One Too Many

by Jade West

  “Browning,” he said. “Why didn’t you fucking tell us?”

  My teeth were gritted long before I met his eyes with mine. “Because it’s not my fucking name anymore.” My pause was long enough for the spite to choke back up. “And because it’s none of your fucking business.”

  I wasn’t expecting the way he shunted me, knocked off balance by his sheer bulk as he charged me back through their kitchen and slammed me into the wall. “My fucking dad’s every bit of my fucking business,” he snarled.

  My hands rose up between us in a breath, shunting him back with as much strength as I could summon from the weaker position. It was enough to push him off me, and there we stood, stare burning stare.

  “He wasn’t your fucking dad,” I spat, hating myself for the way his shoulders sagged at my words. “He was my fucking father, you were just his chosen fucking son. I bet that fills you with fucking pride, doesn’t it? Knowing you were the better boy. The better son. The better fucking man.”

  “He was my dad,” he spat back. “I didn’t know you fucking existed. There’s no fucking pride here. None. Not one fucking bit.”

  Grace was at his arm before he spoke another word, her touch solid as reached for his hand and clenched it in hers.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he said, and there was a desperate twinge to his voice.

  It made me feel like fucking death.

  “I didn’t manage to prove to the old man that I was worth a shit jot more than being his substandard cast off. Proving it to you was the next best thing.”

  His fist slammed the wall at the side of my head. I didn’t flinch, my eyes firm on his as he choked on his disgust.

  “This is bullshit,” he hissed. “You thought it would make you a big man to come down here and rip me and Grace apart? You thought that would make you feel so much fucking better, did you? Like that makes you a fucking man?”

  I despised how ridiculous my logic sounded from his mouth. Not least because it was fucking ridiculous. The whole concept of proving one-upmanship after a lifetime of inferiority by fucking someone’s wife in front of them seemed a pitiful initiative when it was under such a vile spotlight, my insides shrivelling all over again to realise I was still the sad, bitter little cunt who’d festered his way through high school.

  “I should leave,” I muttered, heading for the door without a care for how pathetic a weasel the retreat would make me.

  It was Grace who reached out for me and wrapped her arm in mine. “No,” she said, surprisingly firm for such a delicate little creature. “Not now. Not this time. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  I couldn’t watch as Brett Foster lost his shit and threw the griddle pan from the hob. It crashed into the sink with a clatter, the meat still spitting as it landed.

  I had no words as he bellowed aimlessly, his hands in his hair as he stumbled along the worktop.

  “Go through to the bar,” Grace whispered. “Please.”

  I should’ve made a run for it, straight out to my waiting car before they’d got the chance to come after me, but I didn’t.

  I pressed my back to the wall in the dining room, breathing deep as the world caved down around me. Their voices were loud in the other room, but I couldn’t keep a track of them. There was only my own crazy train of thoughts, hate and spite, regret, fear. The curled up wreck of the boy deep inside.

  My move to the bar was slow and laboured, the world spinning all around me as I dropped myself down on a stool and waited for whatever was coming my way.

  I didn’t even look behind me as the minutes ticked by, praying to a God I didn’t believe in that the bar would stay empty long enough for the Fosters to take whatever action they deemed necessary.

  I heard Brett’s footsteps loud when they came, bracing myself for a blow that didn’t land on me. He threw himself through the hatch to the other side, grabbing hold of a whisky bottle and taking a swig right from the neck before reaching for a pair of shot glasses and shunting one in my direction. The amber nectar splashed all over the bar top as he poured us full glasses.

  My fingers were shaking as I raised mine to my lips, knocking it back in one as he did, only to have him refill it straight after with another.

  I held back on downing this one, but he didn’t.

  “My mum said yours was a slut,” he barked, and if he expected argument he wasn’t getting any.

  “Yes, she was.”

  “Dad didn’t think you were his.”

  My smirk was bitter as fuck at that. “I’m sure the truth would have occurred to him as the years passed by. I look very little like my mother.”

  “You look very little like my fucking dad, either,” he snapped, but he was lying on that front. It wasn’t blatant, but it was there. Our narrow shoulders, our high cheekbones, colouring. I’d seen enough of it, even growing up, to know the truth.

  “I thought he’d acknowledge my existence if I could only be good enough,” I admitted, even though it twisted in my gut. “You didn’t exactly make it easy for me. Every corner I turned you were always ahead, always winning, always loud and brash and proud as a pig in shit.”

  “Because he pushed me to be,” he snarled, flashing Grace a desperate glare as she dropped herself onto a stool at my side. “Because he believed in me. Because he was always there, always asking for my best, always demanding.” It hurt as he said it, me as well as him. “I’d be nothing without him. I’m everything I am because he made me this way.”

  “And so am I,” I spat. “I’m everything I am because he made me this way.”

  The truth was an irony that rocked me to my core. Both of us sitting here, ruined by a dead man, both in such different ways it was laughable.

  “He can’t have known,” Brett hissed, still fighting the obvious. “There’s no fucking way he could have known.”

