Page 109 of Van Cort
West didn’t know whether to be elated, frustrated or frightened. He wasn’t quick enough with any decision, though. Rhett was already moving at him and the first punch landed.
He stumbled back and righted himself.
Lara got in between them and held her hands out to Rhett. “Rhett, stop. I’m sorry. I am. But neither of you have ever asked me what I wanted and-”
“And what?” Rhett snarled. “You want him?” He paced backwards and spun away from both of them, his back heaving with his own frustration.
Lara took deep breaths and looked back at West. He still didn’t know how to react to her statement. He’d been so busy winding himself into a pit of despair that it had never even crossed his mind that she’d want to go with him. His face softened from the pain of the punch, and he sighed with her. She smiled and reached her hand for his, as if that touch might make the other side of this pain between them all go away. It wouldn’t.
He looked past her to Rhett, knowing this would annihilate his world. But what was he supposed to do about that? Say no? Tell her he didn’t want her?
He did.
If there was one thing that would make all three of them not being together better for him, it was him not being alone.
“Rhett,” he said, squeezing her hand and letting go. “We can make this work.” He walked closer, leaving Lara behind near the overhang. “We were going to do it the other way around, so nothing’s changed. We can still—” Rhett spun around to face him, cutting the words straight out of West’s mouth. Purefucking anger lived in his features, and West knew there was no calming it.
He put his hands up and took a step back. “I don’t want to fight about this, Rhett. If she’s made a choice, we should honour that. It’s none of our faults. This is Father and there’s nothing we can do about that. Don’t punish us for something beyond our control.”
“You’ve been planning this, haven’t you?”
West backed up another step, confused. “No. I didn’t know until this moment right here. We haven’t discussed anything other than Lara going to Harvard.”
“Liar.”
“Don’t call me a fucking liar. I’ve never lied to you. I wouldn’t even know how.”
Rhett looked at Lara. “How long have you wanted him over me?”
She crept up behind West and walked in front of him. “That isn’t what this means. I still want you. I do. I want us. The same as it’s always been. It’s just… I had to make a choice, and you,” she looked at her feet and quietened her tone, “I don’t know, Rhett. Sometimes you scare me, and he doesn’t, and… there’s the drinking, too.”
West watched Rhett’s features turn enraged and walked closer to Lara, unsure what was about to happen. “Calm down, brother.” Rhett’s stare didn’t even move from Lara. He was fixated, like West wasn’t even there anymore. West wasn’t surprised. Some strange obsession had developed over the last few years. There was love, and then there was whatever Rhett’s form of it was. It was callous compared to his own sense of the word, but it was more potent, too. It ran deeper somehow, like she was in his veins.
“Everything I’ve done for you both, and this is what you do to me?” Rhett snarled.
West swallowed and tried getting in his eyeline. He wanted to say sorry, or thank you for the years of beatings his brother had taken for him, or even find a way of erasing the situation they were now in. He couldn’t find the words, though. How did you say that kind of thing?
He scanned Rhett’s clothed body, fully aware of the bruises that would be underneath, and let the shame consume him. He hadn’t even tried to console his brother since they were about thirteen. He’d ignored it, and then he’d let Lara deal with it however Rhett needed it dealt with.
Hands finding his face, he tried to rub the heated energy from it. “Look, it doesn’t mean we can’t see each other still. We can both drive, or fly, or… I don’t know. And I’m fucking sorry, alright? And thankful. Is that what you need from me to make this calm down?” Rhett didn’t move or acknowledge the words. “You can’t take this out on us because of something you chose, Rhett. I didn’t ask you to do any of it. You just did. That’s on you as much as me, and—”
“Fuck you, West.” He looked at Lara and stepped towards her. “And fuck you, too.”
Lara started crying again. “Rhett, please. You’ve got to understand. I wouldn’t have done this if there was any other way, but there isn’t, and I had to choose.”
“You chose wrong.”
West moved sideways to try blocking the contact Rhett was about to make with Lara, but he didn’t stand a chance. He got pushed sideways with such force that the inevitability sent him tumbling to the rocky ground. He crashed over it, and by the time he looked up, Rhett had Lara in his hands and was shaking her like a rag doll.
Feet scrambling, he pushed off the dirt to get to them. It only gave her a minute’s reprieve from Rhett’s anger and rage. Three punches in, and West was back on the ground again. He watchedRhett grab hold of her and push her backwards. He was shouting at her, and she was trying to make him see sense. Nothing was working.
He wheezed and got up to try again, too, but all it did was turn Rhett’s ire back on him. He tried talking, tried begging even, but his brother was lost in that fog he went to, and there was nothing to do but take the beating he probably deserved.
Lara was screaming at them both, and West could see her getting closer and closer to them fighting on the ground.
He shoved at Rhett with all his might, desperately trying to get them away from her. It didn’t work, and seconds later he could see her hands on Rhett’s shoulders, trying to pull him back.
The blurry sight of Rhett’s hand lashing backwards and striking Lara stirred something from West that he’d never felt before. She fell from the impact, and West found an energy that must have spent its life hidden within.
