Really, what’s the point of responding to him? He knows—he fucking knows—how hard it’s been. If anyone knows what it’s like for me right now, it’s him. Which is the reason I left Beck and Dee’s place to begin with. I couldn’t handle the looks of pure pity that would come from Dee or the talks Beck would try and throw my way.

I’m lost right now. Trapped in a black hole of nothing. Coop was the last thing I had, the last something real. With him gone, I just don’t know what to live for. It sounds ridiculous even to me, I know, but he was everything I’ve ever lived for since the day our piece-of-shit mother decided that she loved being a cracked-out whore over a mother.

“This shit needs to stop.”

I was so lost in my head I didn’t even notice Maddox walking right into my space. We’re both evenly matched in body and bulk, but I know he could snap me in half if he wanted to.

“Brother, I don’t know how,” I whisper.

“You don’t know how to what?”

“I don’t know how to move on. I don’t know how to escape this...this darkness.” My voice cracks, and even though it’s the last thing I want, I crack right along with it. “He’s gone, Mad. He’s fucking gone and I don’t know how to get past knowing that he’s never going to come back. That my brother is dead. He’s dead and I wasn’t there to do a goddamn thing about it. You know where I was when I got that call? When I got the call telling me that I needed to get my ass here because it didn’t look good? I was balls-deep in some bitch I’d picked up. While I was screwing around, my brother was bleeding out, and that is fucking killing me.”

With tears falling down my face, my fists clamped tight, and my body rigid with anger, I crumble. I can’t even meet his eyes, because if I see the same pity that everyone else has thrown my way in the months that have followed Coop’s murder, I know I’ll snap.

“Do you honestly think you’re the only motherfucker who knows loss? Don’t get me wrong. It fucking sucks that Coop is gone, but do you think he would want you wasting your life away, swimming in bottle after bottle and whore after whore? I know darkness, Asher. I know what it’s like to live the same goddamn nightmare over and over again, but at some point, you need to wake the fuck up and realize there’s more to live for.” He shakes his head, looking off to the side and out the window of his apartment, where the sun is blazing bright.

Another reminder that life goes on.

“You’re killing yourself for what? To keep your mind on some continuous loop of grief? Constantly beating yourself up over something you have no control over? He’s dead, Ash. He’s dead and there isn’t anything you can do to bring him back. We all miss him—trust me on that. And pretty soon, if you don’t turn yourself around, you will successfully drink yourself to your own death, and please tell me what the hell that will fucking accomplish?”

“What the fuck do you know about loss, Maddox?” I scream, losing my tight hold on the control that’s been my only weapon against crumbling into nothing the last few months.

“I know every-fucking-thing about loss, Asher Cooper. I know what it’s like to lose your family, your friends, your life like you’ve always known it, and yourself. I fucking know what it’s like to have NOTHING, and trust me, what you feel right now is heavy, but it doesn’t hold a fucking candle. Work out your shit. Talk it out, fight it out, but stop fucking drinking it out. When you’re ready to take that step, you let me fucking know, but meanwhile, stop bringing sluts back to my house…and find my damn cat!”

He storms past me, knocking my shoulder so hard I fall right on my ass in the middle of his living room, and the only think I can think of is that he’s fucking right, but I have no clue how to fix my life.

Chapter 6 – Asher

Why anyone would think I should be responsible for something breathing is beyond me. I can’t even take care of my own damn self, and obviously I can’t take care of anything else since I lost a cat. An indoor cat. There aren’t many places this beast could hide either. I can hear Maddox slamming shit around and grumbling under his breath about me getting my shit together. Meanwhile, I’ve been crawling all over this damn apartment looking for his stupid cat.

And I say cat loosely since this thing is about forty pounds. I wonder if I can get by with telling everyone that his cat beast scratched me to hell and not some crazy chick.

“Come on, Cat. Come out wherever you are,” I say through clenched teeth. Stupid damn animal.