“I can’t,” Mom sobbed. “I can’t—we can’t do this anymore. It has to be done.”
“Wendy,” Dad said, voice sharp.
“He needs help!” she yelled, her voice fading from the room but still managing to pierce my chest. When she continued, her words steadily grew louder as she returned. “He needs what we can’t give him. He needs people who can control him, Mike, and we can’t do that.”
“The answer is no,” he said firmly. “We’ll talk later.”
“We’re talking now,” she argued. “I am his mother, and I need to do what’s best for him.”
“What’s best is his family,” Dad shouted louder than I’d ever heard. “Stability. Not that bullshit you’re trying to put on him. That’ll only make him worse.”
“You’re wrong. I’ve talked with them. They’ve had plenty of boys like Beau, and they’ve helped them. I know they’ll—know they’ll—” She burst into tears and sagged to the arm of a chair. “They’ll help.”
I’d gone still long before.
My heart so, so slow as I listened. Watched. Felt every word cut through me.
That sickness inside lingering.
Waiting.
Ready to ignite.
“We ain’t doin’ this in front of the kids,” Dad said firmly.
“I already sent in an application.”
Dad pushed off me, turning to look fully at Mom at her confession.
Another sob broke free from her. “It has to be done.” Her eyes drifted to me. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I love you. I love you so much, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Hunter’s grip slowly tightened on my shoulder. As if he could feel the shift in me. Like he was holding onto a bomb that was about to explode.
My stare went to Cayson’s blood-smeared face and then over to where Sawyer was cradling his arm. Knowing whatever happened to him had been my fault even though I couldn’t remember it. Just past them, Madison stood, holding Emberly close to her side.
All of them were watching my mom, waiting to find out what was going on.
But as much as I was dreading whatever had my parents fighting in a way I’d never seen and had my mom looking the way she did, I was more afraid to find out when the room was full.
If I lost control when no one was around, I lashed out against the closest thing to me—like a wall.
I wouldn’t take my family down with me . . . again.
“I should be alone when I find out,” I choked out.
“Nothin’ to find out because it ain’t happenin’,” Dad said decisively.
“It has—”
“Wendy—”
“I sent in an application to a military academy,” she yelled over him, fat tears falling down her cheeks as she looked at me.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
That feeling building inside me? It terrified me.
“Down in Harlingen,” she explained. “If you get in, we’ll see how things are for you at the end of next school year.”
What the fuck?
She shrugged as her cries prevented her from continuing for a while. “But this has to be done. They can help you.”
What the fuck? What the fuck?
“Nothin’ to help,” Dad ground out. “He’s not goin’—you ain’t goin’, Beau.”
My voice was low and ragged when I said, “Get away from me.”
“Take a breath, man,” Hunter said quickly. “Think of Savannah—what she would say right now.” From his hushed curse, he realized his mistake as soon as he mentioned her.
My heart twisted. Splintered. Shattered.
And everything went so, so red.
I tossed my keys to the side, not bothering to pick them up when they slid off the table and hit the hardwood floor. Each step feeling like it took all my strength as I struggled to make it somewhere I could lay down.
But just as I was nearing the couch, a key sounded in the lock. After a longing look at the couch, I turned to stare at the door, brows drawn close together. No one had come to the condo in the two and a half weeks I’d been staying there, but I didn’t have the energy to care about who it might be.
And then my brother walked in.
Stare sweeping the place until catching on me, body going still as the door closed behind him. “Beau.”
“Cayson.” I nodded toward the table my keys hadn’t landed on. “Here for your stuff?”
Hesitation crept through the space between us for a moment before he reacted. Body rocking to the side and head slanting. “No. Uh . . .” He cleared his throat and gestured around. “We’re keeping it like this. Emberly wants to rent it out.”
I dipped my head, gaze darting around to the few things I had there. “I’ll leave.”
“No, no. Stay however long you need. Just something we were talking about for later,” he explained as he moved deeper into the condo, toward me. Stopping when he was a handful of feet away, watching me like he didn’t know where to begin.
Knew the look because I felt the same.
I’d only seen Cayson a handful of times in the six-or-so months since he’d come back to Amber. The first two had gone about how I’d always thought they would—all hostile sneers ripping from me as I’d tried dragging him from my home.
Then again, I’d hated him for a damn long time.
Blamed him for the painful domino effect that had destroyed our family.
The next time he’d shown up, explaining all the fucked-up shit our dad had done to him and the family business, I’d once again wished Cayson had never come back. Because in his revelation, he’d torn apart a man I’d looked up to, revealing his true, abusive nature. And I’d been slammed with the horrifying realization that Dad and I were the same. Consumed with the crippling fear that, one day, I would turn on one of my kids the way he’d done to Cayson. Verbally, mentally, and physically beating them down because I was no better than he was.
“You busy?” Cayson finally asked, trying to break through the awkward tension sitting between us.
I lifted a hand as if to show I wasn’t. “Just got back from Blossom.”
His brows lifted. “Yeah?”
A lifeless laugh tumbled past my lips. “Yeah.” I stepped back to the couch and sank heavily onto it, running my hands over my face and through my hair before letting them hang between my knees. “Savannah finally let me back yesterday to see the kids.”
My jaw worked as I thought through the hours with them. Hours that went by too quickly in the middle of days that were so damn long.
“She’s letting me go over after work until they go to bed. I’ll take what I can get.”
“Damn,” he breathed as he sat in a large chair opposite me. “Have y’all talked about it?”
My narrowed stare shifted to where he was messing with his phone. “She won’t. The hell is that shit?” I asked when a song started playing through his phone.
“Dixie Chicks.”
“No.”
A wry smile slowly crossed his face as he turned the volume down a little and set his phone aside. “Emberly said I had to.” He lifted his hands as if to say there was nothing he could do about it. “Said they help everything.”