Page 133 of The Spider & the Storm

He could never stop, period, and that was what eventually killed him. Because without someone else to hold him back, Luke couldn't stop either.

Ritchie leaned forward, putting his mouth against Luke's ear. Luke tried to brush him away, but Ritchie grabbed onto his shoulders, holding him steady.

“She said she always wished Charlie boy had died in that crash too. Burned to a crisp, just like your mommy and daddy. She even said you guys would still be together if it wasn’t for his psycho, whiny ass, always crying, always getting in the way. She said she would've just killed him herself if his cock wasn’t bigger than y—”

He stopped talking when my brother's fist flipped up from the armrest and bashed him square in the mouth.

I hadn't noticed the blood on Luke's hand that night—I'd been too stunned—but the impact against Ritchie's front teeth had cut into Luke's knuckles.

One of Ritchie's teeth cracked, and he cried out, “Asshole! You broke my fucking tooth!”

“Asshole?!” Luke stood up, enraged and unable to see beyond revenge. “I'mthe asshole?!”

He climbed over his seat and into Ritchie's row. Ritchie began to rise, ready to fight, when Luke's hands shot out, encircling his throat.

“You never left him alone. Youalwaysmade his life a living hell. And Ialwayslooked the other way because you were my friend. God, you were my best friend! And I let you torment my little fucking brother, and for what?! What the fuck had heeverdone to you, huh?! He was a little fucking kid! What the fuck had heeverdone to you?!”

Luke's hands tightened, snapping Ritchie's bones and crushing his windpipe. Someone screamed for help; someone else screamed to stop.

That same someone screamed, “You're killing him!”

Someone else ran out of the theater, screaming for the manager or someone—anyone.

God, so much fuckingscreaming, but Luke hadn't heard any of it, and even if he had, I couldn't be sure that he’d cared in that moment.

Because then he said, “I told you once if you ever fucking said some shit about him again, I'd fucking kill you. Remember that, you piece of shit? Why can’t you fucking stop?!”

But he had stopped, and Luke realized two seconds too late that his former best friend was no longer breathing, just as a security guard and a manager ran into the theater.

A few people tried to stop him on his way to the emergency exit with little success. He ran to his bike, hopped on, and sped home as quickly as he could, knowing the cops would be on his tail. Knowing there'd been witnesses. Knowing they'd heard Ritchie say his name. Knowing they'd catch him and arrest him and take him away.

All because he had to see me one more time. To warn me. To tell me he loved me.

And that had made it really, really hard to hate him, even when he pleaded guilty. Even when the judge sentenced him to twenty-five years to life in Connecticut’s Wayward Correctional Facility for murder in the second degree. But especially when his eyes met mine as the guards took him away to begin the rest of his life behind bars, and I tried hard to see him the way the rest of Connecticut had seen him—a cold-blooded murderer—and I couldn't.

He was still just my brother, and it had been really, really hard to hate him then.

And it was still really, really,reallyhard to hate him now as I sat across from him at a metal table in the Wayward visitor center.

It'd been a little over a year since he'd been thrown behind bars. The first couple of months, he'd been held at a county jail before his transfer to the state prison, medium security.

Luke had once said therealbad guys got thrown into max, speaking like he knew what he was talking about, like he wasn'tscared shitless of mingling with some of the worst people in our society, and when I'd pointed this out, he'd simply said, “I'm one of them now, Charlie. Yeah, maybe I'm fuckin' scared. Iamfuckin’ scared, but I'm no more scared of them than I am of myself.”

As it turned out, he'd had a fairly good point then, I realized after I visited him at the correctional facility every other Sunday. These guys—the ones I'd seen visiting with their friends and family—weren't much different from my brother, or hell, even myself, apart from the fact that they'd committed their crimes and gotten themselves caught. Luke had even introduced me to a few of the guys he'd started to call his friends.

No, it wasn't the other guys who had scared me or left me feeling uncomfortable, unable to put a word on the strange sensation settling in the marrow of my bones. It was Luke who had done that. Not because he'd become someone I no longer recognized. He hadn't at all, and that was the problem. He was still Luke, still my brother, still my best friend, and I couldn't bring myself to accept that this place was where he belonged, according to society.

I couldn't accept that he had used his own bare hands to rob someone else of their life. No matter how much I might've hated that particular someone else.

But that wasn't all I was having a hard time with.

I shifted my ass against the cold bench as Luke raked his hair back with one hand. He'd started to let it grow longer since he'd been locked up. I wasn't sure what had inspired the change or if he just hadn't gotten around to having it cut. If I was being honest, I didn't care enough at the time to ask. All I cared about was how angry and alone I was and how I really, really, really,reallywished I could hate him.

“So, then Wolf just”—Luke made a flicking motion with his wrist—“chucks this fucking book at this dude's throat and told him to stop being a pussy for crying on the phone. And Soldier and I were just sitting there, like, what the fuck, man?”

He got caught up in a burst of laughter, to the point where tears squeezed out from his eyes, and all I could do was stare across the table at him, wondering if he'd always been this guy or if he'd just adapted that easily.

A sigh whooshed from him, taking the rest of his laughter with it. “Guess you had to be there.”

---