He sputtered out a laugh that gave me a little confidence. “I’m fine, Mom. How are you?”
“Shut up. I can ask how you’re doing. Last time I saw you, you were bleeding out,” I spat.
“Yeah. Well, that’s better now, at least,” Deon replied, then let out a deep sigh. “How are you?”
“Don’t ask if you don’t care.”
“You fucking piss me off,” Deon responded. “How are you? Fuck!”
Despite my best attempts, I let out a chuckle. “I mean, I’m on my feet. All my family is…gone. I have the Court, but we’re falling apart at the seams, so…”
“Oh, yeah? Your little gang can’t hold it together, or what?”
Part of me wanted to snap at him, but the other part of me knew I deserved the ridicule. “Turns out, we aren’t built for heavy pressure.”
“No!” Deon gasped. “I never would have guessed that.”
“Did you just call to anger me, or did you have something you wanted to say? Shit, I don’t hear from you for two fucking months, and all you’ve got for me is insults?”
That time, the noise that came out of Deon’s mouth was sympathetic, almost apologetic. “Sorry. I’m so used to hating you that it’s a hard habit to break.”
“Why do you hate me?” I asked. “What did I do?”
“Is that a joke?” Deon replied. “Ignoring the fact that you tracked down the woman I was in love with and dated her while I was in prison, the very first thing you did was corner me and threaten me if I didn’t join your little club.”
I didn’t respond right away. With everything that had gone on, I’d nearly forgotten that I did that. Yes, I approached Deon when he first came back and told him to join The Royal Court. There wasn’t any specific plan when I asked him to do that. If anything, I was just searching for a way to bring him back into the fold of my life. It crushed me when he left, and even though I had a ton of reasons to be angry, he didn’t have any to be angry at me.
That’s when it hit me like a ten-ton block of bricks—I’d jumped the gun.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked after a pause. “If I hadn’t done that, then when you saw me next, what would you have done?”
“It’s difficult to say,” Deon responded. “After I went back to North Postings, Cherri and I used to trash The Royal Court. It was nothing personal, but thanks to our dad, her life got totally uprooted when she first moved to Maine, so she wasn’t a big fan of his. I wanted to impress her and didn’t tell her we were related, obviously. I didn’t want her to hate me. If I’m being totally honest, though…” He went quiet for a few seconds before saying, “I probably would have been happy to see you.”
That statement drove through my chest like a poison-tipped dagger. “Really?”
“Well, yeah? I mean, you’re my brother, and it wasn’t like you did anything wrong to me. I was angry with Connor, not you. It would have made me nervous, trying to figure out how to explain to Cherri that I was related to the family she disliked so much.” He scoffed. “She certainly found a way to get over that, so it would have been easier than I had thought.”
“Wow.” I kicked the inside of my car in frustration. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“Then, obviously, once I found out you were with Cherri, that would have changed some things, but even then, I thought it was just bad luck and mostly on me because I didn’t tell Cherri that we were brothers.” He started to laugh. “Fuck, yeah. Now that I think about it, if I hadn’t learned all that shit about you going for Cherri just to fuck with me, I would have written that shit off as a coincidence. Might have even been happy for you two if you were really in love or whatever. Might.”
“I was so…pissed off that you left. That you just packed up your shit and left, not even thinking about me. I couldn’t believe it was that easy for you to go.”
Deon was quiet again for a little bit. “I mean, it wasn’t, really. I…” He let out a growl. “Fuck. Are we really doing this? This sappy shit. Right now?”
I shrugged, though Deon couldn’t see it. “We don’t have to. You called me.”
Deon let out a loud sigh. “I mean I…loved you or whatever. You’re my brother. I always wanted a brother.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Of course, when I left, I knew it meant leaving you behind, and I hated that, but I was a kid. I fucking missed my mom. I didn’t know Connor from a fucking hole in the wall. I’m used to barely being able to breathe in a tiny house, and suddenly, I have my own fucking wing. And all that shit your dad tried to force on me all of a sudden. You mean to tell me that if you had somewhere else to go, you wouldn’t have gone there with all the shit your dad put you through?”
“I would have.”
“I didn’t want to leave you necessarily, and I always thought about trying to get back to you at some point. I knew, if nothing else, high school would roll around, and we’d reconnect there, but… Well, obviously, I didn’t make it that far.”
I bit down on the inside of my lip. He didn’t make it that far, thanks to me. “Okay, well, so… Shit. Do we just do the brother thing, then? Not fucking fight about every little goddamn thing and put the past behind us? I made mistakes, you made mistakes, and we have a shared common enemy at this point.”
“Yeah, I’d like that, and can that include not ever having a heart-to-heart again. I don’t like this shit at all.”
I laughed. “Fine.” Of all the weights scattered about my shoulders, one of them fell off. It was comforting, if even just minorly. “Well. What’s up? I imagine you called for a reason.”
“Yeah. I expect Nikita and Cherri are still okay? No one has come for them?”
“Not so far. I didn’t let Nikita out of my sight for all of winter break, and honestly, I upset her today. I really need to call her and figure some things out.”
“What about Cherri?”
“She’s, uh…”
“What?” Deon’s voice got serious. “What? What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. She’s fine—er, she’s healthy. She won’t even talk to us, but she has been hanging around with Sicily.”
I could hear Deon’s smile. “I should have known my best friend would look out for her.”
To say I was offended would be an understatement. “I’m doing what I can. I paid five hundred bucks to cover her ass today.”
“For what?”
“She’s changed, Deon. Chopped her hair, dyed it, new leathery, badass, combat boot look. She’s skipping classes, getting into fights.” To my surprise, Deon started to laugh. “Um,” I said. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, it’s just, that sounds more like the Cherri I know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he responded. “Before you came and got her, she was rough and tough. I was shocked when I saw her all prim and proper. Don’t get me wrong, Cherri is Cherri, and I love her regardless, but trust me when I say, the version of Cherri you all got, The Royal Court version, that is not the real Cherri.”