Cormac raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”
“I found a picture of Finn and a woman. He flipped shit and kicked over a table. There was a frame and it shattered. I found a picture behind it. He won’t talk about it.”
“That happened here?” Cormac asked.
“Yeah.”
“What were you doing when he flipped?”
My cheeks turned red. “Nothing.”
“Ah, you liar,” Cormac said. “You were doing stuff with him. That’s why he flipped.”
“It’s because of the woman…”
“Aye,” Cormac said. “This cabin was meant for something else. See, me and Finn grew up tight as brothers. We trained together. He’s the toughest and smartest goddamn man I’ve ever met. Never saw a fighter like that before.”
“He was a regular fighter? Like you?”
“Regular?” Cormac asked and snorted. “Yeah, he was regular. He and I were tearing things up. Winning fight after fight. Nobody could stop us. My trainer, Henry, then started talking about me and Finn going at it.”
“You two fight?” I asked, eyes wide.
“Yeah. Why not?”
“But you’re friends.”
“Exactly. We’re brothers.”
Again, the word ‘brudders’… it was kind of cute to hear.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“The two best always end up fighting,” Cormac said. “That’s how it works. But when the two best trained together for years, rose up together, and were brothers… that’s a big deal.”
“You mean money.”
“Fucking right. Lots of money. Well over seven figures in deals.”
“So what happened? No, wait, let me guess. The woman in the picture.”
“Bingo,” Cormac said.
“It’s always a woman that ruins friendships and stuff.”
“Whoa, take it easy with assumptions.”
“Then tell me.”
“It’s not my place to do that,” Cormac said. “Sorry.”
I left the kitchen with nothing else to say to him. I wasn’t going to play a run around game. It probably wasn’t my business anyway. Time was running out on everything in my life. Just listening to myself talk about Sasha brought forward the reality of it all. I was a damn fool for trying to find her. She had to be dead. She had gone off with Zander’s crew and that was it. She probably got into drugs or maybe sold herself and then got killed. All I had to do was stay out of it. But I couldn’t let it go. Sasha was all I ever had in life. My sister. The motherly figure. Not to mention the twin connection, which, by the way, I figured had to be bullshit. I thought if I tried really hard, I could somehow find her. Like some kind of secret sense only twins had.
Yeah fucking right.
“You could be pissed off at me,” a voice said behind me.
It was Cormac.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re not going to tell me a thing. Finn won’t talk. He just comes at me with these eyes… I think maybe for a second it’s real but then he gets mad and leaves. He either breaks a table or breaks me with his words.”
“Christ,” Cormac said with a slight roll of the r. “I’m sorry about that. Here’s what I can and will tell you, Shayna. He built this cabin for a woman. He had a straight life to live with that woman.”
“I already heard everything you said,” I said as I turned. “You two were close. You were fighters. You won everything. You were going to fight each other and be rich.”
“Aye. That’s right. We were going to have the entire thing build up for a year. We were going to train for our fight together.” The word together sounded like ‘togedder’… “But it all slipped away. It crashed so hard, so fast, I sometimes blame myself for not being the bigger fighter and the bigger man to carry Finn through the darkness.”
Cormac’s voice was almost poetic, sounding like ‘trew da’ dahkness’ when he spoke. He blinked fast and then cleared his throat.
Was he crying?
Then his eyes met mine. His blue eyes were glistening.
“All because of a woman?” I asked.
“You see, Shayna, not just any woman. It wasn’t what you think. Aye, both of us loved her with all our hearts. But for different reasons.”
“What does that mean?”
Cormac stepped toward me and put a hand to my shoulder. “She was my sister, Shayna. That’s why I loved her. And for Finn… he’s still not done grieving her death.”
23.
(Finn)
The punching bag was a gift from my trainer before he died. He insisted I take the old beat up thing and keep it forever. I was going to toss the damn thing, but then I got a call that he had cancer. He died before I could say goodbye, so now each time I punched the bag, I pictured him yelling at me. Telling me I was too weak. That my head was too cloudy. That my stance was all wrong.
He was a mean old man, but I loved him.
I swung my fists as hard as I could into the bag. It gave way with ease, clouds of dust still pouring from it. Shit, it had been at least a year since I hit the thing. I had hidden it in the cabin and while I never forgot about it I never had a use for it.