Page 25 of Crash’s Secret

The punch lands flush. Crash goes into my dresser, catches the edge of it, and stays down on one knee. He doesn’t get up. He doesn’t put his hands up either. He spits blood onto my floor and stays exactly where my brother put him.

“Stop!” I’m out of the bed, blanket gone, in my T-shirt and shorts with my hands out between them. “Saber, stop!”

“You’re supposed to protect her.” Saber is yelling. “I gave you one job. One. We talked, and you told me she was fine, and the whole time you were—” He cuts himself off. His jaw works. “Get up so I can knock you down again.”

“Stop it.” I plant myself in front of my brother. “Look at me. Saber. Look at me. I’m a grown woman. He didn’t do anything wrong. I love him.”

Saber looks at me like I slapped him. Then he laughs, one short ugly sound with nothing in it.

“You love him.” He points past me without taking his eyes off mine. “Cass, I’ve known that man for most of my life. I’ve watched him charm half the county out of their pants and forget their names by breakfast. He’s my best friend, and I’d die for him. But listen, I’m telling you, as the person who loves you most on this earth, he could never love you. He doesn’t have it in him. He’s never had it in him.”

“You’re wrong,” Crash says from the floor.

He gets up slowly, one hand on my dresser, blood running from the corner of his mouth, and he doesn’t wipe it. He stands there in front of the man who hit him and doesn’t square up, doesn’t grin, doesn’t crack jokes to defuse the situation.

“I didn’t want you to find out about us like this.” He looks at me when he says the rest. “You’re wrong, Saber. I do love her.”

For just a moment, I forget my brother is in the room.

Crash has never said it. Not on the ridge, not in this bed, not in the dark when it would’ve been easy. He said mine and yours. But he didn’t say love—until now.

He loves me. He said it. He said it out loud.

Saber stares at him. “Out of all the fucking women throwing themselves at you,” Saber says, “you pick my little sister.”

“I didn’t pick her. You think I’d choose this? You think I wanted to want the one woman guaranteed to cost me my best friend?” Crash shakes his head once. “It’s her. It was always going to be her. I just didn’t know it until she came home.”

Saber’s hands open and close at his sides.

And then his phone buzzes, and I watch Saber read the screen. His shoulders set. When he looks up, the fury is still there, but something else just happened. That’s what this life does—it doesn’t even let him finish being angry.

“We’re at war, and I don’t have time for this shit.” He points a finger at Crash. “And if it weren’t for that, I’d fucking kill you. And you’d let me, because you know you’ve got it coming. But right now, I need my VP more than I need to beat the shit out of my best friend. Get dressed. Church. Five minutes.”

He walks out. He doesn’t look at me again, and that hurts more than anything he said.

Crash picks his boots up off my floor. There’s already swelling along his cheekbone, and his lip is split.

When he stops in front of me, I reach up and wipe the blood off his chin with my thumb.

“You heard that,” he says. “What I said.”

“I heard it.”

“I wanted to tell you differently. Not like this.” His hand comes up to the side of my neck, thumb along my jaw. “I’ll fix it. After.”

“Go.” I push him toward the door. “Your Prez needs you.”

He kisses me once, fast, copper on his mouth, and he’s gone down the hall with his boots still in his hand.

The sun is dropping behind the western range when there’s a knock, and it’s Trapper, and his expression is all wrong.

“Pack a bag, Cass. You’re leaving in ten minutes with the others.”

“What’s happening?”

“All the women and kids are moving. Safehouse.” He’s already looking down the hall toward the next door. “Clubhouse isn’t safe enough. Everybody knows where it is, and Saber wants you all someplace different. Ten minutes, okay?”

He’s gone before I can ask anything else. Not that he’d answer. Club business.