Chapter 208

#Chapter 208 – Hard Lines When Victor and Evelyn come down the stairs ten minutes later, Rafe is sitting at the kitchen table looking down at his folded hands. Evelyn doesn’t say a word, barely glances at him as she instead goes to her boys, who are standing by the open front door.

“Mama!” Ian says, breathless with excitement. “Did you see it!?”

“See what, baby?” Evelyn says, coming to put a hand on his back between his shoulder blades and see what the excitement is about.

“The house,” Alvin says, leaning against the door and looking up at her with wide eyes. “The car house!”

“Oh,” Evelyn says laughing and looking at the driveway. “It’s called an RV, boys – a Recreational Vehicle. Apparently,” she smirks and looks over her shoulder at Victor, who pulls out a chair to sit across from Rafe, “your dad buys the newest model every year. Just in case.”

“It’s awesome,” Ian says, his wide eyes eager. “Can we go travel in it?”

“Can we go live in it?!” Alvin shouts, clasping his hands beneath his chin in excitement.

“You’d want that?!” Evelyn asks, laughing and gesturing towards it. It really is beautiful but…live in it!?

“You’d want to live in that thing, like living in a can of sardines?”

“Well, our other house did burn down,” Ian says, pouting, “we should get a new one and this one is already here.” Evelyn can’t stop the laugh that starts to spill from her at his earnest kid logic.

“Yeah,” Alvin says, as if it’s obvious. “And we can take this one to the beach.”

“Okay, okay,” Evelyn says, reaching for the coat hanging on the peg by the door. “Let’s go explore it, and then we’ll decide whether or not we should move in.”

The boys run out the door, happy with this deal, and Evelyn looks over her shoulder at Victor before following them. Victor gives her a deep nod as Burton hands him a fresh cup of coffee.

Thank you, Victor says into her mind, for distracting them. I’ll handle this in here.

Anytime, Evelyn replies with a wink. Then, she pulls the door shut behind her, following her sons to the RV.

When the house is quiet again, Victor turns his attention to Rafe. “Evelyn told me what she knows,” he says, his deep voice rumbling with disappointment. Hearing his tone, Burton quickly makes himself scarce.

When the butler is gone, Rafe lifts his eyes to meet his brother’s. “Listen, Victor. I f****d up.”

Victor lets his head fall a little to the side, giving Rafe a look that suggests what he has said is an understatement. A massive, horrible, disgusting understatement.

“Victor, come on. Evelyn already yelled at me last night,” Rafe says ruefully. “I get it. It’s not like I don’t already know that what I did was horrible. I’m going to make it better. You don’t have to yell at me too.”

“What is it that you’re afraid of here, Rafe?” Victor asks, starting to get genuinely confused as he sits down at the table. “That I’m going to repeat back to you your actions in the past few months? And you’re going to have to face what you did, instead of making excuses for yourself? Or comforting yourself that it’s okay because nobody knows about it?”

Rafe looks at his brother, rueful.

“Fine,” Victor says, shrugging. “I’ll leave that to Evelyn – she’ll be more than happy to go through the details and pin you to the wall for each one. I’ll skip right to telling you what a rotten piece of work you really are.”

Rafe grimaces at the thought, but Victor continues, cutting to the chase. “What the f**k is wrong with you, Rafe?” Victor growls, leaning across the table and glaring at his brother. “That is a good woman, who by all appearances loves you – or loved you, at least. How could you treat her like that? What, genuinely, went through your mind to make you do it?”

Rafe exhales a huge sigh and puts his head in his hands. “I just got so wrapped up in it, Victor,” he says, his voice muffled against his palms. “In all the s**t after the wedding – in all of the s**t before the wedding. You weren’t there – you didn’t hear everything Dad was saying about you bringing those boys into your life. About how you were failing the pack.”

“Is that seriously your excuse?” Victor says, sitting back in his chair, a little further disgusted. “That dad made you do it?”

“Of course he didn’t,” Rafe says, taking down his hands and glaring at Victor. “I did it. I’m man enough to take responsibility for my choices, even if…well, if not for much else.”

Victor just holds his coffee in his hands as Rafe takes a moment to sort his thoughts.

“At the moment when I started the lie,” Rafe says slowly, perhaps figuring it out for himself as he goes, “…nothing, in my life, seemed more important to me than ripping this pack from you and taking it for myself. In getting that approval from dad.”

