(Do Not Read Back Up Copy)

Chapter XVI

Caleb

You get to thinkin' when you think you’re gonna die.

Free falling down through the floorboards, I kept having this thought.

I had this idea that maybe, at the end of things, if this fall happened to split me open, whoever found me would see that on the inside I wasn’t like any of my brothers. Sure, all the blood and everything would be the same, but my head and heart wouldn’t.

Maybe it’d turn out that I'd been right my whole life thinking and feeling different than my family, ‘cause I really was different. I wasn't as messed up or crazy as they said I was, just running by a different set of rules, my rules, and nothing was wrong with that.

My Mom told me growing up that the most important thing to a young man coming into his own is to know that he's not broken. I believed in that almost as much as I did her. After she died, I banked on the bad, put my money on things always going wrong. After tonight, that may be all I’ll ever believe in—things going from bad to worse, and from worse to unthinkable.

Everything hurt. Everything, and the hollow quiet I'd fallen into hung heavier than the diseased smell of dead things in the air. I shut my eyes and opened them over and over again hoping for a change, but there was nothing to see, nothing but darkness.

Something soft moved around in the rotten hay bail under my back. Didn't feel like a body but lots of little ones scrambling for their lives. They weren't too different than I was, slipping through the cracks blind and afraid of everything. I hoped to God rats were the only things moving around in the dark.

I slid my hands over the hay trembling all the while, waiting to find another body somewhere around me. I sat up, a little bit too quickly, forgetting how badly Liam took his fists to me earlier. Funny how pain starts to feel like nothing when you've got bigger things to worry about.

The guys up stairs were still looking for us. Every other second, four or five footsteps would clomp against the wood floor overhead. We must've fallen a good ways down ‘cause even the cops sounded far away. Not even a flashlight could shine into this place. I needed to stop thinking and start moving before the suits found their way down to where I was.

Shit, I didn't even know where Hailey’d ended up or if she'd still be breathing when I found her.

I got to my knees and grazed my hands overtop of the hay all frantic, like I'd lost something important. The way things were in my house growing up, I fought for every damn thing I owned. Liam ended up taking most of what I had away, just ‘cause he could.

He did a lot of things just ‘cause he could. He only ever grew into bullying, everything else was weak to him. Honest to God, he scared the hell outta me, but the way things were now I'd break Liam’s neck if he came between me and anything else I cared about. Didn’t matter if it killed me, as long as he ended up in his place.

I kept thinking about Marcus, hoping he came out of fighting with Liam alive. Liam respected him too much to hurt him like he did me. Marcus would go with the cops if they asked him, so I trusted he’d be okay despite how bad things were.

Liam would go down swinging, and if he’d ended up shot dead I’d understand, but I couldn’t understand why Cillian had to take the fall out of the four of us. I would’ve taken his place if I could’ve, but the gunfire happened too fast for anyone to make sense of anything. Wrong place, wrong time was all it was, at least that’s what I wanted to believe.

A cold quiet slithered around my legs and crawled up my spine. I choked up just thinking about how much Cillian suffered before he died. No man should lose his life like that. I don’t even know how my brother died, and once the cops take him I never will. I jabbed my fist into the bad side of my ribs, and a terribly familiar pain came roaring back before I got to thinking too much about Cillian. Just shut up and keep moving, Caleb, stop thinking and keep moving.