“I’m fine. I just want to understand how you met a woman who came to a party looking for a sugar daddy, who turned out to be crazy, and then decided she was the most important thing to you? Screw your family. This girl, yeah, she’s the one? Mom was worried—”
“Lorelai was worried about her image! The Darcy image, the same thing she has been worried about since the day I came into this family. What do you want me to do? Go back and apologize for telling her the truth? I don’t care—”
“You should! Who the hell are you right now? I get it. All your life you’ve been the brooding, silent, suffering Theodore. You’re pissed at Mom for looking down at people when you do the same goddamn thing to her and all her friends for being rich.”
“It is not the same,” I snapped, closing the gap between us. “It’s not the money that bothers me, it’s the contempt she and you and everyone else seems to have toward people who aren’t in the same tax bracket. If you call her crazy or insane one more time, I will knock your teeth in.”
“Screw you, Theo. If you don’t want to be part of this family, fine. Just remember pity isn’t love.”
“Funny, the last person you were in love with was Violet, wasn’t it?” I said, and his eyes widened. “You think I didn’t know?”
He clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t know what you think you know, but you’re wrong. If only you were as dedicated to her as you are to Felicity. She just wasn’t damaged enough for you, was that it? Or aren’t you using Felicity as penance for the fact you weren’t with your mother as she died?”
“Get. Out,” I hissed through my teeth.
“You disgust me. You’re not even a man and you’re insane—”
Like I’d promised, I pulled my fist back smashed it into his nose. He stumbled back, gripping the bridge of his nose before wiping the blood from it.
“I warned you, didn’t I?”
“You son of a bitch!” he muttered then charged at me. He got one good punch at the side of my face right next to my eye, sending us both backward over the couch. Flipping us over, struggling on the surface of the couch, we landed back on the glass. However, I didn’t care. I pinned him to the ground and he struggled, grabbing my arm as I held on to his throat.
“When have you ever been able to beat me, Arty? Huh?”
“Theo! Let him go,” Felicity yelled, running up behind me and pulling on my arm. “Look at his face! He’s turning blue!”
Urgh! Getting got up off him, I put as much space between us as possible. “Get out or I’ll throw you out, Arty.”
Felicity tried to help him up, but he smacked her hands away. I was tempted to go back and smash his head off. Felicity took a step back, blocking my path.
“This is all your fault.” He sneered at her, snatching his helmet on the way out.
“It’s always someone’s fault, Arty, never yours!” I yelled. The door slammed. Running my hands through my hair, I took a deep breath. Damn him! Reaching into my pocket, I took out my phone. “Nolan, my brother just left. He’s impaired—yes, thank you.”
“Your hand is bleeding.”
Felicity returned from the kitchen with a first aid kit. I looked down at my hands and sure enough, they were bleeding from the broken glass.
“Sit,” she commanded, opening the box.
“I’m fine—”
“It’s either me or a doctor, Mr. Darcy, but you really need to get the glass out.”
Sitting across from her, I leaned against the windows that overlooked the city.
“How much of that did you hear?”
“All of it, I think,” she replied, staring closely at my hand with a pair of tweezers between her fingertips. “I was just going to ignore it when I heard the glass break. Good thing too, because it looked like you were going to kill him.”
I might have.
“This is what Arty does. He gets better, then he gets worse, then he finds me and we fight, and then he tries to pick the pieces of himself up all over again. I’ve tried to help him, but he doesn’t want that, he just wants to fight me. No one else, just me.”
“I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad that you make it your mission to try and save everyone, not just me,” she muttered, and I winced at the glass. “Sorry.”
“I’m not trying to save him. I’m trying to….” I drifted off because in a way, I was seeking to save him. I wanted him to move on from whatever it was that was hurting him so badly. “Don’t compare yourself to him. With you, it’s not like….”