My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 116

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The party is in full flow and I think for once it may actually go off without a hitch.

Oh no, I just jinxed it didn't I?

Almost everyone from our year is here, as well as a load of people from the teams near by. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't slightly gutted when a few of the girls told me that Zoe wouldn't be coming, her older sister is back from college for the weekend so her mum is making them do family night.

I've actually missed her, ever since we got back on a good path to friendship again, it's been nice to have her be a part of my life.

Fighting through the crowd, I manage to make it to the kitchen without anybody groping me, or someone trying to shove questionable liquid down my throat. That's a success for one of Eli's parties.

Eli seems happy with one of the cheerleaders from Western keeping his lap warm, Leeroy staying unnecessarily close to him ever since he asked me about Josh and I practically growled at the twat. He isn't exactly the first person I wanted to tell about Josh being my boyfriend but if he asks me anything about getting his number again I will rip his fucking throat out.

I slip out through the back doors with my drink, there's a lot of people out here but at least I feel like I can breathe. I've been tempted to call Josh to come get me three times already but Eli made me promise that I'd stay for at least a few hours.

This vodka tastes like piss, I'm really hoping it's not the same shit we added water to after his last party and put back in his mum's stash.

The gate behind me smacks straight into my back and sends me almost tumbling to the floor until my arm is grabbed by the person coming through it. I look up ready to thank and curse whoever it is, only to be met by the most crystal clear grey eyes.

Luke smiles brightly as he forces me back onto my feet, laughing when he realises half this shit passing as alcohol is now down the front of my shirt. Great.

"Falling for me already Thompson? I only just fucking got here." Oh he's hilarious.

Long sleeves. I know it's colder tonight but he still in the long sleeves.

"Hey, I didn't think you were going to make it." He looks around at the amount of people here, it's become clear to me that he definitely has some level of social anxiety, even if he tries to pretend he's fine all the time.

"Yeah, well me neither but here I am." He turns towards the house, looking in through the back door where Eli has one girl on his lap and another two sitting on the edge of the table in front of him. "I can see he's set for the night."

I don't miss the bitterness in his tone, I wonder if he realises that if he wasn't such a dick to everyone all the time then he could probably get as many girls as Eli does. He's a good looking guy with a lot to offer... Not Josh good looking but still.

A group of girls flood in through the gate so I grab his arm and pull him to a quieter spot in the garden, stepping over one of the guys we played at camp who's quite happily passed out on the floor already. Fucking lightweight.

We find the bench at the back between the trees empty, taking a seat I pass him what's left of my drink as I try to squeeze out the majority of what's soaked into my shirt.

"This tastes like piss." I laugh as he continues to drink it anyway. Fucking teenagers, they really don't give a shit what they're drinking as long as it gets them drunk do they?

I really don't know how to bring this up with him, it's not like we're best mates or anything, in fact until recently I'm pretty sure he hated my guts.

"How's your arm feeling?" I try to ask it nonchalantly but I'm pretty sure he can sense the tension in my tone.

He looks down at his arm, slipping his hand further into the sleeve and letting the fabric wrap around his thumb before taking down what's left in the cup.

"It's fine." I'm starting to think that me and Luke haven't made the progress I once thought we had, we're quickly slipping back into short answers again here.

"Eli said he didn't realise you got injured on his watch, he feels pretty shit about it." Eli actually doesn't know but it doesn't hurt to add a bit of guilt into the pot right?

"Yeah, he looks really beaten up about the whole thing." It's kind of hard to argue with him when Eli is sitting there in the a three-way kiss with two other girls. How the fuck did I not realise that guy was bi already? He has so much sexual energy that I doubt one sex or one person could ever be enough.

Luke makes to stand up, but if I let him leave now then there is no fucking way that he's going to get back into a situation like this with me. I reach out and grab his hand, pulling him back towards me and catching him so off guard he doesn't realise what I'm doing until I already have his sleeve pulled up and I'm staring down at the bruises on his wrist.

It's probably faded over the last few days but you can still clearly see where he's been hit by something straight and hard, the perfect vertical lines up his arm that were definitely not made in fucking basketball.

"What the fuck are you doing?!"He tries to pull his hand back but I refuse to let it go. Luke notices a few people paying attention around us so quickly sits back down next to me, tearing his hand free and yanking down his sleeve.

"What did he use to do it?" He won't even look at me, Luke just keeps staring off into the other side of the garden, making sure not to make eye contact with anyone as he clearly hopes this will make the attention disappear. I get why he wouldn't trust me with this, he needs to understand that I'm on his side.

I sit back against the seat, keeping some distance between us so he has space to breathe before I say what I have to say. "My father wasn't really one for using weapons, he preferred to go in on us straight with his fists."

Luke turns to face me, shock clear on his face before he lets his head drop again.

