Venture Untamed (The Venture Books) by R.H. Russell

come with us?”
    “Grace doesn’t want to baby-sit me.”
    Justice’s chiseled features softened. “Grace loves you.”  
    “So let’s keep it that way. You’re supposed to take her out. And not with your little brother.”
    “You’re not so little anymore, and I’ve missed too much.”
    Venture turned away and began rummaging in the cupboard. He’d prefer a fight with Justice to this kind of talk. But Justice let the silence hang there, until Venture had to give in and say, “Too much of what?”
    “You being little.”  
    Venture raised his head up, glanced at his brother, then plunked a dented tin cup, plate, and knife on the table. “You’ve done exactly what Mom would’ve wanted you to do. And I’m doing fine. I got five years of tutoring. Who in our family could ever say that?”
    “I know the Fieldstones have been good to you, and I’m thankful for that. But you’re my family. I don’t ever want you to feel like you’re not. Me getting married, having Tory, that didn’t change that.”
    Venture took a step closer to Justice, thought about putting an arm around him, then shrugged instead. “I know that.”
    Justice would always regret not being there at the worst of times. The unspoken guilt carved a line in his forehead that only ever appeared when he was talking to Venture about the past. There was nothing you could have done , Venture wanted to say. Nothing anyone could have done . But the words stuck in his throat, and a part of him, a part he’d tried to bury under reason, still popped up from under a heap of common sense and said that those words were not true at all, that someone could have done something, that he, Venture, could have done something.
    “Justice,” he finally managed to say, “I know you love me.”

CHAPTER NINE

    Venture barely heard Justice knock on the wall next to his curtained-off nook and call, “You up, buddy?” as he did every weekday before leaving for work.  
    Venture answered with his usual, “Yup,” but then slipped right back into slumber.
    He felt a jolt, realized Justice had whacked the back of his head with the flat of his hand. His eyes snapped open. Justice tugged him by the twisted blankets, which Venture had fitfully thrown off and pulled back on countless times, owing to the conflict between the growing heat of the summer morning and his habitual inability to sleep without being at least partially wrapped up. Justice’s yank on the tangled mess of quilt and sweaty feet and rumpled hair sent him tumbling in a heap onto the groaning, dusty wood plank floor.
    “Justice!” Grace said. “What are you doing to him?”
    “Up now?”
    “Yeah, yeah, I’m up, all right?” He moaned, pushed himself up, and unwound the bedclothes from his sluggish limbs.
    “It’s an hour past sunrise! I have to go, and you’re going to get a thrashing.”
    “Oh, no.”
    He’d overslept more than half an hour. He’d tossed and turned all night thinking about Jade, and then fallen asleep just before dawn. He would have to do without breakfast now, and still he’d be late. He rushed to put his clothes on, grab the worn bag Grace shoved at him, and run, rather than walk, the mile-and-a-half down the hillside to training.
    Venture reached Beamer’s in record speed, sweating and clutching his side. Warm-ups were well underway. He shouldered the door to the training room open, keeping his eyes down. He set his bag down as quickly and quietly as possible, stuffed his pendant inside it, and brushed the dirt off his bare feet, then rubbed hurriedly with a towel at the stubborn bits clinging to the moisture under his toes.
    Venture knew what was required of him. He began doing push-ups, all the way down and all the way up, his back perfectly straight. Fifty push-ups for every exercise he’d missed. Altogether, two hundred. Few men could even claim to be able to do two hundred push-ups without stopping; fewer could actually perform the task to Beamer’s standards.