My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 143

MILO'S P.O.V.

Where the fuck is Eli?

Why won't he tell me what's up with him? He asked me to meet him out here so we could run over some of the plays for the rest of the season but that was twenty fucking minutes ago and there's still no sign of him.

Zoe waves at me from the other side of the fields, the cheerleaders are out fucking early to be practising, but she told me yesterday that they have a big competition on next week so they're all in drill mode right now.

I could do that... I'm way more flexible than I look...

I try ringing the little English fucker again but his phone is still ringing out to voicemail. I've got so much shit to get done this free period, I'm behind on everything at the moment so I can't be wasting it hanging out next to the fucking gym all day waiting for him to be done screwing whoever's supposed to be at the top of that pyramid.

Oh wait, that's Zoe.

Fuck that would be weird... but it would explain a lot... No, they'd tell me.

I hope.

It's been easier here lately, it doesn't feel like every corner I turn around I'm walking in on people having a conversation about me anymore. I always knew it would die down eventually but I'm still grateful that it's finally happened, everything has been hard enough as it is.

My phone lights up again and I get ready to tear into Eli when I realise it's just a message from Josh. Well, it's never actually just a message when it comes to Josh, it's usually a set of simple words that combined with the sight of his name is enough to make my stomach flare with fucking butterflies.

He's just letting me know that he'll be getting Liam from school today and seeing if he wants me to have them pick me up after, which obviously I do.

We've hardly been apart since he got custody of that kid, I know that Josh could totally take care of him on his own but I actually like doing the stupid little stuff with him. Besides, Josh always gets the shampoo in his eyes when he washes Liam's hair so he needs me to be there to do that for him, I got you my boy.

Those bubbles sting like hell no matter what the bottle says.

Yesterday when Liam came home from school he practically launched himself into my arms shaking with joy, he'd moved up a reading level with his books finally and I don't think I've ever been more proud of anyone. We've been working really hard on it every night and I like to think I played a little part in helping him progress.

I guess this is kind of what it'll be like when we have our own kids...

Mum's finally started to chill with the whole situation, really chill this time, not like when I came home and she'd made a batch of seriously dry cupcakes covered in rainbow frosting as a way to try and fake some kind of support for me and Josh. I give her points for effort but nothing for actual execution.

She's been really amazing with Liam too, he's been coming to our place after school every night until Josh finishes work, mostly because Heather desperately wants to be with him, and it's been really nice to watch him slowly starting to come out of his shell there too. Even if he still spends most of the time sitting in the gaming chair at the bottom of my bed, I actually really love his company so I'm cool with it - him being able to do my algebra homework quicker than I can is not something I'm so cool with, although it does help.

Finally in the distance I see Eli race out of the tree line, his dishevelled clothing being altered back around his body as he makes his way across the court and tries to catch his breath.

The guy seriously has no level of self control. It's the middle of a school day!

"Dude! I'm so sorry... We were supposed to be... I got busy doing..." Eli tries to force his words out but he's so out of fucking breath, it's not even that far to run! I honest to God don't know how this guy plays a full fucking basketball match.

"I really don't want to know what you and - what I'm assuming was the twins - were up to back there. You ready to do these plays?" Eli glances back over at the tree line and I try to follow his eyesight to see whoever he was fucking around with in there but I can't see anybody, a few of the cheerleaders beginning to talk amongst themselves as Luke comes out from the other side of the forest and pays them no attention when he cuts straight across the field. "Eli?!"

Finally the guy snaps himself from whatever was distracting him and comes around back to me, shoving me so hard off the bench that I almost hit the fucking ground before laughing and racing back through to the gym. Oh I'm going to fucking kill him!

"These are new jeans!" Josh ripped into my last pair...

He throws open the doors and sprints straight across towards the locker room. He's slow as shit but he's pushing those tree trunk thick legs of his as fast as he can. Spotting a wayward basketball still sitting on the bottom layer of the bleachers, I grab it quickly and hurl it at his back.

It's a move I've used once before, throwing every ounce of air out of Josh's body all the way back at camp when he was trying to be a competitive little fucker... Damn, it was the first time I saw him without his shirt on that day... Fuck that was a good day.

The ball has the exact same effect this time, Eli falling to his knees and gasping for air as I race across the court and throw my body completely on top of his.

My shoulder feels so much better, even throwing a ball like that does something to fulfil an empty space inside my soul. I really can't wait to be back on the fucking court.

Wrestling with Josh like this way back then was really... interesting... but doing it with Eli is a totally different experience, like trying to round up a pouncing Bengal tiger that just repeatedly tries to claw your eyes out. He's such a bitchy fighter, he's about three seconds away from pulling my fucking hair.

Eli manages to flatten me against the court, holding me down with his fat-ass body squashing every inch of me.

"You should be used to this, an American bowing down and being crushed under the weight of British superiority. You can rewrite the history books all you want mate, we all know what really happened."

Oh I am going to destroy this fucking colonizer.

I try everything in my power to throw the redcoat to the ground but he's got all that added weight of prideful British oppression to keep him solid, Eli laughing his head off even as I keep screaming at him that I can hardly fucking breathe. Damn I've missed him.

Finally he mercifully removes himself from me. I try to keep track of how many bones he's broken in my body as he reaches out with his giant hand and pulls me back to my feet. I'd like to spit some historical insults at him but he gets pretty fucking passionate about this shit lately, I don't know when he started giving a crap about history lessons but he's actually been fucking studying and everything.

We're both still chuckling as we walk into the locker room, but it all dies out immediately when we look at the faces of our fellow teammates that appear very far from fucking joyful.

All huddled in a circle and looking on almost in disbelief at something that lays between them on the bench.

