Oops My Stepbrother and His Rival Want Me

CHAPTER FIVE: WRECKAGE

Viper doesn't say a word first. He just moves.

He's across the room before I can get a single sound out, fist closing in Rezo's collar, and the two of them go sideways into my desk hard enough that my chem notes scatter across the floor like confetti nobody asked for. Rezo doesn't go down. He twists out of the grip and shoves back, and suddenly my bedroom is two grown men trying to put each other through the drywall.

"Stop! Both of you, stop!"

Neither of them stops. Viper lands a punch that snaps Rezo's head sideways, and Rezo comes back with one that knocks Viper into my dresser, sending a lamp crashing to the floor in a spray of glass. I grab for Viper's arm and get shaken off without either of them even registering I touched him at all.

"You don't get to touch her." Viper's voice comes out raw, scraped down to something underneath the usual control. "You don't get to be in this house."

"She let me in." Rezo wipes blood from his mouth, almost smiling through it, like pain's just another part of tonight he's enjoying. "Didn't seem to mind, either."

"Shut up." Viper goes for him again, and this time Rezo catches his wrist mid-swing, twisting it back hard enough that Viper's jaw clenches against the pain.

"You want to talk about who doesn't get to touch her?" Rezo's voice drops, mean now in a way I haven't heard from him yet. "You've had every chance in the world to claim her and you're still standing there hesitating. I didn't need five minutes to decide anything."

"That's not the same thing."

"It's exactly the same thing. You're just slower at it."

Viper breaks the wrist hold and drives his shoulder into Rezo's chest, and they go down together, knocking my desk chair across the room. A picture frame falls off the shelf and shatters somewhere near my feet. I'm yelling at both of them, useless, my voice not landing anywhere either of them can hear it over their own rage.

"You think this is a game to me." Viper gets a knee into Rezo's stomach, pinning him flat against the floorboards. "You think you can walk into my territory, climb through his window, and there's no cost to it?"

"I think you've been too scared to claim what's already yours for a lot longer than you'd ever admit, and you hate that I'm not scared of anything." Rezo gets a hand free and shoves him off, both of them scrambling back up. "That's not my problem to fix."

"This isn't about her." Viper's hands are fisted in Rezo's shirt now, shaking him with every word. "This is about you needing something of mine just because it's mine."

"Maybe it started that way." Rezo doesn't fight the grip this time. "Doesn't explain why I climbed back through that window tonight instead of staying away like I should have."

That lands somewhere Viper clearly didn't expect, his grip loosening half an inch, and for one beat neither of them moves.

I don't see who throws the next punch. I just see the lamp base, already cracked on the floor, get kicked sideways in the scramble, and I lunge to grab it before someone puts a foot through the glass, except I'm too close, too slow. A shard catches my forearm at the same second Viper's elbow catches me square in the side, and the two things happening at once are enough to fold me in half and drop me straight to the floor.

The room goes silent so fast it rings.

"Keira."

I'm on the floor before I register falling, palm pressed against my ribs, breath gone somewhere I can't find it. The pain is sharp and immediate, the kind that steals the next several seconds entirely.

Viper's on his knees in front of me before the glass even stops settling, hands shaking so badly he can barely get them near my arm without flinching back first. "I did this. I'm the one who—" He cuts himself off, jaw working, and for a second he looks younger than I've ever actually seen him, like the version of him that existed before any of this, before clubs and territory and three years of careful distance, has clawed its way back to the surface out of pure panic.

"It's a cut, Vee. I'm not dying."

"You don't get to decide that right now." He pulls his own jacket off in one motion, pressing it against the gash on my arm. His hands are still shaking. "Hold this. Hold it tight."

Rezo crouches at my other side, slower, more contained, like he's already deciding how to fix the problem instead of falling apart over it. He takes my wrist, turns my arm gently toward the light, assessing the cut with the same focus he'd probably give a map of enemy territory.

"It's not deep. Needs stitches, not a hospital." His thumb brushes just above the wound, careful, deliberate. "You're lucky. Glass like that usually goes worse."

"You sound very calm about my blood."

"I am calm. Panicking wouldn't get it cleaned faster." Something flickers in his eyes when he looks up at me, the same hunger from the bar, just dialed down to something more useful right now than admiring me. "Doesn't mean I like that it happened."

"You don't get to be calm right now." Viper's voice is sharp, aimed sideways at Rezo without looking away from my arm. "This is your fault as much as mine."

"Never said it wasn't." Rezo doesn't rise to it. "Arguing about whose fault it is doesn't stop the bleeding either."

"I'm bleeding because of the two of you," I snap, at both of them, and neither one argues the point.

Viper's hands are still shaking around the jacket pressed to my arm, and for a second he looks like he might actually apologize out loud, mouth opening on something before he swallows it back down, like even now, even with my blood on his hands, he can't quite let himself say the real thing.

"We need to get you cleaned up properly." His voice has gone quieter, steadier, the club president reasserting himself over whatever just cracked open in him a minute ago. "Both of you need to stop talking and let me think."

That's when the front door downstairs slams open hard enough to echo up through the floorboards.

"Keira?" A voice I don't recognize calls up the stairs, sharp with alarm. "Viper, you up there? We've got a problem."