Page 58 of Dirty Love

I won’t fail him again.

Never again.

She finally leaves the room and I look at Nicky, reaching up to move his bloody hair from his eyebrow, lightly brushing my thumb over the tube taped to his cheek. Three more minutes pass and I lose a little more of my sanity, allowing myself to seethe for a few seconds while I recount the stitches on his face. My hands are shaking again and I’m vibrating with rage, plotting and planning and picturing all the ways I could make that cunt suffer for what he did today.

But not just him.

There’s too much blood on Nicky’s skin, too many broken bones, too many goddamn marks on my boy’s body for Jasper to have acted alone. He had to have had help, and even though Nicky’s not awake to give me their names, I already know exactly where we’re headed when I get him back on his feet.

I saw the shock on their faces when I followed the paramedics to the ambulance in the parking lot, saw the fear in their eyes when they saw the look in mine.

I didn’t say anything, because they already knew.

I’m gonna get every last one of them.

CHAPTER 22

NICKY

I’ve never seen my brother cry.

Not once in… fifteen years.

He’s always been the stronger one, but in this moment right here, as I slowly work my eyes open and find him sitting in a hospital room beside me, covered in blood from his face to his fingertips, he looks… weak.

He looks broken.

I move my knuckle over his lips and he looks up, eyes wide as he bounces them between mine. I frown at him and he lets out a noise I’ve never heard before, his shoulders visibly shaking while he drops his forehead to my arm. My heart aches in my chest and I try to lift the hand that isn’t wrapped up between his, weakly moving it over to run it through his hair.

“It’s okay,” I rasp out, unable to speak properly because my throat is too dry. “You got me, you son of a bitch.”

He laughs against me and I frown again, stopping when I realize that’s what’s hurting the front of my skull. He stays like that for I don’t know how long—just a few seconds, probably—then he moves closer and grabs a plastic cup of water from somewhere, careful not to lean on me while he holds it up to my mouth. I sip it without lifting my head and then turn my face towards him, watching him set it down on the side while I fight to swallow it. He watches me right back and I stare at his teary eyes, moving my finger to run it over the wetness covering his cheeks, then down to his lips.

“You’re crying,” I tell him, even though I’m sure he already knows that.

His features tighten and he makes that sound again, leaning over me to touch my forehead with his. “I thought I lost you, baby… I thought you left me.”

“You’d never let me leave you.”

He nods his agreement and I slide my hand around to the back of his neck, pulling him in until his mouth brushes mine. I kiss him and he lets me do it, taking over for me when my lips get too tired to move.

“Do you remember?” he asks, resting his forearms on the pillow either side of my head.

“Yeah.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah,” I admit, wincing while I try to move my ass down a bit. “It really fucking hurts, Kade.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

He growls quietly and reaches out to pick up some sort of button, but then something happens and he whips his head over his shoulder, flying off of me a second before our dad throws him back against the wall.

“No,” I try to scream, but all I end up doing is dry heaving, my chest and ribs tightening painfully while I watch him wrap his hands around my brother’s throat.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

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