Victor sits quietly, listening.

“But as time passed, after all that I did – to you, to Evelyn, to Bridgette – I realized that…dad was just using me, as he does all of us. He’s just like John Walsh in that way, do you know?” Rafe looks up, then, meeting Victor’s eyes seriously.

“They’re all from a different generation of Alphas,” Rafe says then, shaking his head. “Where it’s fine, encouraged, even, to just take whatever the hell you want, and shape the world into the image you want it to fit. But these past months with you, with the world that you’re making…”

Rafe pauses, sitting back in his chair, studying his brother. “How did you get out of it, Victor?” he asks.

“How did you…not become them, like dad and Walsh? Like I did?”

“I’m not sure I did escape it,” Victor murmurs, holding his coffee tight. “I think I only started to change when…”

Rafe can read the end of the sentence on his face though. “Evelyn?” Rafe says, leaning forward in his chair, a little disbelieving. “Seriously? One woman comes along and everything is different?”

Victor just shakes his head. “I treated her…I’m ashamed of how I treated her, Rafe, at the start of all of this. I have trouble even thinking about the things I said to her. But I was the Alpha, I was just repeating things dad said to mom for years, things I thought were right.”

“And then?” Rafe asks, genuinely curious.

“And then,” Victor says, shrugging, “I started to see her as a person. She forced me to start seeing her as a person. Not as a Luna, or as a surrogate, or as my kids’ mom. But as a full person, who loves and fights and speaks and breathes. And the way she loves,” he shakes his head, still bowled over by it. “I had to become a different person, to even begin to deserve her.”

Rafe laughs a little at that. “You certainly blew up your life to do it.”

“It was worth it,” Victor says, dead serious and a little mad that his brother would laugh. Rafe holds up his hands, though, apologizing, and Victor forces himself to cool down.

“So what,” Rafe asks after a moment, shrugging. “Is that how I have to change? I have to find the right woman? I have to –“

“Seriously, Rafe?” Victor hisses, leaning forward, the disgust back in his voice. “Are you seriously looking for a woman to make you treat her well? Bridgette is also a person, if perhaps less strong-willed than Evelyn. But Bridgette didn’t have the resources that Evelyn had, the upbringing in an Alpha household that told her her entire life that she deserves more. Are you going to use that as an excuse for why you treated Bridgette like trash? That everyone else in her life treated her like trash, so it was okay for you to do it as well?”

Rafe looks down at the table, ashamed.

“Evelyn’s right, Rafe,” Victor says, shaking his head at him. “You’re not welcome in this house. I don’t want you around my boys, teaching them that your version of being a man – of being an Alpha – is acceptable.”

Rafe snaps his gaze up to his brother at this, his mouth falling open in shock.

“You’re still an Alpha, you’re still my left-hand man,” Victor says, stern. “I need your help in running this pack. But you can’t treat people like this. Until you make some serious moves to change the way you understand the world, the way you treat people, I’m sorry. You’re not welcome in our private world.”

“Well, how do I do that?” Rafe asks, frustrated. “I can apologize, but I can’t go back in time and change anything.”

“You can only change how you act in the future,” Victor says immediately. “And until then, deal with the very real consequences of your actions. Words don’t mean much, apologies don’t mean much. Actions mean everything.”

“Please,” Rafe says, putting his head back in his hands. “I need some breadcrumbs, bro. I don’t even know where to get started on this path.”

Victor shrugs, even though he knows Rafe can’t see him. “It’s your path, Rafe,” he says, holding firm.

His brother has been petted and indulged his whole life, allowed to do precisely what pleased him.

Now, finally, he was coming up against some hard consequences. “It’s not my job to tell you how to do it.”

Rafe sighs, his breath hitching, and Victor can tell that he’s close to tears, if not already there.

“I will set you up with a therapist, though,” Victor says, leaning forward. “Who can help you find that path.”

“Seriously?” Rafe says, peeking over his hands. “You want me to talk to someone about this?”

Victor nods seriously. “It helped me. Well…” he smirks a little, considering. “My situation was…a little different. But yes, it’s a therapist’s job to help you find that path, to get started on it.”

He leans back in the chair and smirks at his brother. “I even have a phone you can borrow.”

Rafe frowns at him, confused. “Wait, what? I need a special phone?”

“Yeah, sure,” Victor says, standing up and gesturing to him to follow. “Come on, we keep ours upstairs in the closet.”

“What?”