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“Maddie,” I murmured. “This was never about her. Did you stop to think how she felt? What you did to her?”
He smirked. “Oh, no, brother. Believe me. You did that. Not me.”
“That’s not what happened,” I argued, but it was.
I hurt her because she hurt him. Because I fucking hurt. Lennox nodded as he saw the truth roll across my face. The change in him seared my heart. This was the reason I pushed her away from the start. For him. My brother. My twin.
How the hell had I gone from balls-deep in the girl, her soul singing with mine, to be brought back to ground level? It was a wonder she let me touch her, though I hadn’t given her much of a choice. Still, she didn’t push me away. Did she?
I didn’t realize I whispered the words until Lennox’s smile darkened.
I groaned, leaning my back to the wall and dropped my head to my knees. A hangover of epic proportions brewed in my head, and I hadn’t had a single damn drink to earn it.
A squeal that didn’t come from a human mouth ripped the night apart.
I turned in the direction of the parking lot, my legs already pumping as I burst through the trees without the knowledge of my body moving or how I got there. The open gravel space was still but for a single car, the night eerily silent as I stared at the scene in front of me.
Dark lines where the drunken idiots had been doing burnouts crisscrossed the asphalt. The classic blue Torana idled quietly, its usual guttural roar muted. Two of the frat boys who made pretty hood ornaments stood by the car’s doors. Uncertainty and hesitation filled the small space, an unspoken threat pervading the stilted air.
One crouched beside a dark bump, his hand outstretched as though to touch it, but then he pulled back. A bundle of cloth, not a lump. My feet slowed as my mind caught up. Lennox paused at my side, his sharp intake of breath confirming what my eyes saw but hadn’t put together yet the way his had.
Now you have your own first to claim, brother.
Because my brain finally kicked into gear and the scream lodged in my head tore from my throat.
“Maddie!”
Chapter Eight
Maxom
“Maddie,” I whispered, sliding through the gravel on my knees to cradle her head in my hands.
Footsteps with the same cadence as mine followed much more sedately in my wake. I didn’t look back or need to say anything for him to know to stay the hell back.
If I’d been a few minutes earlier.
If my brother hadn’t detained me.
If he hadn’t been an asshole and took her from me in the first place.
If I held her the way I should have, never played games with her, and told her I loved her.
So many fucking ifs that I didn’t even care about the cold shock that doused my system at the last one. Because seeing her too pale, cold, and still in my hands was more than I could take.
“Who hit her?” I grated in a soft voice.
My fury brewed but now was not the time to take that out on the four drunk jocks peering over my shoulder where my brother should have been. A few murmurs answered me, but nothing coherent made it to my ears.
“Answer him,” Lennox snapped at my back. He paused then spoke again. “I need an ambulance…”
That he called the emergency line without checking brought me some peace. If I lost her, that fragile slice of a future treaty would never be replaced.
“Who?” I roared over the chatter at my back.
“No one, man. She … I think she glanced off the headlights, running in those stupid ass heels,” a jock offered weakly. “It was stopped. The car. No one hit her.”
Except the scream of rubber rang like a death knell in my memory.
