Page 129 of Trigger Happy

He knows the reason, and I know it, but I still say, “Because he was still your brother, and you loved him. Hate can never erase love.”

He wilts. This. This is why I didn’t want to tell him. I want to say something funny or helpful to lighten his pain, but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make this better. For him, though, I’ll try.

I lower myself beside him and gently thread my fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp the way he likes. He takes in one of those deep, trembling breaths and presses his forehead to my shoulder. He doesn’t speak, and there’s nothing I can say to help, so I wrap an arm around him and draw rhythmic circles between his shoulder blades, wishing it could be enough. We stay like that until pinks and purples stain the sky.

When the cicadas reach their crescendo, he pulls his head up, eyes red. “Thank you.”

I rear back. “That’s the last thing I expected you to say.”

“I know.” He blows out a breath. “But you let me hate you all so I could keep believing the best in my brother.”

And now that I’m witnessing the pain it’s causing him, I don’t regret letting him live in peace for a little longer.

I interlace his fingers with mine. “What do you need?”

“I should…” He runs a hand through his messy hair, making it stick up in the back. “I don’t know. I should probably take some time to work through this, and maybe find a therapist who’s not related to Ted Bundy.”

My heart drops. Everyone knows “take some time” is the start of a soft-launch breakup. What am I supposed to say to that? Don’t talk to your therapist, talk to the criminal who failed high school psychology and had to bribe the principal!

There’s another long silence. The crickets join the cicadas. If he wants space, the least I can do is give him that. I thumb over my shoulder. “Okay, well, I should go. Maybe find an eye patch or something.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Just give me a few.”

A few what? I want to demand. Days? Weeks? Years?

I trudge back to my rental truck and swipe at the tears dripping from my eyes before anyone can see. The only thing keeping me going is knowing an everything shower is in my future. I need all this blood and grime off. I know this was an atomic bomb to drop on his life, and I don’t blame him for needing space. But god, I’m really going to miss him while he’s processing.

I grab the handle on my truck, but before I can climb in, a callused palm slams the door shut.

“Where the hell are you going?” Lawton rasps in my ear, hot breath blowing a strand of hair across my cheek.

He cages me against the truck, brushing his chest against my back as he lowers his chin to my shoulder. His biceps flex, grazing the curve of my arms. I glance back at him, and the intensity surging through his eyes has me wondering if I did something wrong.

I swallow. “Um, back to Manhattan? You said I should go.”

“I thought you meant go inside.” He grips my hips, gently spins me around to face him, and presses me against the metal door using all six foot two of his towering body. “Sabrina, I don’t want you to leave. I just needed a few minutes to get my shit together before I faced my mom. I need to figure out how to break this to her.”

Minutes, not weeks. My heart does a tap dance. “Oh. You said you needed to take some time. I thought you were still mad.”

“I do need some time, but I want you by my side while I figure all this out,” he says, moving his hands to my rib cage. “And I am mad, but I’m mad at myself for believing the worst without giving you the chance to explain, and I’m pissed that part of me’s relieved you didn’t kill him for no reason, and I’m furious with Walker. I hate what he did to those women, and to you—”

He stops talking like he can’t finish the thought. His muscles vibrate, veins straining against his neck. “If he weren’t already dead, I’d lock him up in a basement, lecture him until I got his head back on straight, then shave his hair and see how he likes being bald for what he did to you, but…”

Now would probably be a bad time to tell Lawton I gave him a mullet on his deathbed, so instead I say, “But what?”

A breath gusts out of him. “I hate him for what he did, but Walker was still my brother. And I don’t know how to stop loving him any more than I know how to stop loving you.”

His lips crash against mine.

It’s a messy, painful kiss that can’t be undone, knotted and rough and full of things you can feel in the dark. And that’s the thing, I don’t care how pitch-black our love gets.

If Lawton tries out antidepressants and quits them all because he doesn’t feel like himself, I’ll be there googling a new psychiatrist on the dark web. And if he decides to spray-paint his brother’s gravestone with the word asshole and then regrets it the next day, I’ll bring the power washer. Because sometimes love means sitting in life’s darkest moments without forcing someone to turn on the light.

He pulls back first, only so he can kiss the tip of my nose. “I know we argue like a divorced couple that secretly wants to get back together, but you might be my best friend, Chastain. No one else would’ve…”

He trails off, and there’s a flicker of pain in his eyes, so I try to snuff it out with a joke. “Excuse me, might? I’m definitely your best friend. We established this when we agreed that paying eighteen dollars for avocado toast should be illegal.”

“And that wax museums are creepier than graveyards,” he says, smiling. It’s a small one, but it’s there.