Page 63 of End Game
“Finn—”
“Answer me!” he bellows.
“She told me last night.”
He paces a circle, clenching his fists, trying to calm himself down. I’ve seen him do this in games and in the locker room and even at a party once where a guy threatened the girl he was seeing. I can never remember him doing it quite likethisthough.
My quick-thinking skills are gone and I’m left scrambling to figure out how to put this. I force a swallow. “Finn, honestly, I’m sorry?—”
The words are ripped from my mouth by a crisp right hand, whipping across my face—fist closed—and rocking my head back. My face moves out of sync, my jaw working to catch up with the rest of me. I see the left coming and roll underneath it and pop up a few feet to his left and out of punching distance.
Wiping some blood off my chin, I glare at him. “Feel better now?”
“No.”
“Go on. Do it again.”
He doesn’t flinch.
“Do it again. See if it helps. Come on, motherfucker.” I stick my chin out, goading him to hit me. My face throbs, already swelling, but I don’t give a fuck. I need this. Iwantthis. Iwantthis pain. “Hit me, Finn.”
“Fuck you,” he snarls.
I don’t see the fist coming. The contact rings me awake, knocks the hangover right out of me. Savagery steels across his face, sinking into my psyche and reminding me of every way I’ve messed up.
“What were you thinking?” he hisses, his eyes narrowed to tiny little slits. “I ask nothing of you but to stay away from my sister and you can’t just stay away from her, you get her pregnant?”
He lurches forward again, but I have my wits about me now and jump out of the way. He crashes into a table with some books and a vase filled with sand from the Wabash River.
Everything crashes to the floor and Finn lies in the middle of it. He falls back to the floor, eyes closed, and doesn’t move.
Tugging at my hair, I look to the ceiling and wish I could just make this go away.
“I know you know I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I say as pacifyingly as possible. “I’d never do this to you . . . or to her.”
His eyelids pop open and he looks at me.
“I just . . . We just thought we’d have some fun, you know? I still don’t know how this happened.”
“Need a biology lesson?” He gets to his feet, brushing dust off his pants. “For fuck’s sake, Branch. Did you do this just to spite me?”
“Of course not.”
“I took you to my family’s home because we were friends. I trusted you,” he says, the anger giving way slightly to a look of disappointment. “I thought you were my guy, my buddy, the oneI could trust to bring into my world.” He considers me again. “You’ve disrespected my sister and you’ve betrayed me.”
My spirits fall, spiraling from what little height they had left into an abyss I’m not sure I’ll ever recover them from. The way he looks at me reminds me of the way Layla looked at me last night, and my stomach builds pressure, threatening to be sick again.
Clearing the bile from my throat, I get my bearings. “Layla is a?—”
“—an amazing woman,” he cuts me off, “that’s so far beyond your league you shouldn’t even get to fucking look at her, and I’ll blame myself for the rest of my life for introducing the two of you and giving you access to her.”
“Damn it, Finn. This isn’t your fault.”
“No, it’s your fault, asshole. This is all your doing with your hedonistic bullshit and greater-than-thou attitude.”
“Come on . . .”
He glares at me again, the friend I once knew all but gone from his eyes. “I hope she tells you to fuck off but clearly neither of you listens to me. But I want you to know this: if you’re not going to take full responsibility for this baby, get the hell out of her life. Hear me?”
