Page 61 of Brother In Arms

Chapter 22

Bailey

I lay in the dark, wide awake and losing yet more sleep over my asshole brother, but it wasn’t the main thing keeping sleep at bay. I couldn’t stop seeing Rush’s powerful fist plowing into Ken’s face over and over again. His model perfect looks would never be the same again, I knew that in my heart of hearts but what scared me about the thought wasn’t the thought itself, it was the fact that I felt nothing about it. Well, that wasn’t precisely true, what I felt about it was satisfaction. Did that make me a terrible person?

Rush jostled me slightly and I jumped, his voice softly penetrating the dark of the room and the miasma of my thoughts to ask, “Hey, you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“What’s eating you? What I did to that guy’s face?”

“That’s part of it,” I confessed.

Rush grunted, “You ask me? That was some karma right there. No girl‘ll ever be suckered in by his pretty boy face again. He tried it on you, Bales, there’s not tellin’ how many he’s succeeded on.”

I blinked and my heart sank, not for me but for the fact that Rush was right. I suddenly didn’t feel like such a monster for not feeling bad for the cockroach. Still, if it ever got out what happened to his face it would be my fault, just by virtue of being a woman. Never mind associating with a criminal element capable of such barbarism. I sighed, and Rush pulled me a little closer in the dark.

“Scared the shit out of me, seeing you like that. I just wanted to kill him. Make sure he could never touch you like that again. I still should have broken his damn hands. Maybe Dragon and Dray did it for me.”

“You mean that,” I said.

“Damn right I do.”

“I’m not used to this,” I said looking up at him, I couldn’t see him in the dark, the light through the blinds illuminating my face but leaving his shadowed.

“I know. Things are a lot simpler where I come from. More basic. You touch a man’s property, his woman, his bike, you best be prepared to have your face smashed in.”

“Is that what I am to you?”

“What?”

“Your woman, your property?”

“Well, yeah, Bailey. At least I’d like you to be.” I swallowed hard and pushed away from him, getting out of my bed.

“Get out,” I said and it nearly broke my heart to say it but it needed to be said.

“Call someone else to come sit with me, I don’t care but get out.” I was shaking now and he sat up completely, clicking on the bedside lamp and leaning back against the headboard.

“Talk to me,” he said, and I could tell by his tone I’d hurt him.

I shook my head and said, “Just please, get dressed and leave.”

“Not until you tell me why.”

I sniffed and stared at the ceiling, willing the tears to remain where they were and not spill but no such luck. It was like the tap was loose or something and wouldn’t quite shut off.

“Don’t you understand?” I demanded. “My whole life I’ve been told to shush. I’ve been shuffled off to the side in favor of the Berling golden boy. Told what I’m going to do, when I am going to do it; paraded in front of people to make my parents, my father, look good to his cronies and to impress clients or whatever. I’m not a show piece, damn it! I’m a woman, a person and no one’s fucking property!”

He started laughing then, hanging his head and shaking it a little just like every patronizing male in my life ever had as a way to discount the girl, oh don’t mind her, must be that time of the month, sort of thing. I hated it, I hated it so much and all of that venom, the poison I’d been ingesting since I first drew a damn breath just boiled to the surface and I just completely blew a gasket.

“Get out!” I screamed at him and stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door, locking it.

He tapped on the other side of it a moment later while I paced over my travertine floor and seethed.

“Bailey, open the door.”

“I mean it, Rush, either you leave now or I’m calling the police.”

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