Brothers

by L. A. Casey

  When I reached the platform, I saw my opponent up on the surface with his hands on his hips as he shook his head from left to right. I could see on his face he couldn’t believe he was fighting me. He thought I was going to be an easy win. I’d have to show him and everyone else just how wrong he was.

  “You’ve got this,” Damien said when I turned to him.

  He was scared for me, I saw it in his eyes, and I knew he saw my fear in mine, too. I hugged him and my other brothers. I didn’t linger with them; instead, I jumped up, gripped the platform, then hoisted myself upwards until I was on my feet and standing across from the man whose name I didn’t bother to learn. I decided that I didn’t want to know the names of the people I fought. That way, it was easier for me to tune out that they were real people.

  “How old are you?”

  I didn’t want this man talking to me. I just wanted to fight him, then leave.

  “Fifteen,” I answered. “You didn’t know about me?”

  He shook his head. “I was just told this morning about this fight.”

  I had known about it for few weeks.

  “Lets’ get this over with.”

  The man chuckled. “I don’t wanna hurt you, kid, but I’m going to.”

  I shifted my stance. “You can try.”

  He laughed again, and it wasn’t a conceited laugh. It was a genuine one. He thought this fight was a joke. His relaxed stance told me he didn’t take it, or me, seriously. He didn’t see me as a threat in any shape or form, so I had to use that confidence to my advantage. I knew how to fight. Kane had been working with me until I could no longer stand in preparation for this match. I knew I could handle a body mass twice the size of my own. I knew I was going to kick this guy’s ass ... before I was worried, but standing up on the platform facing him, I knew the only person who should have been worried was him.

  “No pain,” I said out loud, bumping my fists together. “No fucking pain.”

  The buzzer sounded without warning, and the man came at me fast. Most likely, he wanted to put me out of my misery. He swung his right fist my way, and he put power behind it, hoping to catch my chin and put me on the canvas. I ducked left and fired two jabs to his liver. His body jerked at the contact, but he swung around, and the surprise in the man’s eyes wasn’t missed. He stood a little taller, tensed his muscles more, and tightened his guard.

  He wasn’t playing around now.

  When he darted forward, I managed to avoid his first jab, but he caught me around the waist with his free arm, lifted me up, and slammed in against the floor. The breath was knocked out of me, and it hurt, but I didn’t lose focus. I wrapped my legs around his torso, then latched onto his arm when he tried to twist out of my hold. I controlled my breathing and applied pressure on his arm. I heard him scream, and the crowd did too. Their cheering became deafening and encouraged me to keep hold of the arm bar I had. I got a fright when a roar came from the man, followed by a pop in his arm that I somehow felt. I quickly let go of him, and he promptly rolled off me, hollering in pain.

  I couldn’t look at his elbow. It was obvious by the angle that I had snapped the bone. I didn’t notice the blood until he turned over and I realised the bone had come through his skin. I didn’t want to fight any more at that moment ... I didn’t want to hurt other people. I looked at my brothers, finding them with wild eyes, and I focused on Kane when he jerked his head. I knew what he was telling me to do. Marco said I wasn’t to stop fighting while my opponent still had fight in him. Damien’s life depended on me following orders. One look at the man told me that he wanted to kill me, and my heart dropped.

  My stomach twisted in knots.

  I shot forward before he could get to his feet, and I dived on him. I punched him until he stopped trying to fend me off, and when I saw he was in no condition to continue fighting, I stood and roared. I let out every bit of pent-up frustration, hurt, anger, and fear that I had, and I released it within that roar. I wouldn’t fear my fights anymore. I would trust myself, and what I was capable of doing, and I would knock down anyone in my path. It was a stranger’s pride versus my brother’s life, and my family would win every single time.

  Marco would regret the day he made me his fighter ... I’d make sure of it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Eighteen Years Old ...

  * * *

  “All I’m saying is you both don’t have to go to public school. I can continue to homeschool you both right here.”

  I gently banged my head that resting on the kitchen table, making my brothers laugh. All but my eldest brother, that is. Finished with my cereal, I pushed the bowl away and gave Ryder my full attention.

  “I don’t know what you’re all finding so funny,” he grunted. “I’m serious.”

  “Ry,” Damien began. “We’ve been homeschooled our whole lives. We’ve never been around kids our age ... not normal kids, at least.”

  Ryder sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to convince us to stay at home.

  “Look,” I continued, “it’s a good thing. We’ll be around people our age in a natural environment. Haven’t you always been worried that we were too sheltered?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed with a nod. “But—”

  “We want to go to this public school, Ry.”

  Ryder looked at Damien when he cut him off, and though he looked so much like our dad, I knew he was a much better person and wouldn’t react violently towards us. He looked at all of us, and as I knew he would, he bobbed his head in understanding. He was clearly worried about us, and I hated that. He always worried about us, but something as trivial as us attending school didn’t need to be added to that lengthy list.

  “The school is ten minutes away from here, and it has a max of three hundred kids. There are forty-five kids in our graduating class, Ry. Nothing is going to go wrong. Not even Dominic can get into trouble here.”

