“This isn’t our honeymoon.” Cora’s voice came from behind me. “You never showed up for the wedding to make this a honeymoon.”
Jacob’s eyes latched onto her. “We’ve been over this a million times already. I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember.” He started pacing, rolling his neck. “For all I know, you could have been behind it. Drugging me so you could sneak off with this guy and finally get him out of your system.”
“Jacob, stop,” I ordered, trying to keep my voice and body calm. It was challenging, especially with the way he was the total opposite.
“I’ve never been looking for ways to get Matt out of my system,” Cora said slowly. “I don’t want him out of my system.”
I was expecting it, so I was able to block him before he got a step toward her. “Step back, Jacob,” I ordered, but he didn’t listen. Not that I was expecting him to.
Now that we were closer, I could smell it. The liquor. He’d been drinking. Not enough to be stumbling, slurring drunk, but enough to lower his inhibitions and make him more dangerous.
“You step back, you traitorous bastard.” Jacob shoved me, but I didn’t budge. “That’s my girl. My fiancée. Not yours.” His finger stabbed the air in Cora’s direction.
“She’s not something to possess.”
He rolled his head to the side, cracking his neck. “No? Because you seem to be under the impression you can just take her without asking permission.”
“He didn’t take me.” From the sound of movement, I guessed Cora was climbing off the bed. I wasn’t going to look back to confirm it though; I didn’t dare take my eyes off of Jacob for one second in his current condition. “This was my choice. My decision. I’m here with him because I want to be, not because he took anything.”
For the briefest moment, sadness settled into his eyes. It was unmistakable, raw, and fleeting. This wasn’t the way I’d wanted things to happen. This wasn’t how I’d wanted him to find out. Despite my brother’s downfalls and mistakes, he deserved better than this.
I was a knot of emotions, a dozen different agendas pulling me in different directions. Protecting her, protecting him, wanting to explain, wanting to go back in time, looking for the rights words to say that could fix all of this.
This couldn’t be fixed though. The damage had been done. All I could do was try to protect them both.
“Jacob, I’m sorry. This wasn’t what I planned. We’d never want to hurt you, but she’s made her choice.” I moved with him as his paces went wider. “Can you try to respect that?”
Jacob stopped, turning so we were facing each other, his eyes unrecognizable. “Can I try to respect that? Sure, I guess I can try to respect that.” He paused for a minute, his eyes lifting like he was considering it right then. “Sorry, not going to work for me.”
I caught a glimpse of it in his eye before his body went into motion, but not in time to move. Just enough time to brace myself for it.
Jacob’s fist came around fast, and right on target. When it cracked me in the jaw, all I concentrated on was staying on my feet and not retaliating. This wasn’t the first fist I’d taken from my brother, but it was the first one I’d taken without paying it back. Part of me took it because I knew I deserved it. Another part realized getting into a fight with my brother wouldn’t solve a damn thing.
So I let him have a free one.
Cora gave a little cry. I heard the sound of her feet rushing closer, but I lifted my arm at her, shaking my head.
“How’s that for respect, brother? Not that a piece of shit like you would know anything about it.” Jacob shook his fist, bouncing like he was just getting warmed up.
Moving my jaw around, I positioned myself directly in front of him. “Respect it or don’t, but she’s made her choice.”
His arm moved so fast this time, I didn’t have time to brace for the hit. The sound of his knuckles connecting with my jaw pierced the air, the sound of Cora’s shouts echoing with it.
I staggered to the side a few steps, but I didn’t go down. I couldn’t. If Jacob needed to use me as a human punching bag to diffuse his anger, fine. If he was so exhausted at the end of beating the shit out of me that he didn’t have any energy left to target at her, that worked just fine for me.
“Jacob, stop!” Cora came up behind me, her hands dropping to my shoulders as she pulled on me like she was trying to yank me away from him. “This is your brother for god’s sake. Enough.”
“That’s right. He is my brother. You’d think that came with some kind of loyalty, wouldn’t you?” Jacob was shaking out his fist again. A couple of his knuckles were bleeding. Or maybe that was my blood. I could taste it in my mouth and feel it trickling down from my lip. “Then again, you’re my fiancée and I just found you beneath another man, so maybe loyalty’s gone extinct.”
“You are the last person to be talking about loyalty,” Cora snapped.
“And the last person I’m going to take morality lessons from is a two-timing whore.”
Breaking out of Cora’s hold, I stormed toward him, shoving him so hard he fell back into the wall. My arms were trembling at my sides, my fists curling, begging to be put to use.
All that did was make him laugh. Like we were all in on some joke and had just discovered so. Lifting his arms out at his sides, Jacob stopped when he was a few steps in front of me. “This is your chance, Matt. Your chance to get me back.” He turned his head so his cheek was facing me, his arms still raised like he was offering himself to me. “To take it out on me for all the times I know you wanted to. For all the times it was my arms she went into instead of yours. All the times she picked me over you. All the times you heard her sighs coming from behind my bedroom door. This is your chance to beat the shit out of me like you wanted to do all of those times.”
My body was trembling. From wanting to let him have it, from trying to hold back. I felt like so much adrenaline was filling my body, it was seeping out of my pores. “You’re wrong.” I closed the distance between us by a step. “I didn’t want to beat the shit out of you back then.”
He huffed. “You hated me for it. You hated me because I had her and you didn’t.”
My head shook slowly, and I held my hands up like I was making a truce. “I didn’t hate you. I loved her.”
So much for my truce. It wasn’t Jacob’s fist that came at me then—it was his whole body. Barreling in my direction, he drove me into the wall on the other side of the room. The breath rushed out of my lungs from the impact right before he drove his fists into me like he couldn’t land them fast enough.
Cora rushed up behind us, looking like she was about to get in the mix and try to tear us apart. The thought of her coming between us when Jacob was like this shot panic into my bloodstream.