Page 33 of Abduction
Chapter Eighteen
Josh
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WHEN I GOT TO MY ROOM, I found Tommy waiting there already.
“If you’re here to chew me out, trust me when I say Dad’s already done it,” I told him, and he shook his head.
“No, no, I’m here to help,” he replied, and he pointed to an icepack as well as some bandages sitting on my wardrobe. I rubbed my hand over my face and sank down on to the bed, letting the weight fall from my shoulders for a moment. I needed to have more trust in my brother. I needed to accept he was really here to help me, even when, sometimes, it felt as though he would rather have taken my father’s side with all of this.
“Thanks,” I muttered as he began to peel back the ripped fabric of my shirt and tend to my broken skin. It wasn’t the first time either of us had done this for one another. Our father had been liberal with these punishments when we were young, telling us it would all make sense down the line when we were older. It was his way of teaching us responsibility, though, when I was a kid, I had often wondered if there was an easier way of doing it.
Tommy cleaned me up in silence, and I bit back the grunts of pain as he started to fix me up. He must have known what Dad was going to do to me, to have all this ready to go. He came prepared. I tried not to let it bother me. He could have attempted to stop him, but he knew as well as I did there was little chance of getting my dad to drop something he had on his mind. When my father wanted payback, he would find a way to get it, no matter what it took or how much it hurt.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” he told me, even though I was sure he was lying. These would scar. At least I didn’t have to worry about Amber seeing them—judging by the way she had acted, I doubted I would ever lay eyes on her again. She wanted to be done with me. She wanted to be a good girl, and I didn’t know if I could convince her to the contrary.
“Thanks,” I told him as I reached for a fresh shirt to throw on instead of the bloodied ruins of the one I had been wearing. I was surprised Tommy hadn’t already started laying in to me for letting him down, but I was also kind of relieved he didn’t seem so intent on chewing me out for everything that had happened. I hadn’t done all of this to hurt him or my father—I had done it because I’d gotten distracted, by someone I really, genuinely liked. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me what a fucking idiot I had been for failing them.
“Sorry for not turning up today,” I told him, biting back the urge to curse him out for not defending me against Dad. No point in that. He knew if he got in the middle of things, he was only going to make it harder for himself, and he didn’t want to cause that kind of trouble.
“I handled it,” he replied, his voice curt. He was pissed at me, even though he knew I had bigger things to deal with right now.
“I’m really sorry about what happened today,” I conceded to him. After I had fucked up the way I had, I knew I owed him a serious apology, and I didn’t want him to think I was trying to get out of it.
He didn’t reply. Waiting for more of a reason as to why I had failed to turn up there. He had drilled it into me in every way he could how important this was, and I had totally failed him. I knew there was no excuse, and if I told him it was about a woman, he would have flipped out even harder on me. I wouldn’t have blamed him. The way I had acted wasn’t acceptable. Getting distracted by a girl I barely knew, who was engaged to someone else, no less. He would have told me, and he would have been right, that I was stupid for trying to chase someone like Amber.
“I know I’ve been distracted lately,” I admitted, forcing myself to be at least a little honest with him. I wasn’t going to be able to expect his kindness like this if I didn’t try and give him some sort of reason for it.
“Yeah, you have,” he replied, his voice cool. He was pissed. Really pissed. He might not have shown it in the same way that Dad did, but I could tell he was having a hard time being in the same room as me right now. Much as he wanted to stay in control, he could only take so much before he lost it and admitted he was having a hard time showing me any kind of respect.
“It’s going to change,” I offered him. “I’m going to get my head back in the game. I promise. I’m sorry to have asked for so much patience from you—”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” he told me, cutting me off before I could go any further. “It’s Dad.”
I fell silent. I knew what he was getting at. My father had a much, much shorter fuse than Tommy did, and he had already shown himself to be willing to actually hurt me to get his point across. He would do it again. Maybe worse, if I didn’t start stepping my game up, but I didn’t want to push him that far.
“I don’t know how much more he can take,” he continued. “And I don’t know what he’s going to do when he reaches the end of his fuse. You need to start stepping up. I can handle it, but our father...you know he can’t.”
I nodded, not saying a word. He was right. Much as I hated to admit it, he was right. If I kept fucking up like this, my dad wasn’t going to stay patient with me. He was already pushing closer and closer to the edge, and I didn’t know what he would do when he eventually went over it. He expected more from me, and if I kept failing, I would lose my place in this family.
And I knew my father had no time for people he thought of as useless to him. If I was out of the family business, I might as well have not existed to him. I wouldn’t have a place in the legacy, I wouldn’t have the money, I wouldn’t have the power...my entire life would have shifted in an instant, and I didn’t know if I could handle it.
Tommy rose to his feet. He clearly had nothing else to say to me, and I didn’t want to keep him here if that was the case. I was sure he had plenty of his own shit to think about, especially given he’d had to run the whole of this evening by himself.
“You should take some time to think,” he told me, voice still cool. “I’ll speak to you later.”
He gathered the stuff he had brought in with him and left. The moment the door clicked shut behind him, I felt my shoulders sag. Dammit. What a fucking night.
And all of it had been because of Amber. I couldn’t believe how quickly I had forgotten about everything I was supposed to be doing just because she was around.
Or had it really happened like that? I’d been nagged with the memory of my promise to Tommy the whole time I had been out with her, but I’d found it hard to think about dropping her to be with him. She was the first person in a long time who I had met who sincerely seemed to have no idea about the kind of person I was, the sort of family I came from. The relief that offered me, a relief I hadn’t known I needed until now, was bigger than I had expected. Yes, I had shown off to her a little, but she still didn’t know where it all came from, the legacy it was attached to, and I wanted to keep it that way.
Not that I was expecting her to waste more of her time with me after this. She was clearly torn—torn between me and doing what she thought was right. I was dead certain her fiancé was cheating on her, but I couldn’t convince her short of showing her photographs of him fooling around with his secretary or whatever it was he was up to.
I needed to stay the fuck out of her life from this point forward. No matter how tempting it might have been to give in to my desire for her, my desire to be with her and get to know her and spend more time with her, I wasn’t going to let it happen. I was going to focus on the family because I knew it was where my future was. Amber was just some woman I had only met a few times. There was no point chasing after her, especially not if it got in the way of what I knew my father wanted from me.
