Eat Your Heart Out

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Chapter One

Bru – the present

“How the fuck do you two even know each other?”
My brother’s words had bite to them.
His gaze matched.
Ares Mallick came at Fawn and me hot when we’d come in, but he wasn’t the only one who was pissed the fuck off.
Which was why I was cutting him off from Fawn again.
I cut off his view, cut off any and all contact he could possibly make with her. He didn’t have any right to it according to what she’d told me at the airport.
“I’m going to need you to clarify something for me first, bro,” I said, slipping my hands in my pockets. My brother was taller than me, but I noticed he’d gotten leaner since I’d last seen him. I assumed that was because he wasn’t playing football this year. He actually went by Wolf on the football field, and people called him that. He was clearly still a gym rat, though. His angular jaw was chiseled and defined, and because Wolf was my adoptive brother, we looked nothing alike. He had a tan to his skin that I didn’t have, his parents a mixture of races. His hair was darker than mine too, and more often than not, he kept it back and out of the way. It was long and curly, so I got that. He did that today, and I think I only picked up on his leaner build because I myself had been packing on the pounds in the gym. It’d been something to do between classes.
Yeah, something to do.
Wolf’s reasons for not playing football recently weren’t unknown to me and was almost the reason I didn’t go away to school this past semester. My brother had been going through it, and I wanted to be there for him. What I hadn’t expected when I came back from a semester overseas was all this, though. What Fawn had told me was insane.
Fawn Greenfield…
Behind me, she was looking at everything but Wolf, and it’d been so long since I’d seen her. Been around her…
Gazing away, I faced my brother. “I want you to explain to me what happened last semester. What happened between you and Fawn.”
My brother blinked then and with good reason. I was still having a hard time digesting what she’d told me, and even seeing Fawn at all had been crazy. I’d actually been trying to figure out what I was going to say to my family about my last semester when I saw her.
And then, well, I saw her.
She’d been there right in the middle of Maywood Heights International Airport. She had her phone in hand, and I thought I dreamed her up at first. It’d been a really long time, and I greeted her, of course. We were catching up when she said she missed her flight home and the alternative was her going back to her school, Pembroke University. I was familiar with it since my brother and sister went there, and she was talking like she was going to spend the holidays on campus.
I didn’t know why my first instinct (after chatting with her for like a minute) was to invite her home with me for Christmas. She probably thought I was a freak, but it’d just been so nice to see her. I’d been really in my head when I saw her, and yeah, it’d been nice.
I had to say not much changed about her, but then on the other hand, so much had. I recognized her right away, bright red hair, freckles, red lips. She’d worn lipstick back then too, always did, and it always made her look like a vintage photo. One of those classic ones of old Hollywood starlets. I remembered thinking that even back then.
What had been different was the automatic smile she gave in my direction to someone, she clearly, hadn’t recognized. I’d changed quite a bit from the brief time we’d gone to school together, but despite not knowing who I was, she had just smiled at me. The old Fawn I knew hadn’t done that. She was guarded heavily, and it took some time to crash through that exterior.
In fact, I didn’t see anything of the old Fawn until she had mentioned my brother. It came up when I’d been asking her about coming home with me. I explained my family dynamic, how I was adopted, and as soon as she found out who my family was, her entire demeanor had changed. She’d locked up again.
She got guarded again.
I was covering her at this point because, for some reason, my brother was getting closer to her. His two piercings in his left nostril rose and fell when his nose flared. He was angry I brought her here, but he wasn’t the only one who was angry.
I put a hand on Wolf’s chest, his heart racing behind it. “Bro, explain to me. Now.”
Because my shit was racing too. I was angry too because no reason in the goddamn world warranted the kind of behavior Fawn explained to me.
And definitely not directed toward her.
It’d been a long time, but I knew Fawn’s story. I knew what she’d been through. I also knew she’d been a friend to me no matter how brief the time. We’d both had some bullshit happen to us back then.
And we’d managed to find solace with each other while within it.
I got Fawn’s hand then, mostly because my brother was still stepping up on her. She started backing away, and I wanted to let her know she was okay. I had her, and she was good.
Right away, she gripped my hand, and distracted by that, I glanced down. My brother gained then, and it took a second to distance him.
He sneered at me, Fawn, then for some reason our hands, which I found odd. He bared teeth. “You told him, Red? You fucking told him? How do you guys even know each other—”
“You have no right.”
I blinked for a few reasons. One was because my brother had given Fawn a nickname. I mean, it was an obvious one. She was a redhead, but that was… different. Another was because I was still kind of thinking about my hand holding Fawn’s. We used to do that a lot too. We were friends, but there were a lot of moments either one of us just needed a little security in the past. We needed a kind gesture from a familiar face.
We needed a friend.
I wasn’t able to think about it long because she let go, which brought me to the other reason I blinked. She’d been the one to tell my brother off after what he said and was now stepping up on him with her finger in his face. She legit walked up on him, and even though she was like over a foot beneath him (everyone was with his height), she stood tall. She stood confident. I’d seen that before too. Fawn Greenfield stood up against her bullies.
She always had.

