he placed a hand on his holstered gun, stopping me from wrapping my hands around his neck. “I was there, we’re together, she needs me.”

“We have called an emergency contact to be with her. But she adamantly said to keep you away.”

“Did she say why?” I was so fucking mad but so fucking relieved she was coherent enough to even speak at all.

“No, she didn't. But she seemed scared.”

“She knows it's Mike,” I mumbled. “She knows it's my brother and she’s fucking scared.”

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