Page 19 of Broken Breath
Dane’s nostrils flare, and I think he might lash out at me. Instead, he laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “You think Ilether do this? You think I hada fucking choice?”
“You’re her big brother. She adores you and would do anything you tell her to do.” I glare at him. “Of course, you had a choice.”
“No, Finn.” He shakes his head. “Ididn’t.”
“So, what? You’re sayingshemade the choice for you?”
“I’m saying if I hadn’t helped her, she’d bedead.”
What?
I take a step back as if denying his words, but Dane doesn’t stop.
“You think I don’t know howstupidanddangerousthis is?” His voice rises. “You think Iwantto be here? Watching my little sister throw herself into thisinsane-fucking-missionknowing damn well it won’t do what she thinks it’ll do for her?” He steps toward me, eyes blazing. “You think I wanted to walk away from my whole fucking life only to come back seven years later to find her standing on the same goddamn mountain, chasing down the same goddamn ghosts?”
I fight the urge to step back as he continues his tirade.
“If I hadn’t helped her, she wouldn’t be here, Finn. And I don’t meanhereas in Fort William.” His voice drops a register and becomes rougher. “I mean here as inalive.Alaina didn’t live after the crash. She survived. Barely.”
And where the fuck was I?Sitting in hotel rooms, scrolling past headlines, wondering why they didn’t answer my calls.
“You don’t know what it was like after. You don’t know what it did to her. All the pain and the surgeries and the broken dreams.” His hands curl into fists at his sides, and his eyes go distant with the memory. “You don’t know how many nights I sat outside her door, too fucking scared to goto sleep because I didn’t know whether she’d still be breathing when I woke up.”
His eyes fill with tears, and my nose starts to burn in the tense silence that follows.
“You could have called me, Dane,” I say eventually, my voice barely above a whisper. “I would have been there for you.”
I called him every day for at least a year, but he never picked up, not even once, so I stopped.
I shouldn’t have.
“She was gone, man.Gone.And there was nothing I could do. Nothing you could have done.” He swallows. “Nothing but let her have this.”
“So this whole thing, this disguise, this insane fucking plan…”
“It fueled her.” Dane’s eyes drop to the floor. “She livedbecause ofthis. She got out of bed because of this. She trained, she rebuilt herself, she became unstoppable. All because of this.Because ofspite.She’s only alive because she had this to fight for, and I’m not only terrified of what happens when she wins this. I’m terrified of what happensafter.”
I blink and take an involuntary step backward. “What do you mean?”
Dane lifts his gaze, and his eyes are hollow.
“What will happen to her when she has nothing left to fight for?”
Well,fuck.
CHAPTER FIVE
Alaina
Finn disappears into the crowd like he wasn’t just sitting next to me, trying to peel back my skin with his stare to see what’s underneath.
But he didn’t.
Or, I don’t think he did.
I thought for sure he would say something after the hiccup, but maybe it was just the disruption that startled him, a weird sound in a high-pressure moment. Maybe he forgot that was even a thing I used to do. It’s been years, and it’s not like I was ever important to him in the first place.
Not like he was to me.