  “Don’t jinx yourselves.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I assured him.

  Kane was observing us quietly, like he always did, but when we stood from the table, he snorted.

  I narrowed my eyes. “What’s so funny?”

  “You’re both matching.”

  Damien and I looked at one another, then down at our school uniforms, before we looked back at Kane.

  “You have to wear a uniform at this school. We can’t wear regular clothes.”

  “I get that, but you’re twins, so it’s funny to see you match.”

  I never thought of that.

  “Do we look stupid?”

  “No,” Ryder answered instantly. “You look like regular school kids.”

  He sounded damn happy about that fact.

  I nudged Damien. “We have to be there ten minutes early to get our schedules, so we should get going.”

  He nodded, and after saying goodbye to our brothers, we grabbed our backpacks and left the house. We decided on walking since every other kid would be walking too. No student parking was just one of the many things that was different about Ireland. We had been here exactly six weeks, and I couldn’t help but notice just how different everything was. The people, the accents, the food, the alcohol, the scenery, the currency, the driver’s side of a car. Anything you could think of, the Irish did it their own way, and I liked it. I had been to so many countries in a few short years fighting opponent after opponent, and Ireland was the first country where my brothers and I felt very much at home. It was a collective decision to stay here, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.

  I was from New York but living there never felt like home. The compound where I grew up felt like a prison, but being here in Ireland with my brothers felt very much like home.

  “Is it normal that I’m stoked to go to school?”

  I laughed at Damien’s question.

  “Nah, bro. I’m excited too. It’ll get boring fast but fuck it. At least we’ll be around regular people, and that’s all I care about.”

  The walk to the school was quick, and by the ti
me we entered the school grounds, I was sweating. It was too hot to be wearing the thick fleece sweater I had on, and when I caught sight of other students just wearing their school shirts and ties, Damien and I quickly rid ourselves of our sweaters and put them in our bags.

  “Are you worried about your fight on Friday?”

  “When am I ever worried about my fights?”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Damien said as we searched for the main office. “It’s just me. You don’t have to lie.”

  I glanced at my brother and sighed. “I haven’t fought since we were in Scotland. That was two months ago, and my training has been off since we moved here. It took us a while to find our house and get settled. I need to win because these next couple of bouts are it, and then we can finally be rid of Marco. I can’t lose. I can’t give him any reason to think he can ... keep us.”

  I couldn’t let Marco retain his hold over us. I couldn’t.

  “You’ll be great, Dominic. You always are.”

  “Aw, thanks, brother.”

  Damien punched my arm, making me laugh. I stopped laughed when I noticed more than a few pairs of eyes focused on us. Many of those eyes belonging to girls.

  “Has your ego just inflated massively too?”

  “It’s not the only thing to inflate massively.” I grinned. “Some of those chicks are hot.”

  Damien laughed. We found the main office, knocked on the door, and introduced ourselves to the receptionist when she opened the door. The woman’s name was Ann, and she took all of sixty seconds to give us a crash course on the tiny school. We got our class schedules with a key, so we understood the abbreviations, and a school map. The school was tinier than I imagined. The school’s soccer pitch was bigger than its cluster of buildings.

  “Ann explained that homeroom is what they call a tutor class here,” Damien said as we left the office, reading our schedules. “Our tutor is the teacher we go to if we need anything. We have registration class for ten minutes with her every morning to get marked in on the attendance role, and other mornings, like today, we have a whole period with her.”

  “So she’s not someone who tutors students?”

  “No,” he answered. “Each class has a tutor, we just go to ours if we need a bathroom pass or something like that. It’s just a title.”

  That’s stupid.

  I furrowed my brows. “I thought Ann said we were to go to our year head if we need something, but I don’t know what the fuck that is.”

  “It’s the head teacher of our entire grade. We go to her if we get kicked out of class or do something wrong. Her name is Ms. Wall. Our tutor is Miss McKesson.”

  “Let’s not get kicked out of class because I’ll probably just walk home out of confusion of not being able to understand who I’m supposed to report to.”

  Damien laughed, shaking his head. “We’ll be fine. Let’s just find our registration class so we aren’t late.”

  We found it easy enough, but when we got there, the door was locked.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we wait,” Damien answered. “School starts in—”

  “Can I help ye’s?”

  Damien and I turned to the voice, and when I realised the owner of the voice was a hot twentysomething, I stood straighter.

  “We’re new here,” Damien answered the woman. “I’m Damien Slater, this is my brother Dominic—”

  “But I prefer Nico,” I cut my brother off.

  Damien glanced at me, then back at the woman, and said, “This is our registration class.”

  “Ah, you’re me American lads.”

  Hers?

  “I guess we are.” I smiled, and she smiled in return.

  “I’m Miss McKesson, your tutor. Follow me and we’ll get you settled in.”

