Page 10 of Off-Limits Love
Elias grabbed the chair Hud had vacated and sat down.
“Did you come just to give me a hard time?”
“I came to check on you. One of the cops on duty last night was at the gym this morning. He mentioned he’d paid a visit to your neighbor’s house—and wound up cuffing you.”
Finn grimaced at the memory of the metal locking down on his wrists. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It was that bad?”
That bad? No, it was a party complete with shiny bracelets and humiliation. Not his kink. “Stupid stutter locked me up tighter than a vault. The little girl was missing so…”
Elias looked angry on his behalf, but Finn shrugged again. “Mak— Sam’s niece hadn’t met me. I was just some guy who appeared out of the woods.”
Elias shifted uncomfortably. “Raz felt really bad about it, for what it’s worth. Said to apologize to you again. He…mentioned you might want to carry something on you, like a card, for when that happens.”
Finn glared at his brother but knew the advice was given out of kindness. Out of concern. But it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “They told me that last night.”
Seconds ticked by, marked by the old clock in the hallway. When they’d left the house to venture out on their own, every Blackwell kid had taken one item from the family home.
The clock had been a gift from their grandparents to their parents. And it served as a reminder of how precious time was. And how quickly it could be taken away. Something he’d never allow himself to forget.
“You could try therapy again, you know. Things have come a long way since we were kids. The docs said it seemed to be a mental block due to the accident. Maybe you should give counseling another shot.”
Finn couldn’t stop the surge of anger that flooded his veins. He knew his twin meant well, but some things… Maybe some things were just meant to be.
Especially considering the circumstances.
And to say flat out that it was a mental thing? Yeah, maybe it was—or maybe it was his punishment for the pain he’d caused his entire family. His punishment for his parents’ deaths.
“Okay, fine. I know that look,” Elias said in a low tone. “Just know that whatever crap you’re probably still telling yourself about the night of the accident still isn’t true.”
He fisted his hands and fought the urge to slam one or both into his twin.
Elias didn’t know. He didn’t know what that night had been like. That it was his fault. That he had caused all of it.
Elias got up and carried his mug to the sink and rinsed it before adding it to the dishwasher.
Finn didn’t speak. He couldn’t when he still fumed over Elias’s words. Still reeled from the memories—the screams, his screams—flooding his head like they always did.
The horror and shock in the mere seconds it took to be riding in a car to flipping through the air and rolling over and over.
The fear and pain and that moment of silence when the world finally stopped spinning and he became lucid enough to realize what had happened. That he was trapped inside the wreckage, pinned. That his father was…gone. His mother bleeding out in front of him, eyes on him as though she tried to say something but couldn’t.
All he could do was watch. And scream. Over and over again until he’d lost the ability to speak.
“Look, I’ve said it before, but I’ll keep saying it until it finally sinks into that thick head of yours. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted you to shut everyone out the way you have. You ripped me a new one not that long ago when I was being stupid regarding Quinley. Now it’s my turn to remind you that you didn’t die that night, and the last thing Mom and Dad would ever want is for you to think you didn’t deserve to live life to the fullest because you survived and they didn’t.”
Finn stayed still despite everything inside of him wanting to bolt.
Thankfully Elias did it for him and left after shaking his head and murmuring a goodbye along with how Finn needed pull his head out of his ass.
His brother’s words echoed long after he was gone. Images of that night continued to loop in his head until he pressed his palms to his eye sockets and scrubbed like he could rub them away once and for all.
Realistically he knew he wasn’t driving the car. He hadn’t crossed into oncoming traffic. He wasn’t the one who’d been under the influence and plowed into his parents’ vehicle.
But they wouldn’t have been there on that road at that time if not for him, and that?
That was his fault.
