Page 181 of Beautiful Scars

I let out a deep breath. Can a man not watch his own brother die in peace?

Knocking his hand off me, I get up from the floor. “Are we people who give a fuck about right from wrong now?”

“This…it’s crossing a line,” he replies.

“Crossing a line?” I glance at the floor. “What line? Where is the line? Has there ever been a fucking line that we’ve not crossed?”

Cole chokes again behind me.

“Kill, please,” Sarah begs, eyes filled with tears.

I tell Derek to get out of my way, because it looks like Sarah’s one step away from rolling him over herself.

Don’t they understand? They’ve been here the entire time. They know what he’s become. An old dog with a broken back leg. No cure. Except death. He wouldn’t want to be committed to a hospital—it would be like snapping a swallow’s wings. No flight. No freedom. A horse that can’t move without pain.

He’d be completely alone. For the first time since our single egg split into two people.

Don’t they get it?

It’s cruel.

I won’t be with him. I won’t be visiting.

Because that’s not Cole lying there anymore. It’s an imposter. The same thing that got hold of my da’s brain has taken root inside his.

“Listen. Sarah, listen to me.”

When she doesn’t, I grab her wrists, pulling her hands away from her face.

“I’ll let you phone an ambulance, but you hear me out first.”

She looks up.

“He’s a cancer. Do you understand that? We’ll never get out. Even if he lets us go, we’ll never really escape. A man like that leaves scars that never heal. Is that what you want? One way or another, he will kill us. And he might leave us alive but we’ll not be the same people. He’ll be committed, drugged to his eyeballs. And we’ll want to help him because that’s just what we fucking do.”

“Killing him would be the cancer, Cillian. That’ll eat you up from the inside.”

I take a step back.

I’ve been living with the cancer of killing my dad all my life.

It’s like a disease, and the only way to fight it is to stop feeling anything at all. Guilt, anger, pity, joy. Love.

Off.

Until Meisie.

I’ve felt every one of those things with her.

Now she’s gone.

And so is my brother.

“You two do what you want with him. I’m going to check on Maddie.”

***

“Kill…Cillian.”