He blanched. “I was coming back for you!” His eyes swung to Cam’s. “I was going back for her. I thought if she was missing for a few hours, and I found her…” He shook his head. “I was fourteen! I was a stupid kid!”

“She was nine!” Cam shouted, shoving Xander harder against the frame. “Nine! And you left her there bleeding and hurt so you could go back and rescue her? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“She was fine! See, she’s fine!”

“Because I found her! Because I slid down fifty feet of a mine shaft and then pushed her up every foot of it to get her out. She’s fine because of me!” Veins bulged in Cam’s neck, and for the first time, I worried that he might really kill Xander.

“I would have found her if you hadn’t ripped the headlamp off my head and run!” Xander shouted. “You ruined it. You ruin everything.”

Cam pushed off Xander, putting a foot of space between them, and Gideon relaxed next to me. “This is what you really are? Under all the polish and the PR, you’re just a pile of shit.” Cam shook his head. “I thought you were the best of us. You were the golden boy. You were going to change the world, Xander. That’s why I took the fall for you that night when you set the bunkhouse on fire.”

There was a collective gasp, and my heart broke. The very thing he’d been condemned for in this town hadn’t even been his sin. He’d taken it from his brother.

“That’s not—”

“Shut up! I saw you! I couldn’t figure out what you were doing with the hose from the mine’s water tank until I saw you throw the torch.”

My head felt light, and I swayed on my feet.

“No one was in there! Everyone was outside at the bonfire.” His eyes darted toward me. “At least they were supposed to be.”

“So, what? You were just going to put the fire out and call yourself a hero?” Cam shouted. “Instead you sat there. Holy shit. You watched Sully crawl out. You watched me go in. You stood there the whole time, didn’t you?”

Xander swallowed. “Look, it caught so much faster than it was supposed to.”

“You let me take the blame for it! You watched them pin it on me, and then you used it against me in Dad’s case.” Cam shook his head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Don’t hit him. Don’t hit him. He wouldn’t get away with it, not with the crowd and the cameras.