Chapter 1
As his mood slummed down into vile territory, Oz Reid threw up the banners of surrender and sank against his bedroom wall in defeat.
The roaring in his head was deafening, pulsating in sync with the erratic vibration of his out of control heart, and his nails bit against his hand, half crescents blistering into the fleshy banks of his palms.
Not like this, he thought. His chest heaved beneath the labor of his breathing. Sweat swirled at the base of his temple, trickling down the edges of his cheeks. The room blinked in and out of focus, closing in, expanding, both a cage and a vastness so consuming, it felt as though he were drowning. Not like this.
Through all of it, there was only one person on his mind: His brother.
Shoot, he’d been looking up to Isaac since he was old enough to hold his own head. For most kids, their father was their first idol. For him, his brother had been his solid foundation of safety and trust. It was Isaac who’d calm him down after a bad dream. It was his brother who’d had the patience to check under his bed for monsters. It was Isaac who’d do his homework for him when he hit the deadline and crumbled into full-blown panic mode.
His mama always tried to remind him Isaac wasn’t perfect, he had faults, and not to put him on such a big pedestal, but Oz really didn’t see it; his brother was the one person in the entire world who could do no wrong.
And now?
With a shallow whine, his knees drew up to his chest. Burying his face into them, he tried to push the jitters down. It didn’t work — his stomach was made of quicksand and every positive or logical thing he tried to think was yanked down from his brain and lost in the thick mulch in his gut, rolling back and forth in tidal waves of indigestion.
One stupid mistake. One incredibly messed up encounter.
And . . . and . . . and it was going to cost him everything.
Despair was a lonely friend. It had a way of isolating a man. It pushed one to their lowest point, dangled them off the edge of a cliff and seemed to taunt them, as though asking ’can you fly’?
He sat with that isolation longer than he could bear. He watched as the thin veil of light beyond his half-drawn curtains faded to a crisp navy, eventually succumbing to an all-extending blackness that gripped the street in an icy grasp.
The silence of the house grew steadier, the creaking of the old pipes, the wind whistling in beneath the not quite solid frame of his window.
Isaac would be home soon.
He’d get home and . . . and . . ..
Oz shook his head, trying to clear it, but it didn’t free up any space for wishful thinking.
One mistake, one bad call, and it was game over. He knew his brother probably already knew, and when he got back, everything would be different. Everything would be weird.
His big brother, his hero, would look at him like some kind of freak.
And he deserved it.
