Page 59 of What Lies Within

Tyke doesn’t let Digger finish. “Why you gotta ask?” He throws his arms wide. “Just do it.” The pain is laced through his pinched brow and narrowed eyes. “Just go be there with her. Be a friend, for fuck’s sake.”

“Brother,” Digger warns, rising to his feet. “Hear me out.”

“No!” Tyke hollers. “You hearmeout, you fuckin’ selfish asshole!”

"I'm selfish?" Digger roars in return. "You fucking go off half-cocked and then have the audacity to sayI’mselfish?”

"You don't care," Tyke yells over the top, barely letting Digger finish. "Everything you do comes back to whatyouwant, whatyouneed?—”

“You think I don’t care about Maddie!?”

“She’s fuckin’ broken in there, and you’re both too busy doing what? Fuckin’?”

The crack is sickening; Digger's knuckles find his older brother's jaw as the argument descends into violence. The assortment of pen cups and figurines atop Tyke's desk go crashing to the floor, the sofa closest screeching across the boards as Tyke's foot connects with it, Digger pushing the larger man backward over the desk's surface.

I jam the heels of my hands to my ears, gulp down a fortifying breath, and then yell. Every fucking muscle in my arm goes taut, tendons proud on my neck as I pour the frustration of the past weeks—shit, months, maybe years—into the expulsion of noise and energy as I plead for them to quit. My voice fades, crackingas I lose lung power, and it’s only when I stop that I realize they have too.

The brothers stare at me as though I've grown a second head, maybe shed my skin, and become unrecognizable.

“What the hell?” Tyke mutters, surprised by my outburst.

Digger pinches the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb and mutters, "I was trying to fuckin' tell you. They had Rae. They took her too."

"The fuck?" Tyke's head whips back and forth as he looks us both over. "Why the fuck you not tell me this?!"

"I'm sorry," I wail, fingers digging into the sides of my head, nails scraping my scalp. "I’m sorry, okay. I'm just sorry." My voice fails, cracks, and splinters as my resolve to do this—to do life—leaves.

“Hey.” Digger’s there, on his knees before me. “Ain’t anything to be sorry for.”

I don't want to look. I can't look at Tyke. Not when I know, without shifting my gaze from my knees before me, that he's standing stunned on the other side of the room.

Probably shocked at what he’s got himself in for. What he’s labeled as his own.

“You can have it back,” I whisper. “The patch. I don’t need it.”

Digger rocks back on his heels, a deep frown disrupting his handsome face. “The fuck?”

"I don't deserve it." I drop my hands to the tops of my feet, thumbs rubbing at the sides of my arches. "It was a mistake to accept it. I'm sorry. All I've brought to this place is trouble. All I've done is create chaos." I dare in that moment. I dare to search out Tyke's gaze, needing him to see how much I mean this. "All I've done is brought you both pain."

“Shit.” Tyke turns away, hand rubbing the back of his head.

I can't take it anymore. I can't stand the attention on me—on us all. One after the other, I slide my legs out from beneathDigger's T-shirt and rise to my feet. "I'll be upstairs, packing my things." Hands wound in the hem of the shirt, I cringe and force the request through a thin throat. "I'd be grateful if you'd let me hang around until Maddie comes right. Then I'll go."

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Digger growls, gaze fixed on the floor beneath his knuckles. He leans on one hand, still on his knees, the other splayed wide on his thigh, fingers flexing. “Don’t you fucking get it?” Face contorted with his pain, he looks up at me. “Don’t you see it? We’re all as fucking broken as you are, Rae. You ain’t special for feelin’ this way.” His jaw steels, fucking eyes watering as he adds, “You ain’tdifferent.”

I don’t know what to say. He’s done it again. He’s humbled me by pulling me out of my goddamn head and pointing out how self-absorbed I’ve been in my self-hatred.

Heisbroken—I know that. AndI don’t care.I couldn't care less about the scars these men carry; at least, I couldn't give a shit that they have them. It doesn't affect my love for them. If anything, it makes me appreciate and respect them more. Knowing they shoulder the weight of past mistakes and trauma and manage to get through life anyway.

And yet, I see those same flaws in myself, and I fucking implode. I turn inward and claw and scratch at those fucking failures, those weaknesses and convince myself thatI’m not worth lovingbecause I dare to be human.

I dare to fucking be a goddamn mortal soul trying to get through this thing called life.

“Who taught you this?” Tyke finally asks, voice gentle as he moves toward where I stand, his brother at my feet, head bowed. “Who the fuck taught you to hate yourself so deeply?”

Fuck.I want to give him some spiel about abusive parents, a schoolyard bully—Greg. Some shit that would make sense. Yet all I can push through my choked throat is, “I did.”

“Why?” Tyke’s word cracks. His breath leaves on a whoosh from his nose, lips parted and eyes screaming his confusion. “Why do that to yourself?”

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