"My mum got it for a really long time, although what he did inside her head was far worse than what he did to her body. Jayce though, Jayce felt the full force of it all. I was so young that I didn't realise at the time how bad it was, sometimes he would be awake for days after, not able to sleep through the pain in his body. It never stopped him though, every time Nigel would go after my mum again Jayce would jump in front of that punch without a second thought."

Luke's hands interlock behind his head, his vision firmly glued to the floor as he tries to box his whole body in like he's trying to protect it from the punches and aren't even coming at him anymore.

"I had it once, I guess some people would say that once is enough. I don't even remember the hit. The first thing I remember after it is my mum crying as she tried to keep me in the water of the bath to soak my leg, she kept saying she was sorry and I remember thinking that she wasn't the one that needed to say it... She made him leave after that."

We sit in silence, I don't know what he's gone through, maybe I'm way off base but from the way he's reacting right now I don't think I am.

"Is that why he was in prison? I thought... People said that he fucked with a little girl or something." Luke's voice is thick and heavy, he's really fucking tired. Has he slept at all this week?

"He had pictures taken of a girl before her eighteenth birthday, compromising photos. But yeah, he got a lot more added to his sentence for what he did to us too. I'm not sure which one of them got him killed though... Luke, my mom has this friend, Hannah. She's a detective and she's really good at –"

"No cops." Luke's face suddenly shoots up to look at me, I don't know if his eyes are so red from exhaustion or because his head was practically between his knees for the last five minutes but either way he looks like shit. "I mean it Milo, don't you dare tell a fucking cop about this. It isn't like what your dad did to your brother, it's not that bad. Swear to me, that you won't say shit to anyone." Why the fuck is he protecting him?

"Luke, your dad is fucking hitting you! You can't just ask me to pretend that I don't know that's going on. Hannah is fucking amazing at what she does, she'll make sure he's locked up for what he's doing to you and then –"

"And then fucking what?!" Luke keeps his voice low so people don't over hear us but the anger radiating through it is unmissable. "I'm eighteen Milo, I'm too old for the fucking system. If they lock him up then it's just me, I'll have to get some shitty jobs somewhere just to keep a roof over my head and I can kiss goodbye to fucking college. No fucking way, my brothers took this for years, now they're free and in a few months I will be too. Leave it."

I can't.

"That's not the way it has to be! If they lock your dad up then you can go live with your mum or one of your brothers. I can't leave you to just get fucking beaten Luke." Luke's hands shake at his sides, clenching into fists as every word I say seems to only trigger him further. Can't he see I'm trying to help him here?

"My fucking mum? What am I going to do, dig myself a nice grave next to hers? My oldest brother is halfway across the fucking country so I only get to see him when he brings his kids in near enough that I can drive there. The twins never come back from campus... Not all of us have big fancy houses and families that would never give up on us like you have Milo! And stop over exaggerating, he's not fucking beating me, he's not a fucking psychopath like your dad. He just gets pissed sometimes, he doesn't even remember it when he wakes up the next morning so just fucking leave this."

He stands up and attempts to walk back to the house but I swiftly step in front of him, I can't just do nothing.

"Fine then. If there's no one else then there's three fucking spare rooms in my 'big fancy house' so why don't you just fucking pick one? It doesn't matter if he's beating you unconscious or just scaring the shit out of you Luke, abuse is fucking abuse!" I'm really trying to keep my shit together here but I just don't understand why he keeps defending this guy.

Luke grinds his teeth as his jaw clenches, I swear they're going to turn to dust if he carries on like that.

"I don't need your fucking charity, I don't need fuck all from you." Luke steps right up to me, his chest pressing against mine as he squares his jaw and stares directly into my eyes. "If you ever tell anyone about this, you go ringing that fucking cop friend of yours, I'll deny this. I won't tell them anything and I will never fucking forgive you. Forget this Milo, or I swear to fucking God I will end you." Luke shoves his shoulder directly into my bad one, storming through the garden and catching me off guard as I attempt to chase after him.

My mum denied what my father was doing for years, I know some people can't admit what's happening to them, but I'm offering him a way out here. He needs to take it.

I manage to make it into the kitchen just in time to see him grab a random bottle from the side and disappear into the dancing crowd in the living room.

"Man, everything okay?" Eli pushes one of the girls off his lap as he turns to face me, standing up and trying to follow my eye-line as I scan through the crowd.

"Yeah, I'm just trying to see where –" The crowd seems to grow ever closer, people pouring out of the living room and into the kitchen before disappearing into the yard behind us.

Me and Eli almost get run over by the stampede and have to push our way through it just to see why everybody has decided to scarper.

It becomes increasingly clear why when we step into the lounge to find the room now filling with tattooed dicks from the Southside. Their little fucking ringleader spreading himself out on the couch with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he looks up and meets my gaze.

"There he is. Just the big brother I was looking for. So, you going to tell me where she is?"

Diego.

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