  “I was always right there,” I told him. “We were in the same fucking town. I saw you every fucking day. Saw him at every fucking school sports game, hoping that would be the one he met my eyes.”

  He tossed another whisky back and I managed a sip of mine.

  “You wanted to destroy me,” he said, and I didn’t deny it.

  “I wanted to destroy everything.”

  “That would have made you feel better, would it? Taking everything away from me?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t think I ever really did.”

  My honesty seemed to do something to him, his eyes widened just a fraction, his jaw giving an almost imperceptible nod. “I don’t think either of us knew shit.”

  I didn’t argue with that.

  There was no fire in me spitting to compound his pain to match my own. No fight left inside to prove some ridiculous point that I was worth something.

  I felt worthless sitting there, not because I was a kid who struggled to amount to anything back before it meant anything, but because I’d lived a life meaning nothing through all the years following.

  The money meant nothing. The businesses meant nothing. The marriages I’d ruined meant nothing.

  I’d learned it here, in the place I’d come to claim my ultimate crown. I’d learned it in Grace Foster’s warm arms and in the slap on the back her husband had finally blessed me with. In this quiet cove and the quiet love of the two people building their dreams.

  I wasn’t prepared for the pain of his next statement. It hit so hard my shoulders buckled over the bar top, my fingers white around the whisky glass as I fought the undulations.

  “We could’ve been brothers.”

  “Brett,” Grace started with a voice dripping with pain.

  I dragged my eyes to the man across the counter, reeling with every cell in my fucking body to find him as ruined as I felt. He was barely standing, doubled over with his arms braced on his thighs.

  “You could’ve fucking told me,” he continued. “Am I really such a cunt that you’d rather ruin my fucking life than tell me the fucking truth?”

  I shrugged at
that. “You weren’t exactly approachable when I knew you first time around.”

  His spite was fully justified. “I was just a fucking kid when you knew me first time around.”

  “And so was I.”

  I was barely aware of Grace’s fingers coming to rest on my arm. “You’re really Thomas Browning,” she whispered. “I remember you. I remember you in the school corridors with Polly Piper.”

  I wouldn’t have believed the despair could have reached a higher level, but the mention of Polly’s name took it there.

  “I’m surprised you remember anything of me, Grace. You barely had a glance for me back then, much less a cognisant memory.”

  “When were you going to tell me?” Brett grunted, and I opted for the truth for once.

  “I wasn’t. I was going to take your wife and leave you on your knees, trusting that would prove for once and for all that I was the better man.”

  His laugh was empty. “You think stealing someone’s wife makes you a better man?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s an asshole move,” Grace said, her fingers still resting on my sleeve. “And I’d never have left Brett. Not in a million years. No matter how many times you made me come with your fancy finger work.”

  My smile was all real as I looked at her. “That’s what I’ve grown to realise, yes.”

  “So why did you come back this time around? Why did you stay?” Brett questioned, and I shrugged all over again.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “That’s bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re the kind of guy who knows what shape his shit’s gonna be before he squeezes it out. Don’t fucking tell me you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing here.”

  And it was bullshit.

  The whole fucking thing was bullshit, and I was done.

  “Because I found something,” I admitted. “Here. I found something here. Something real. Something that made me believe in something.” I waved my stupid words away with my hand, but Grace reached out and took it in hers.

  “Don’t do that,” she whispered. “Don’t toss it away like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing.”

  I closed my eyes but still I could feel his burning into me as he spoke. “We could’ve been fucking brothers.”

  “Please,” I hissed. “Please don’t say that.”

  “But it’s true,” he said. “We could’ve been fucking brothers. We could’ve been drinking here as two men who gave a shit about each other. Two men from the same fucking stock, even if it was fucked up in the first fucking place.”

  “We’re not from the same stock,” I told him, but it was his turn to shrug.

  “Not genetically, no. We’re nothing alike. Not one fucking bit. But I’m my dad’s boy, raised by a man who pushed me to be the best. And you’re his actual blood, born with the urge to be the best, just like he fucking was. You’re from blood, I’m from the man. Makes no fucking odds, we could still be fucking brothers.”

  I didn’t have a response for that, so I knocked back my whisky.

  “This is crazy,” Grace sighed, and she wasn’t lying.

  “I should go,” I said, despite having no urge to go anywhere, no matter what the shit storm.

  That was the cold, hard reality outside of this one. I had nowhere to go. Nowhere worth anything.

  Brett’s finger jabbed through the air in my direction. “You’re not fucking going anywhere.”

  “Please don’t,” Grace added, and I could have died right there in front of them.

  “I don’t understand,” I managed, my words coming out like bursts of pain. “Why don’t you want me gone?”

  Brett was pouring me another shot before he answered, and his voice was bursting with pain when he responded, just like mine.

  “Because you may be a cunt,” he said. “But you’re still my fucking brother.”

  I heard Grace suck in breath as I swallowed the burning lump in my throat.

  “I mean it,” he added. “I lost my fucking dad, I’m not losing his fucking son, too. Not when I’m just growing to like the sonofabitch.”

