Read Online Lennox by Dallas Cole - Free Book Online Page A

always, I’m the one
who relents. I drop my gaze and wait for him to take control, just
like I always do. I really am a little kid when it comes to the crew.
And especially when it comes to Nash.
    “The fuck is your problem?” Nash snaps.
    “I’m—I’m just trying to fix breakfast—”
    He throws his hands in the air. “There you fucking go again.
Trying to pretend like everything’s normal. Like you can just
cook some fucking breakfast and make everything okay.”
    I clench the spatula harder. No. If I get angry, too, it won’t
make anything better. But he’s pushing me closer and closer.
    “How the fuck can you stand it, Elena? How can you pretend
nothing is wrong?”
    Something in me snaps. This whole week I’ve put up with his
moods, his outrage, his snide comments and all his efforts to rewrite
history. To make Lennox out like this longstanding villain who was
always plotting to destroy us. And I’m done with it.
    “One of us has to.” My whole body shakes as I say it.
“’Cause right now, it’s not Lennox tearing the crew
apart. It’s you .”
    Nash freezes. Goosebumps rise on my arms. Shit. I shouldn’t
have said that. Shouldn’t have even dared to speak Lennox’s
name. “What did you just say to me?”
    I turn my back to him and flop the eggs onto a plate, quickly as I
can. “Someone has to hold this crew together.”
    “Just—just stop.” He groans. “I don’t
need your fucking Betty Homemaker bullshit, trying to mother us,
trying to be this clingy little leech. All you want to do is keep me
from feeling what I feel.”
    “I’m trying to talk some sense into you,” I say.
“Trying to keep you from doing something you’ll regret.”
    “Regret? You wanna talk to me about regret?”
    I shut off the stove and face him again, crossing my arms. God, he
looks a wreck. Deep, dark grooves under his eyes, veins throbbing
along his temple, his dark blonde hair stiff and unwashed. All week,
I’ve tried to soothe that sorrow away. Tried to pull him out of
that shadow. But now, I feel nothing. No instinct to save him. I’m
tired. So tired of trying.
    “Regret,” Nash says slowly, “is that I didn’t
fucking kill that son of a bitch three years ago.”
    “God dammit, Nash. You have to stop living in the past,”
I say. “None of this is going to bring Troy back. What’s
done is done. Don’t let it wreck the present, too.”
    Nash tosses his head back and laughs. A dry, hysterical laugh, wrung
with exhaustion. I wince, half-expecting him to hurt me, or hurt
someone else. But instead he slumps against the kitchen wall. “You
just don’t fucking get it, do you?” He snatches his
jacket off of the kitchen table chair. “Of all the people,
Elena. You should fucking have my back.”
    “And why is that?” Does he think I’m blind to
what’s happening? That I’m too stupid to see what he’s
doing to our crew?
    “You should support me. It’s your fucking job .”
    I raise one eyebrow. “Well, it’s not. Not when it’s
threatening my family.”
    He meets my gaze. But I am my uncle’s niece. And I am done
caring. I’m not backing down anymore. I’ve spent all week
walking on eggshells, trying to play nice, trying to soothe him,
trying to hold him back. I can’t muster the energy for it
again.
    “Then maybe we should take a break,” Nash says.
    For a moment, my icy anger shatters. I feel my chest caving in and
tears needling at the corners of my eyes. How do I live without Nash?
He’s been my whole world for two years now. Ever since I became
an adult, he’s been there for me—my first—well,
almost everything , and always there when I wanted a good time
or to hang with the crew.
    But this is the first real adversity we’ve faced together.
Everything else we’ve sidestepped or ignored—whatever he
gets up to with Uncle D and the rest when I’m not around. I
never ask about the other girls he flirts with at races, because I
don’t want to be That Girl. I never pry into