Page 65 of Hideaway Whirlwind
“Sure. Thanks for the groceries. Now leave,” I say without looking at him.
“I said I was sorry, brother.” Russell tries to clap me on the back, his tone sincerely apologetic, but I skirt away from histouch—something I’ve never done before with him.
“To me,” Birdie says, a bite to her voice. “But not to Elliott.”
With her at my side, I can finally look my brother in the eye, my expression blank. Waiting.
“I…I am sorry, Elliott,” Russell says with pain-filled eyes.
“Thanks,” I say. “Get out.”
Instead, Russell drops down on the couch, palms up as if in supplication. “She was screaming at you to stop touching her after you cornered her in the bathroom. You can understand how I got the wrong idea. You’d have done the same if you were in my shoes. I’d want you to.”
“No, I wouldn’t have. I’d have given you the benefit of the doubt, at least long enough to get your side of the story instead of assuming, after fifty years of being brothers, that you’d suddenly flipped a switch and turned into an abuser. You never gave me a chance.”
There’s something about the way he looks off to the side a second too late, and it hits me like a ton of bricks.
“It’s because I’ve been to prison. Doesn’t matter why I was sent there, or that you championed for me to get out early. Told everyone we knew that I was a good man when they balked at you for giving me a job instead of cutting me out of your life. Doesn’t matter that I risked my freedom to help you when it came to Layla more times than I can count. At the end of the day, I’m still a felon with a bad reputation.” I’d thought as much as soon as Layla threw that in my face. This just confirms it.
A flash of anger has him surging up onto his feet. “It doesn’t help that you murdered this Priscilla woman when you went to Vegas,” he says through gritted teeth, a vein in his forehead starting to bulge as his face turns red. “Brother or not, I won’tstand by a man who would hurt a woman.”
“Except you didn’t find out about her untilafterthat night at Goldie’s.” I cross the room in two strides and jab my finger in the middle of his chest. “And I wasn’t the one who killed her—only buried her.”
Birdie sucks in a strangled breath, and my stomach drops to my feet. She was never meant to find out.
“The chopping board…it was me. I thought I’d just knocked her out.” Birdie brings her fingers to her mouth, chewing her nails that have hardly started to grow out. “Oh shit,” she says, breathing hard. “How many people do you have to kill to be considered a serial killer?”
“Three,” I answer quickly. I’m all too familiar with the term, though all myvictimsexcept Curtis were put down in true acts of self-defense.
“And, like, not all at once?” Birdie asks, garnering a sharp nod from me.
My right side aches where I’d been stabbed for the first time within days of starting my prison sentence. At my size, once my fellow inmates found out what I had been convicted of, I was a threat that had to be neutralized when I wouldn’t join this side or that side. They found out real quick that the only person whose side I was on was my own, preferring to keep my head down and do my time. Of course, that was only the beginning, and the scars from the accident that shattered my old life are only half of what I walked out of prison with. It’s why I still watch my back, two decades since being released, in case anyone still has a score to settle.
Russell rocks back on his heels. “You’re saying Priscilla isn’t the first person you’ve killed?”
I’m back by Birdie’s side in an instant, pushing her hairbehind her ears, her face paler than normal. I sweep her up when she sways on her feet and bring her to the recliner, kneeling before her when she starts to hyperventilate.
Blinking fast, Birdie says, “Guxxer and Quincy.” A smile that starts off wobbly grows wider, her eyes going round, a maniacal look to her. “I put ground-up glass in Guxxer’s breakfast every morning.” She giggles. “It took him weeks to die.”
Though I should probably be horrified, or at least a little more leery of her, I find warmth pooling in my chest. Is it pride? Yeah, I think it is. “And Quincy?” I ask.
“The day I found I was pregnant,” she says, resting her palm on her baby bump, “I snuck into his mom’s house and cut his personal stash with something a little stronger. He overdosed—he’d done it before—so no one suspected me when he died.” As an afterthought, she adds, “I wish I could have seen it.”
“My Black Widow Birdie,” I coo, grabbing her hips and pulling her to the edge of the recliner, the flannel riding up her gorgeous thighs. What a pair we are. Soulmates.
She grabs my T-shirt and twists it, her lips brushing mine. “If you ever cross me, Elliott Berenson”—she drags her index finger across my still-healing throat with a click of her tongue—“it’s lights out for you. I’ll make it hurt, I can promise you that.”
“Alright,” I say with a shrug, pressing a kiss to her lips. “You know, this is just more proof we belong together. Two murderers in a pod.”
“That’s not how the saying goes, you crazy motherfucker,” she says right back.
“I am, aren’t I, Mama?” I slip a hand under her flannel,patting her belly gently until the baby kicks my hand. No, notthebaby.Mybaby.
“You two give me the creeps.” Russell visibly shivers when we both turn to look at him.
I’d forgotten he was here. What does my brother see when he looks at us? What would he have done if he’d known the full extent of the crimes I committed while I was incarceratedbeforehe managed to get me released? If he ever had second thoughts after I came clean to him, he had no choice but to live with his actions. I think I’ve proven myself to be a better man in the time since I’ve been out. At least I’ve tried to.
Russell’s reassurance is a slow-acting balm to soothe my twisted thoughts when he says, “But I love you anyway, brother, and I’m sorry for making you think I see you as simply a felon or that I’ve held your reputation against you, because I don’t.”
