Page 5 of Abduction
He glanced away from me, taking a moment to gather himself. I could see how mad he was, but he didn’t like to let anyone else see him when he was losing it. He always wanted to put out the idea that he was totally and utterly in control, even when he wasn’t. Even when I could tell he was having a hard time holding it together.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded, pushing him. I knew I was acting like an asshole, but I was finding it hard to give a damn. I had a couple of drinks in me, and I wasn’t going to be talked to like an errant fucking child by my own brother. What, just because my dad was mad at me? We weren’t kids anymore. That didn’t mean anything. He was a grown adult, same as me, and he was still insistent on acting like he needed to bow to every little thing our dad asked of us.
“You’re not taking responsibility for this shit,” he snapped back at me. “You’re acting like it doesn’t matter, but it does. You’re fucking over me and Dad just because you’re too proud to—”
“Proud?” I cut him off. “No, this isn’t about me being proud. Or if it is...it’s about me being proud enough not to bend to every little whim our dad has.”
I locked my eyes on his, daring him to argue with me. He knew I was right. He might not have wanted to admit it, but he was basically buckling under everything our dad was demanding from him. He had even gone through him to get to me, and he couldn’t stand up for himself and tell him to piss off.
“I’m just taking responsibility for what this family has done for us,” he replied, his voice low. If I knew one thing about my brother, it was that him dropping his voice like that was a sign he was about to blow up. He hated losing control. He hated it. But when he was stressed, especially when he had a couple of drinks in him, he had a hard time handling himself, and he didn’t want to show me how much I had managed to get to him.
“This family?” I shot back. “You’re my family, Tommy. We’re twins. We’re supposed to have each other’s backs. What happened to that?”
His lip curled with irritation. I knew he hated it when I played that card, but there was no way I was going to let him speak to me like this, as though I hadn’t looked out for him a million times before. Yes, things might be difficult right now, but it didn’t mean he needed to treat me like this. Dad was pissed at me, not him; it was between me and my father. So why was he jamming himself in between us, like it was any of his business?
“I’m not going to look out for you when you’re screwing up,” he shot back, and I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, so you get to decide that now?”
“Of course I do.”
“Why? Because you and Dad are justsoclose working together that you know when he’s going to be mad?”
“You fucked up, Josh, and I don’t know why you can’t just come to terms with it,” he replied, taking a step toward me, a furious look on his face. It wasn’t often I saw him really angry, but it was clear I was getting a hit of it now. He had a real temper on him when it came down to it, and I could feel the tension and the anger rising between us even as we spoke. But I was pissed enough not to care. I wanted him to take a swing at me; I wanted him to show me how angry he was. I was sick of him and Dad conferring behind my back. If I had screwed up, then I wanted him to tell me to my fucking face.
“Because Dad doesn’t have the balls to say it to me and not you,” I replied. I could feel the adrenaline starting to rise in my system, and I didn’t care enough to stop it. I wanted the anger to rush through me. I wanted to show Tommy he couldn’t just drag me out of a bar when I was having a good time to yell at me like I was a child.
“He just knows you would ignore him if he tried to reach out to you. Is your phone even on right now?”
I grunted. Truth was, I’d turned it off the moment I walked into the bar. I didn’t want to deal with anything but having fun, maybe meeting a girl—why should I have to stay at his beck and call when there was nothing I could have done to stop Marione anyway? He would have found a way to escape whether I had been there to speak to him or not. He didn’t have the cash to pay us, or he would have stayed and handed it over. What was the point of ripping me to pieces over this? I wanted to get up in his face, my blood boiling as I realized how angry I was.
“Get away from me,” Tommy told me. “I don’t want to hear this right now. Go back inside, speak to Dad. Tell him you’re sorry.”
“Don’t tell me how to live my life,” I shot back angrily. “I’ve got better things to do than stand around and let you preach to me. Leave me alone.”
Before he could say another word, I brushed past him, knocking him to the side. Childish? Maybe, but he needed to remember I was in control of my own life here. I wasn’t going to let him preach to me, and I wasn’t about to let our father tell me what I needed to do, either. Especially not when he didn’t have the decency to even say it to my face.
I stormed off into the night and didn’t bother to turn around to see if he had anything to say to me. Let him deal with Dad if it was so important to him. I had bigger and more interesting things to consider. I wasn’t going to put up with this treatment. Tommy was supposed to be on my side; we were twins, brothers, we shared everything.
But as we got older, I started to wonder just how dedicated he was to me—and if he was more interested in pleasing our father than he was in having my back.