"What's going on?" They turn their attention to us, one of the guys picking up what I now realise is a book from the bench and handing it over to me, Leanna stepping forward with another trying to explain the connection.

"Look at this." She points down at a photograph in the old yearbook, an image of the Westbrooke high basketball team from a long fucking time ago, her finger floating just above the guy with the captain band on his arm. "You heard that the father of the kid who shot up the school got out of prison this week right? They finally released his name too?"

Leanna looks seriously unsettled, whilst me and Eli just continue to look at her without understanding. She taps on the image again and I realise she's saying that this is that guy when he was in high school here.

"Yeah I heard, but I already knew he was on the basketball team, that's kind of why he was so harsh on his own kid to be the best. What's that got to do with anything?" Leanna slips the page of the other book in front of me, another team from maybe one or two years later staring back up at me from the pages of their own yearbook.

"The school keeps all the yearbooks in the library, a few of the guys just wanted to go in and kind of erase him from the history you know? They were just going to sharpie his head out, nothing fucked up or anything. But look at who he is, read it." I follow her finger as I read the description of the team underneath, explaining this dude was the captain and some shit about it being the first team with two brothers as captain and second. I really don't understand the relevance until I'm staring at the names; Miller isn't exactly a rare surname but when I look at the brother again – older this time in the other book as the captain of his own team - I realise who he is.

That same smug look on his face when he was a fucking teenager as the one he had when he was starting on Josh back at fucking camp, the same look I wiped off his disgusting lips that day in the locker room when I didn't back the fuck down from all the shit he had to say about my now boyfriend.

It's Luke's dad... Which would make that guy Luke's uncle... Which would make the shooter...

"It's his cousin." Leanna finishing my thought before I have a time to vocalise it. "The guy who shot up the fucking school and killed all those people was Luke's cousin."

Holy fucking shit.

Eli snatches the books from my hands, darting his eyes between the photographs like he doesn't quite believe what he's seeing. Quite frankly neither do I.

Fuck, this actually explains so fucking much. His uncle was a psychopath that beat his own fucking kid within an inch of his life and now his father is doing the exact same thing to Luke.

"What the fuck do we do about this Milo? I mean, if people found out it would look really bad on the –"

"Nothing," I cut her off, and the thoughts of anyone else in the room before they can even force them out into the universe. "We don't do anything about this. It's not Luke's fault that he's –"

Every pair of eyes in the room dart away from mine the moment the door behind me slams shut, I turn around slowly but I can already guess who's in here, Luke looking around confused but his eyes hanging with Eli's for far longer than he does with anybody else, whilst Eli just tries to slowly close the books and place them behind his back.

I appreciate what he's trying to do but I think it's a bit late for that.

"What the fuck are you all staring at?" Okay, we all need to handle this delicately. Luke is really sensitive even if he tries to pretend that he's not and I'm pretty sure that he's going to fly off the handle if we just–

"The guy who shot up the school is your fucking cousin?!"

Or Leanna could just throw it the fuck out there like that and let me deal with the fucking consequences... For fucks sake.

Luke freezes, his whole body stone cold and stiff as his eyes drop from Eli's to the books in his hands. Shit, he's gonna freak.

"Luke, it's okay." I begin, trying to calm him before he blows. "No one is going to hold this against you or anything, you can't control being related to a fucking psychopath. It's just–"

"He wasn't a fucking psychopath." Luke cuts me off immediately with a dangerously low tone, what I thought was hurt in his eyes quickly being replaced with pure rage. Shit, I think he loved him... They might have actually been close...

"He walked into a fucking school with a shotgun Luke, he killed people, why the fuck would he do that if he wasn't a psychopath?" Leanna speaks softly this time, clearly realising that she jumped into this way fucking quicker than she should have.

Luke looks around the room and I can almost see the minute the switch flicks, the moment he stops being the Luke that everyone has grown to like and turns back into the Luke that can only protect himself with a shield of fucking cruelty.

"He had his reasons." He spits, every muscle in his throat so tense he can hardly move his jaw to get the words out.

"Luke..." He pauses. That guy is seething with anger right now, usually when he gets in this state nothing can get through to him, but for some reason he breaks just the smallest bit at the sound of Eli's voice. "Luke, it's okay, don't..." Eli doesn't even know what he wants to say, so he stops and just stares at him.

Luke quickly plasters over the cracks though, that look of total indifference I saw the night I confronted him about his father again squared onto his features.

There's not another moment for us to try and talk with him as he throws open the locker room door and storms out.

He isn't responsible for someone else's actions, I'd hate to be held accountable for all the shit Jayce has done... Even Lee said that the kid must have been so fucking damaged to have done what he did. If they're cousins then Luke probably knew him long before he was broken that far, just like me with my father. These single moments of happiness and joy that you have to use to remind yourself that the person they became is not the person they always were.

For fucks sake, I still have the only photograph that exists of Nigel in our house, even after everything he did I still can't let myself destroy the good memories. Some monsters have moments of hope.

I spin back around to look at the group, everyone seeming to have mixed emotions about what just happened. Time to be the fucking captain.

"Nobody says fuck all about this. This information does not leave this fucking room. Luke isn't his cousin, he doesn't deserve to carry around the burden of this. If I hear a single whiff of a rumour about this then I will let Coach take it out on the fucking lot of you. This is a team, that means we protect each other. Luke needs our protection right now." There are nods of agreement from everyone, Eli still staring at the door like Luke is just on the other side. I can see he's ready to race after him but I beat him to it, running through the halls and just catching the glimpse of Luke's back before he disappears into the tree line at almost the same spot I saw him come out of earlier.