  I’d never cried in front of another soul. Not since Polly Piper all those years ago when she glimpsed me at my worst.

  But I cried now.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Grace

  I put a do not disturb sign on the bar door, and luckily we didn’t get any guests knocking that night.

  Both men were hunched over the bar top for the early part of the evening, the man I’d known as Thomas Heath looking nothing like Thomas Heath as he cried big sobbing heaves that took his breath.

  Brett wasn’t far behind him, I’m sure, but he held his composure remarkably well, every inch the elder of the pair as he reached out a firm hand to grip the younger man’s shoulder. I struggled to piece together what any of this really meant, so I kept my distance, there but not there, making my presence known without pushing in too hard on their working things out time. I hoped they could work things out. Even though the whole mess was a result of one man’s desire to ruin the pair of us in the name of pride, I still clung on to the hope that the bones of something half decent could be salvaged from the carnage.

  My body was still aching hard from taking them both as I finally accepted a glass of white from my husband. I was close enough to Thomas that I could hear his shallow breathing as I sat beside him. I took his fingers in mine, daring to squeeze hard enough that he looked across at me.

  “Please stay,” I said, “at least for tonight.”

  “I’m not used to this,” he replied, a ghost of a smile on his mouth. “People normally want me gone, unless they want my dick in them.”

  My own smile was a lot brighter than his. “I’ve been very happy to have your dick in me, but that isn’t why I want you to stay. I think I’m done with two dicks for a while.”

  “Grace,” Brett said with a grimace, and I cursed myself for too much too soon.

  I was still adjusting to the idea that Thomas was George Foster’s biological son, and therefore, in some fucked-up way, Brett’s stepbrother. I guess that made the whole threesome situation utterly gross on some level, but I’d be lying if I said I felt it.

  The only thing I’d come to feel was delight between the two of them, fucked-up or not.

  Tom’s eyes on mine conveyed that he was feeling on my wavelength, and that made sense to me. He’d never had a family, not one that meant anything. His relationship with his mother was clearly strained at best, and the string of stepfathers after his dad left had obviously amounted to nothing decent.

  Brother, stepbrother… none of it meant much to him.

  But it meant everything to Brett. I could see it in his eyes as he weighed up the other man with this revelation in mind. Hurt and confused and hopeful all compounded into one strange expression.

  I knew Brett missed his father. I knew he was struggling every day of his life to live up to his legacy. To be confronted by a biological relation to the man he’d loved so dearly was more than enough to set his senses reeling. I found myself wondering if they ever stood a chance to find steady footing again.

  “Why the name change?” I said aloud to Thomas, eager to keep the communication flowing.

  “Why not the name change?” he replied. “None of my mother’s surnames meant anything to me. Hadley, Browning, Smith, Jones, Weston. Who gave two shits? They never lasted.”

  “What about Heath?” I asked. “Why Heath?”

  I felt his smile in my belly. “He was the only one I cared for, Gareth Heath. He tried hard with me, told me I could call him dad one day when I was ready.”

  “What happened to him?”

  His smile dried up in a beat. “Mother fucked someone else, of course. Some piece of shit from the local pub. Gareth wanted to give it another go even then, but she told him to get his stuff together and leave. I heard her talking to one of her whore friends about him later, saying he had a tiny dick and didn’t know what to do with it. I made the decision from that poi
nt that I’d make it my mission in life to prove to slutty women there was more to a man than his sexual prowess, or destroy them in the process.”

  I couldn’t deny his logic. His brain was one of reason, his methods devoid of all emotion but laced heavily with the strategy of some deranged genius.

  I was very glad to have been the slutty woman to have proved him wrong. Though I wasn’t a slutty woman really. Not even passable as one. There was only Brett for me in heart and soul, and always had been.

  Brett and the fifty grand needed to save our life together.

  The men were drunk on whisky when we finally said our goodnights, and I wasn’t far behind them.

  There was an awkward moment as we got the lights and headed to the doorway, all of us hovering between the route to our private quarters and the staircase upstairs.

  It was Thomas who made the call for us, and I was glad of it.

  “I’ll see you for breakfast,” he said. “Not too early.”

  “Breakfast,” Brett confirmed, his expression strong and constant as Tom reached out a hand for a handshake.

  Tears sprang up in my eyes as my husband used the grip to pull Thomas forward into a man hug, his palm firm on the other man’s back as he bid him a good night.

  I could only nod and smile so as not to cry, wrapping him in a hug of my own that found him rigid against me.

  Time. It would take time to unravel all of this.

  I tried to choke my emotions back for the sake of Brett’s as we washed up for bed together.

  We were lying in bed in the darkness when he sighed and hugged me tighter.

  “He’s my brother, Grace.”

  “Stepbrother,” I said. “That you’re only just getting to know.”

  “But still, he’s my brother. My dad’s boy.”

  My fingers stroked his forearm. “And we’ll take it one day at a time,” I offered. “We need to see how this falls together, Brett. It’s still so early.”

  I knew what was brewing before he said it.

  “This thing with the three of us. We can’t…” He took a breath. “How can we…”