I tapped my fingers hard enough on the table that they started to hurt. Maybe it was foolish to think I could reason with a mad man, but I had to try.
“Fall break is coming up. When it does, Ollie is heading back to our hometown, and she is going to tell anyone who will listen that she was driving that night, not me. She was underage, and five years have gone by. I don’t know that anyone will care, but you have to know that your mother will not let her slide once she openly admits her guilt. Your mom pointed a gun at Ollie. She demanded that she come and tell you that she loves you, that she wants to be with you. She blames Ollie for you being in here and in this condition. I’m hoping you have a shred of humanity left and realize the only person who put you away is you. Your obsession made you sick, and it made you do some pretty dangerous things. I can’t prove it, but I know you grabbed the wheel and jerked it out of her control when Ollie was driving.” Sawyer made a strangled sound, but his stark face showed no reaction. “Now, maybe you saw the deer and were just trying to help her since she was an inexperienced driver.” I doubted that, but I needed to cover all the bases. “Whatever the reason, you were as much at fault for the accident as she was, especially because you forced her to drive that night. That was a choice you made. And at the end of the day, I’m the one who called her to come to get me. I was the one drinking and partying without a care in the world. I put her in as much danger as you did. She was just a kid trying to do the right thing. You punished her endlessly for nothing more than that.”
He shifted weight, but his face still showed no signs of remorse or understanding.
I sighed and leaned forward. “You’ve put her through hell and back, Sawyer. She’s been alone and miserable for years because of you. She doesn’t trust anyone, and she lives her life like she’s ready to run at any moment. You thought you could force her to stay by your side, but your actions drove her back into my arms. I was always her favorite. Nothing you did ever changed that. I lost her once. I won’t lose her again.” I gave him a very pointed look. “No matter what it takes, I’m keeping her, and I will protect her. You need to let her go. You need to set her free. It’s the least you can do for her after how you tortured her, how you used her mother against her for so long.”
Finally, his stony face twisted into a bitter smile. He looked deranged—like the Joker when he fully embraced his insanity.
It gave me the creeps, but I’d come too far to back down.
“I could never figure out why she could only see you.” His wiry eyebrows dipped low on his forehead. “Back then, you were so loud and annoying. You were fat and always filthy. Even when you got older and started to get interested in other girls and made new friends, Ollie sought you out for everything. You were the only person she would talk about. She revolved around you like you were the sun. All I wanted her to do was look at me, just once, the way she looked at you. I tried to tell her over and over again that you didn’t need her the way I did, that you would never want her the way I did. She wouldn’t listen.” My brother’s expression was downright sinister. “I begged her not to go get you that night. I pleaded with her to let you fend for yourself. Nothing I said mattered. When you called, she was always going to come running. I knew as we got older that infatuation was going to turn into something more. She was in love with you long before she knew what love was. I hated it. I hated you. And she made me hate her. As cliché as it is, I really thought that if I couldn’t have her, no one should. I had no idea that the end I had planned for all of us would be the beginning of me and her.