On This Island, I Make the Rules

Chapter 005

“You think I won't?”

Years of humiliation rose in Ethan's throat until he could barely breathe around them.

“If you lay a hand on me, my dad will make you sorry.”

Brooke wasn't afraid. Not yet.

“You don't get to keep doing this!”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

“Have you lost your mind? Let go!”

Her voice climbed into a scream.

For an instant, Ethan thought of the creature in the trees. They still didn't know what it was, or how far away it might be. Screaming could bring it back.

But his anger was louder than the thought.

Brooke's face flushed. Then she caught the look in his eyes, and some of her certainty faltered.

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe I have. Maybe you finally pushed me too far.”

Seeing fear on her face gave him a brief, bitter satisfaction.

Ever since he had entered the Mercer house, she had made sure he had no dignity left.

He remembered an afternoon not long after David took him in. Brooke had forgotten a towel and ordered him to bring one to the bathroom. He had opened the door at the wrong moment, and she had accused him of spying on her.

She had hit him, called him names, and made him kneel to apologize. Otherwise, she said, she would tell her father what kind of boy he really was.

He had been terrified of causing trouble in the only home he had left.

So he had done what she wanted.

And Brooke had learned that she could get away with it.

Eventually, home hadn't been enough. She humiliated him at school too. If he spoke to another girl, Brooke would appear and tear into him in front of everyone.

After a while, people treated him as if he belonged to her, as if getting close to him wasn't worth the trouble.

All those years were breaking loose now.

Brooke's hand closed around the branch he had left beside the rocks. She swung it at him.

Ethan caught it, tore it out of her grip, and flung it aside.

“Leech, right? That's all I am to you?”

“Let me go!”

“You accuse me of things I haven't done. You treat me like I'm not even human. You held my head in a toilet until I couldn't breathe!”

He shoved her backward. She landed hard on the sand.

“You nearly killed me, Brooke.”

She stared up at him, disheveled and frightened, and the sight twisted something inside him.

Why couldn't she have treated him differently? Why had every day in that house had to be a fight he wasn't allowed to fight back?

He had stayed silent because he owed David so much. Somewhere along the way, that silence had become a habit he didn't know how to break.

Brooke began to cry.

“When we get home, I'm telling my dad everything. I'll make sure everybody knows what you are.”

“I don't care.”

“He'll—”

“We don't even know if we're getting home!”

His shout echoed off the rocks.

Her father's anger. Other people's opinions. What did any of it matter if they starved here?

“Even now, you're threatening me.” He crouched and gripped her shoulders again. “You want me to wash your clothes? Your socks? Clean up every mess you leave? I'm not doing it anymore.”

Brooke gave a shaky, contemptuous snort.

“You never minded before. I'm your sister. You're supposed to help.”

“My sister?”

The words almost made him laugh.

“I tried to treat you like family. Have you ever treated me like your brother? You held me under water and didn't care if I came back up. I just stood between you and something that could have torn me apart. Did you care whether I survived?”

His eyes burned.

He remembered how she had looked when she spotted Logan: delighted, relieved.

He knew what that relief meant. Someone else had arrived. Someone she considered worth being around.

If Logan had been alive, Ethan had no doubt that she would have run straight to him. Then the two of them would have expected Ethan to keep fetching and carrying, as if nothing had changed.

“Fine,” Brooke said. “You've made your point. Stop yelling. You're scaring me.”

She had always thought of him as an intruder, the unwanted boy stealing her father's attention. She had never seriously considered what years of treating him that way might do to him.

Now the hatred in his face unsettled her.

But even then, she couldn't bring herself to back down.

“You're going to pay for what you've done to me,” Ethan said.

The words kept turning in his head. She had to understand. She had to feel something of what he had felt.

Brooke lifted her chin again.

“Then do it. Stop talking about it.”

His expression frightened her, but she met it with a reckless, shaking defiance. The argument darkened into the threat of something neither of them could take back.

She struck him across the face.

“There,” she said through her tears. “You hate me so much? Go ahead. Show me.”