There’d only been one time I didn’t come to her birthday. It was when I was sixteen, and North had found out about the stuffed Yoda and confronted me about it. I never told him how I ended up with it. All he knew was that I’d found it and I was keeping it.
The only reason North dropped it at the time was because he had his own demons, and had been fucked up on something. That something being painkillers, or some other kind of drug. Anything he could get his hands on.
But the year I’d stayed away, it had been like her hand had slowly slipped from mine. Every day I sank further beneath the murky surface into the cold depths of nothingness.
I wanted to kill. Destroy. Suffer. And cause suffering. Pain.
I was so fucked up I didn’t trust myself not to blindly hurt Addie or Hettie or anyone else. That’s when I joined the military and left everything and everyone.
The swing stopped when she placed her foot flat on the porch. She set her notebook aside and rose, tucking strands of her honey-blonde hair behind her ear. She looked across the yard in my direction, but I knew she couldn’t see me. I’d made sure of it.
There was a sadness in her I had never seen before. Her shoulders sagged, and even from a distance, I could see her red-rimmed eyes as if she’d been crying.
Her head dipped and her hair curtained her face as she gripped the handrail as if she was in pain.
I didn’t like it.
I frowned at the unsettling need inside me. It was different than any need I’d ever felt before. This was a need to hold her. To protect her. To kiss away the sadness.
A car door slammed on the street, then I heard footsteps, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Fuck. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like this unknown need growing. Building. Changing.
A twig snapped behind me at the same time that she opened the squeaky screen door and disappeared inside the house.
I turned.
A fist slammed into my cheek. My head jerked to the right from the impact, and I staggered back a step.
“You fuckin’ bastard. I knew something was off with you and that fuckin’ Yoda.” He swung again, but I ducked left, and his fist plowed into the tree trunk.
Blood dripped from his knuckles, but rage feels no pain, and he kept coming. I still had on my combat gear because I’d come straight from the airport, and his punches were muted against my tactical vest.
I blocked his kick with my forearm and shoved him back. “North. It’s not what you think.”
She was my breath. The light in the darkness. The warmth in the cold. And that little girl who held my hand and kept me from drowning with my brother.
“Why?” he hissed. “Why are you watching her?” He landed a blow to the side of my head, and I gritted my teeth as my vision blurred.
Fuck this. I reacted.
North knew how to fight. And he was good. But I had combat experience, and that meant it was about living or dying.
I blocked his next blow to my side with a kick to his abdomen. Then with two movements, I flipped him onto his stomach and pinned him to the ground with his arm twisted behind his back.
There was no way out of the hold unless he wanted a broken arm. His breathing was ragged as I held him immobile. “I’ll kill you,” he ground out.
“I’ve never touched her. Never. It’s not like that.”
He jerked on his arm and winced in pain when I didn’t ease up. “Why? Why are you stalking my sister?”
“You going to listen?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and I refused to let up. “Fine.”
I released his arm and stepped back. “Once a year. On her birthday. That’s it.”
North jumped to his feet, blood dripping from his knuckles and onto the lush green grass. “Why?”