Filed To Story: Craving The Wrong Brother Book PDF Free by Elysian Sparrow
But I stop myself.
That’s the fixer in me taking over. My Finn-fixing radar is on high alert, and I’m telling it to stand down.
A cab crawls by, headlights bouncing across the pavement. Finn lifts a hand, and it Pound Of Flesh pulls to the curb like it was summoned by fate itself.
He opens the door and pauses, looking back at us, eyes red, jaw set.
“There’ll be no rest for the both of you unless I’m no longer alive,” he says. “You don’t get to play the victim anymore, Knox. We’re even now. You got your pound of flesh for what happened to Lydia when you stole Sloane and Delilah from me. Next move is mine.”
The moment that name, Lydia, leaves Finn’s lips, I feel Knox shift.
“Don’t you dare mention her name,” Knox says.
“Or what, Knox?”
I turn and block Knox with my whole body this time, palms against his chest. “Let it go.”
The cab door shuts. Tires roll against the curb as it pulls off. Knox’s eyes track it until it disappears.
Then, without a word, he turns and stalks back to the apartment. He moves fast. I run to catch up.
No Apology In The World
Knox is already halfway up the stairs by the time I make it inside the building. He takes the stairs two at a time. I follow fast.
At the next landing, he pulls his phone out of his pocket, scrolls quickly, then presses it to his ear.
He doesn’t say much. Just a few clipped words. Something about a tow truck. The name Aaron.
I don’t need to hear the rest to know what it’s about.
He hangs up just as I reach our floor and stands outside my door, shoulders rising and falling fast, like the adrenaline hasn’t worn off yet.
When I come up beside him, I notice his knuckles. Red and raw. Blood gathers in the creases. It makes my stomach turn.
“You got your key?” he asks.
“I left it inside.”
“You should always carry it. Or you’ll lock yourself out.”
He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his keycard, and taps it against the lock. The door clicks open. At least now I know how he got in. He made himself a spare.
We step inside. The moment we’re in, I turn to him.
“Would you really have kept hitting him if I hadn’t stopped you?”
He drops into the nearest chair and exhales. “He had it coming.”
“You’re supposed to be the calm one. You let him bait you.”
“Maybe I just enjoy hitting him.”
“You could’ve killed him! You knocked out a tooth.”
“I was aiming for five.”
“Knox!”
He sighs and leans forward, elbows on his knees. His hands are still coated in Finn’s blood. He stares at them for a beat before standing and walking toward the bedroom, peeling off his shirt as he goes.
I follow him.
Successfully unlocked!
He kicks off his shoes and steps out of his pants, then walks over to the dresser chair, draping the pants and his bloodied chinelose the back of it. He stands there for a moment, dressed in nothing but his boxers. His tattoos seem darker in the low light, stark lines over lean muscle.. No Apology In The World
“What exactly happened between you two?” I ask. “Who’s Lydia?”
He climbs into bed and pulls the covers over his legs. “You don’t want to know, Sloane.”
“I do. That’s why I’m asking. I want to know why you act like a monster whenever your brother’s name comes up, which you’re not because I’ve seen how good you can be.”
“Don’t call me good just because I’m good to you,” he says. “I’m not. You don’t know half the things I’m capable of.”
“I know you care about me. And I know you married Soraya out of the goodness of your hea-“
“It was a debt. I owed her father.”
“Stop pretending to be this villain. You’re not.”
“You don’t know what I am when I’m not with you, Sloane Mercer.”
“Maybe. But I know this-when people are at their most vulnerable point, that’s when they show who they really are.”
He snorts. “What are you now? A shrink?”
“I used to live with one. She drove me nuts.”
I cross to the bed, lift the covers, and slide in beside him. The air is warm from his body heat. Our shoulders brush. He turns to face me.
“What did Finn do to you, Knox?” I ask. “Because I have a feeling it’s what turned you cold.”
He doesn’t answer at first, eyes fixed on me like maybe if he just stares hard enough, I’ Il disappear.
Then, finally, he sighs. “Like I said before, you don’t want to know.”
I shift onto my side, propping myself up on an elbow. “For God’s sake, Knox, talk to me. I’m trying to understand you. Don’t push me away.”
His jaw flexes. A long silence stretches between us.
“You really want to know?” he says. “Fine. I hate him because he’s the reason our sister died. And there’s no apology in the world that could make me forgive him.
Because to forgive him would mean forgetting everything that happened to me from the moment she died.”
And just like that, the room goes still.
***
~~KNOX~~
***
I don’t know how she does it, but this woman, with her glasses and soft bangs, has managed to extract things from me in barely two weeks that took my therapist month: to unravel.
It’s the reason she keeps seeing me as soft, because she’s cast some kind of spell, and part of me doesn’t even want to fight it.
“Your sister?” she says. “You had a sister? What happened?”
I turn to face the ceiling. The drywall above me has a faint crack, curling like a vein.” That’s information you might actually have to beat out of me, Bunny.”
I can feel her looking at me. She’s probably trying to decide if she should press for more or let it go for now. I don’t look at her. I keep my gaze on the ceiling, counting the slow turns of the ceiling fan even though there’s nothing up there worth seeing.
Her silence answers for her.
She’s letting it go. For now. But I know her well enough to know she’ll come back to it.
“I’ll get you another time,” she finally says. “One way or the other, you’re going to tell me everything about you, Knox.”
“Planning to do some voodoo?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
I turn my head back to her, close enough that I can feel her breath on my mouth. She’s watching me, waiting, like she knows what’s in my head.
I want to tell her how much I missed her. That not hearing from her for days felt like a different kind of torture I didn’t even know could be painful. But saying that would mean… admitting things. Feeling things. And feelings? They make my throat tighten.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.