  She unlocked the door to the room, and we followed her inside. She gave us another crash course of the whole tutor and year head thing, then proceeded to go through the school rules with us one by one until we repeated them and understood them. Miss McKesson was hot, and I knew Damien thought she was hot too, but unlike me, he wouldn’t try his hand at seeing if something sexual could happen. This pleased me ... until I remembered that I promised Ryder that I wouldn’t do anything out of place while I attended school here.

  That sucked.

  Once our tutor had finished, she sat at her desk and began taking textbooks and notepads out of her bag. Damien and I looked at one another, shrugged, then sat at a table right next to one of the windows. I glanced at the green fields that led up to the forest covered mountains and relaxed. I loved it here. It was so peaceful.

  “She’s so hot, the girl with the black hair.”

  I looked up at my twin brother when he spoke, and I raised brow at him in question. I must have zoned out because it wasn’t only just me, Damien, and our tutor anymore. The entire classroom was filled with students; a lot of those students were girls, and they kept staring at Damien and me. I straightened up instantly.

  “Settle down,” Miss McKesson announced. “We have two new students all the way from America. This is Damien and Dominic Slater. Dominic prefers to be called Nico so remember that when addressin’ ‘im. Please, be nice to them and show them around to help them get settled. Ye’ can use this period to catch up on homework due for other classes but do it silently.”

  No one listened to our tutor, and the questions flew left, right, and centre at me and my brother. I didn’t mind answering them because none of them were personal. They were mostly dumb questions like where were we from, how tall we were, how old we were, were our eyes really grey, did we have girlfriends, and if Damien’s hair colour was natural or from a bottle.

  I looked back out of the window just as Damien said, “Dibs.”

  “What?”

  “The girl who just walked into class ... I call dibs.”

  I was too tired to pretend I could concentrate on what he was saying.

  “What girl?”

  Damien grinned at me. “Bro, to your ten o’clock is a fat ass girl with a banging body. I. Call. Dibs.”

  With my interest thoroughly piqued, I turned my attention to where my brother’s eyes were focused, and the second I locked my eyes on the ass attached to the girl who turned and nodded her head in greeting to the homeroom teacher, my mouth watered.

  “Nuh-uh,” I said to Damien without looking away from the girl’s ass. “You don’t get automatic dibs on as ass like that. Christ, man, look at it. It’s perfect for me.”

  My brother snickered. “You’d really jump over the bro code—”

  “Brother, I’d sell my soul for that ass. Yours too.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Damien was shaking his head as he chuckled to himself.

  “I think you’re drooling.”

  I swallowed. “I am. Jesus, I’m in love. I am actually in love.”

  “You haven’t even seen her face yet.”

  “Don’t care,” I answered. “Look at her fucking ass, bro.”

  Damien clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m bowing out. You look like you’re about to cry with happiness. Her ass is perfect for you.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  I sat up straight, rolled my neck on my shoulders, and ignored all the stares from my female classmates to focus on this brown-haired goddess. I hadn’t seen her face yet, her chin was tucked against her chest and her hair fell over her face like a veil, but I didn’t care. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to fuck her so bad it almost hurt, and for that reason alone, I knew I had to be charming and forward just enough that she wanted me to fuck her, too.

  When she turned her head in my direction, and her hair shifted, my pants became ridiculously tight. Not only was her ass fat and her body banging, but her face ... she was beautiful. And not that fake model kind of beauty but a natural beauty. Her skin was fair, her nose tiny, her lips were on the small side, but her eyes were large and bright green. She wasn’t even that close to me, and I could see how green they were.
r />   She kept her eyes lowered as she came to a stop next to the table.

  “That’s me desk,” she said, her tone flat.

  I was a little taken aback by her tone. She already sounded irritated with me, and I hadn’t spoken a word to her yet. It rubbed me the wrong way that she wouldn’t look me in the eye when she spoke to me. It made me feel like she was speaking down to me, and I hated when people treated me lesser than themselves.

  Wordlessly, Damien made a move to get up, but for some reason, I stuck my hand out and placed it on his shoulder, halting his movements. We were new students here, so we didn’t know this seat was assigned because out teacher never objected to us sitting here. This girl, no matter how hot she was or how fucking stunning her ass was, wasn’t going to order me and my brother around. We took orders from one person too many as it was.

  “Your desk?” I asked with a raised brow. “Does it have your name on it or something?”

  She looked me in the eye, and for a few seconds, she didn’t answer me. She was thinking hard about something, but like the flip of a switch, she snapped out of it, and said, “Yeah, it does.”

  She pointed at a name that was carved into the desk, and I hadn’t a single fucking clue how to pronounce it.

  “Bro-what?”

  The chick flat out rolled her eyes at me, and I got a kick out of annoying her, and I had no clue why.

  “Bronagh.”

  “Bro-nah?” I repeated, then to myself I mumbled, “What’s the point of the damn g if it’s gonna be silent?”

  Bronagh cocked a brow. “Yeah, that’s how ye’ say me name, and it is on my desk as ye’ can clearly see.”

  Damien snorted. “She has you by the balls on that, bro. Let’s just move out of this lovely woman’s way and sit in the back row next to the pretty ladies.”