He drops my leg from his hold. “You’re real damn protective of someone who left you behind.”

“As if he had a choice.”

Royce’s frown deepens as he clenches his jaw, but he doesn’t say anything when it’s so obvious he wants to.

I push up on my hands more. “I love how you keep telling me to say what I want, but you hold back every time you can.”

“Trust me, there’s a difference.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“No.”

“Why not?” I snap. “You clearly have an issue with my brother. What do you care?”

“It’s Brayshaw—”

“Brayshaw business?” I say at the same time, cutting off his last word. “Is that not why you brought me here, so I can learn more? Did I not pass your little drug test? Help your family with Enoch? Were you not about to use me today?”

“Watch it.”

“Why am I even here, Royce?!”

“I said watch it.” His tone is an icy black that has me biting my tongue. “You wanna know what happened?” He gives in. “Your brother almost got his ass fuckin’ hung and hung tight. The only reason he’s still breathing is because he stood with and protected Raven when we weren’t in reach to do it. Why weren’t we in reach, because the motherfucker went behind our backs to help where she needed it.”

Betrayal? All my brother ever talked about was loyalty. Honesty.

I swallow, a queasiness swimming in my stomach. I barely get my next words out. “He turned his back on you guys?”

Royce’s jaw flexes and shakes his head. “Every ounce of his loyalty was rooted in our grounds, in our name, and then Raven came along. She became his friend before any of us knew she was a part of us, so when word dropped she was of Brayshaw blood, hidden away for eighteen years only to come back with a fuckin’ bang, he was already all in. His loyalty shifted to her.”

My shoulders fall, and I turn my body to face his better. “Was that wrong of him?”

His eyes cut to mine and he releases me. “Was it wrong to do and be whatever the hell she needed of him? No. It wasn’t. Not even a little bit.”

Royce speaks with unrestrained anger, but the boy is right beside me, and his tells are clear.

His heartbeat is heavy as is his mind, his fists tight but shaking, his breaths deep and harsh, but aching.

Anger is only the outer layer, front and center for all to observe, to fear, while something much deeper suffocates behind it.

I can guarantee I’m not supposed to understand the difference.

He bleeds on the inside too.

His glare is a guard, an impenetrable piece of armor that serves him well.

He has no reason to question his most practiced protection, but pain recognizes pain.

“It wasn’t wrong of him... but it felt like it.”

He grinds his teeth and looks away.

“Tell me what happened.”

He scoffs, licking his lips as he focuses on the sky. “I don’t even fuckin’ know you.”

He says it, but his tone tells a different story. He says he doesn’t know me, but he feels as if he does, and maybe it scares him a little. So, I tease.

“Sure you do. You’ve been watching me, remember?”

He keeps his head facing forward, but lazily slides his gaze to mine. “Took Polaroids too,” he jokes.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” I laugh lightly, and he lets a hint of a grin tip his lips. “One thing my brother did tell me was how nothing is ever buried or unreachable, nothing is off-limits, and no one can do a damn thing to stop you.”

“Me or my family?”

“I thought he meant all of you.” I lift one shoulder. “But now I’m kind of wondering if he did mean you.”

He eyes me a long moment and then turns his attention to the bent plate at my side.

He leans over, picks it up, and taps it against his free palm.

I study his profile, the doubling tension framing his eyes.

He wants to talk, a true conversation, but he’s unsure... and he hates it.

Like me, he has no one of his own to trust, not with anything real or unscripted.

Pain recognizes pain.

I reach out, swiping my hand along the dust of the blue stamped letters and he holds it out, revealing what’s beneath it.

“Lame for a custom.” He stares.

I nod, tracing the number four with my middle finger, and decide vulnerability is only fair when it’s coming from both angles. I don’t talk to people either, but talking to him somehow feels right.

“It was the gift my sick mother gave her casted up son a day after she begged him to lie to the doctors when, for the first time, he couldn’t be ‘fixed’ with time, a forced shot of Jack and a handful of ibuprofen.”

Royce’s frown deepens, but he doesn’t look away from my hand. “Your mom was sick?”

I sigh, leaning against the window. “In the head.”

This time he does glance my way, and I offer a tight smile.

“I mean, she’d have to be, right?”

I try to hide the inner sorrow the irrational question brings, but if the sudden and unexpected bleak look in his eyes means anything, I failed.

A heavy strain falls over his forehead and his chest inflates with a deep inhale. “Tell me what happened,” he mimics my words.

I hold my hand out and reluctantly, he slaps the license plate into it.

I stare down at the bold letters, the stamped number four, and our last name.

4 Bishop.

“I was sitting on the back patio, admiring the sky and trying to recognize a new constellation of stars I was studying when I heard my dad’s car pull into the driveway. I jumped up as fast as I could and ran up to my room before he even managed to get the front door unlocked. His norm was to ransack the kitchen first, watch the Warriors highlights, and there was hope he’d pass out in the process, but not three minutes after the latch of the door rattled the house, his boots were stomping up the stairs. He went straight for Bass,” I remember.

“I tore my door open as quick as I could and ran for him, but my mom flew from her room the second she heard me step from mine and grabbed me around the waist. She held me back, so I yelled—something I never did—and she yanked my hair for it. But Bass...”

“He told you to be quiet.”

“Without speaking a single word.” I nod. “He met my eye for a split second, and I about swallowed my tongue.” I scratch at the red printed California at the top of the item and jump ahead. “My mom was on her knees at my brother’s side when my dad was done with him, but not to cry and hold her son. She was crying, but her tears were in fear of what would happen to my dad, to her. She sat there and pleaded with Bass, and only when he agreed to lie when asked, did she allow me to help him into the car so we could take him to the hospital. I had to grab an old shovel from the garage to balance me out.” I scoff, shaking my head. “She wouldn’t even help me get him to his feet.”

I turn to Royce, who hasn’t looked away yet.

“Bass told the people at the hospital he fell down a hill riding his bike when really my father drug him out his bedroom window and rolled him off the roof into the long bed of his stupid El Camino.” I swallow, sharing the last, maybe even worst, part. “All because Bass had left the back door open.”