Fawn

This was a bad idea. Terrible.
And yet, here I was.
Here we were, Wolf and me, and him driving me fucking crazy. Here he was getting a reaction out of me, and that pissed me off so fucking much.
I shook my finger at him, actually shaking, and I know I surprised him. He closed his mouth after I snapped at him, and he didn’t do that.
And to see him…
This sucked. It killed. My chest borderline caved in looking at him like I’d been socked in the freaking chest. Some of his hair had glided out of his bun, the curly strands wavy.
Gorgeous.
His jawline cut sharp, more defined like he’d been sculpting himself more than bulking up. Of course, he was still huge and completely all-encompassing.
Completely intimidating.
I couldn’t let him intimidate me. Not this time. I hadn’t wanted to come here today and confront him, but since I was, I had to stand my ground.
I had to stand up for myself.
I was doing that by getting in his face, and even though he smelled like literal heaven, I didn’t back down. I wouldn’t. I wet my lips. “You’re completely and ridiculously unbelievable. Do you know that?” The audacity he had for coming at me. The audacity he had for getting mad at me, all things considered. “I owe you nothing. Nothing, do you understand that?”
I really hadn’t wanted to come here today. I’d wanted to go home, but something happened when I saw Bruno at the airport.
Bru…
He looked so different now, completely different. For starters, he was like two Brunos with his size. He had arms nearly as big as Thatcher Reed’s beneath his jacket, which he’d put on after I ran into him in the airport. Thatcher was Wolf’s childhood friend, and the guy was huge, just like Bruno.
I guessed it was Bru now. He’d asked me to call him that when he’d seen me at the airport, and how crazy that had been. I hadn’t seen him in years, and even though I hadn’t, it’d been like no time had passed seeing him. He’d been a rock for me back then, a kind face in the midst of so much trauma.
But then you left.
I had to after what I did to Cissy Armstrong. She’d locked me in a car knowing I was afraid of them after my dad died. He’d died in a car crash, and I’d been at the wheel.
She knew that.
I didn’t regret standing up for myself, but I did regret what I’d done in retaliation. I hurt her physically, badly. It’d been so bad and completely out of character for me. I had to leave school after, leave Bruno, and things got so much worse after that. I got worse.
Bru stood there, and I couldn’t forget the look on his face after I told him what his brother did to me. How confused he’d been…
How angry.
I’d never really seen Bru’s angry side when we’d gone to school together. He’d always been that comfort for me, but the moment he found out about Wolf, he’d been furious. Immediately, he’d wanted to confront Ares, and I should have just let him.
But for some reason, I came with him.
For some reason, I wanted to step in and retract everything I said. I wanted to go to Ares himself and stop Bru from confronting him. I wanted to stop this like I wanted to protect Wolf or something, and that didn’t make any fucking sense.
But doesn’t it?
No, it didn’t. He’d hurt me, and regardless, I didn’t end up doing anything anyway when I saw him. It was like just being in front of him locked me up. It always locked me up, and I was tired of this shit.
Wolf started to open his mouth, but I wasn’t going to let him talk. He’d done enough talking, and it was my turn now.
“Red…”
But then he said that, Red, and he looked at me in a way that made me feel seen. It made my entire being blaze like I was bathed in fire and not given the courtesy of an easy death. A bullet to the heart would have been easier.
It was easier.
I backed away, unable to do this. Bru started to reach for me, go to me. I had to put up that barrier too because he had a way of making me feel seen as well. He gave me support in some of the worst moments of my life. He gave me his friendship, and even though it hadn’t been for long, that meant something to me. It made me stronger, and I didn’t want him to see how weak his brother made me. Bru had seen too many instances of me being weak in the past, and I refused to let him see that side of me again.
Ashamed, I ran off, and even left my bag. Bru had gotten both mine and his inside before we’d seen Wolf.
“Fawn!”
I think it was a combination of them both that called me, but I wasn’t able to identify if that were true. I opened the door, but stopped when I physically couldn’t go any farther.
I think three guys the size of literal marines had something to do with that.