Chapter 18
Trips
Class on Monday makes my skin itchy. It’s been long enough since I’ve been around people that I’m afraid if I open my mouth, I’ll scream.
Or worse, not be able to scream, the solitude and blank walls having already absorbed all the sound I was capable of.
I make it through my lecture, grateful there isn’t any group work, then follow Falk down the hall, the cacophony making the ringing in my brain worse.
Falk turns on the radio on the drive back, glancing in the mirror to see if I react.
Honestly, I’m not sure how to react right now.
Instead, I let the old-school guitar riffs float over me, struggling to keep myself in my body, both the same and different as when my anger takes over.
But I pick out every shade of orange, yellow, red, and brown I see clinging to the trees we pass, tapping out the beat to the music even if I don’t know it, the leather under my fingertips soft and sun warmed.
Last night was a fucking nightmare, but I made it. The whistleblower got to live, and I didn’t have to beat another man to death with my bare fists.
Wins all around.
Fuck, this shit is hard. But I need Mattie out of this hellhole before Father marries her off to the highest bidder.
Clara’s faith in the plan is strong enough that I can almost imagine a world without the specter of my father hanging over every action, every goddamn choice I’ve ever made, waiting for me to fuck up enough to lock me to him forever.
I might be in a cage, but Clara’s promised me a key if I just sit here long enough. And I have to be a man worthy of her faith in me. Even if staying present as we hit rush hour traffic and our drive slows to a crawl is a battle that doesn’t seem worth winning.
After those first few weeks of shock wore off when we ran, after I got my hand strung back together, Clara proclaimed we needed to learn from each other.
So, while we were all still a wreck physically, we focused on the fine art of grifting, reading people and situations, how to identify fake IDs and forged art, how to access the dark web and use open-source intelligence techniques.
Clara came up with a written code, got herself therapy and came home every week with books for the rest of us to read about recovering from trauma, managing ADHD, or processing rage.
All this while cobbling together the tiniest cash line from Jansen busking and Walker selling his first sketches.
Then, of course, she added more to the agenda.
Climbing, running, swimming, scuba diving, fighting, shooting, motorcycles, anything she could think of that might make or break our chance out of this mess, we taught each other.
She was planning what we would do next. But with the desert sun turning the freckles on my arms into blobs of brown, with my hand still weak and sensitive, with my anger still threatening to drown me, I couldn’t see it.
I do now.
When she sat us down and sketched out the start of the plan, I wasn’t the only one who told her it was full of stupid risks.
It is. So damn full of stupid risks and even stupider contingencies that there’s no way it won’t come together exactly the way she’s imagined.
No more leash, no more threats, no impossible decisions between running with a girl I’ve been falling for since the first time she knocked down my rich boy facade and made me show her the real me, and saving my kid sister from a world that sees her as nothing but a game piece on my father’s board.
The brown, end of autumn leaves cartwheel across the driveway as I roll down my window, the pungent smell reminding me of last night, of the conversation Falk and I had, and I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror.
He’s willing to work with us. Now we have to communicate what we need from him without my father figuring out what we’re up to.
He stops the car at the bottom of the steps, and I swallow back the instinctual disgust at seeing the now clean stones, still not knowing if Jansen is okay.
I’ve had a lot of time to think these last few weeks. Too much time. One thing became crystalline to me though—the guys are more than friends or business partners. They have been more than that for longer than I would have admitted to myself even a few months ago.
There isn’t a word for what we have. Some sort of combination of brother, family, and fellow soldier. Losing any of them would shatter not just me, but the unit.
Part of me must have guessed how intertwined we all were as soon as Clara came crashing into our lives. It’s why I didn’t want her anywhere near them. She could have destroyed us. If things had happened differently, in a different order, if she’d been a different woman, she would have.
And I don’t think any of us would have known how to fight for each other then.
Because none of us had fully realized how connected we were.
Not just by circumstance, or contract, but this nameless love that feels a lot like sitting down on a couch and putting your feet up, releasing the frustrations of the day with a simple exhalation, finally safe to relax, if only for a little bit.
We have each other’s backs. And now Clara has all of ours.
Surprising me, Falk leads me not to my bare prison but turns instead toward the blue room. He squeezes my forearm as I pass him, an overwhelming comfort, his gaze steady.
Clara freezes at the top of a pushup, her hair tied into its familiar pile on top of her head, giant, stained sweatpants pooling from her legs to the ground, the waistband rolled so many times it’s practically a belt around the undershirt she’s wearing with it.
The door clicks shut behind me, the snick of the lock horrifically familiar.
Clara pushes herself to her feet, the long lines of her muscles clear as she tucks a curl back up into the mass at the top of her head. “Hey,” she says, wary enough that I have to wonder what I look like to her right now.
I swallow, not yet able to move, frozen with the anticipation of her touch.
She skirts around the bed, glancing around the room with a twist of her lips. But I’m not able to look at whatever she doesn’t like about her surroundings. I’m too taken by the way she moves, the efficiency of every step, the lack of subterfuge or coercion in her body language.
A woman built for trust and truth, turned into a liar and thief by life.
By me and mine.
By a mother who wanted perfection over honesty, and a father too weak to stand up for her. By an ex who needed a shield to protect him from the righteous fury of the world. And by our need for creative solutions to dark problems, her beautiful face so easily used as a tool to get us what we want.
But here, now, with me, I get the real her. The complete one. Forthright and strong enough to have taken the blows she’s been dealt and turn them into hope.
Her palms bracket my jaw, and still, I can’t move or speak. “Trips?” she whispers.
My hands shake as they find the small of her waist, the warmth of her welcome after the cold that’s seeped into my bones. But it’s not enough, the thin fabric of her undershirt crumpling in my fists. “Clara,” I croak.
Those delicate fingers trace the sides of my neck, and I shiver, tugging her closer, just a step, until the warmth of her tickles my front.
Her hands rest on my chest, and I breathe into her, the slight pressure there forcing my eyes closed as I focus on it.
Another breath, and her head joins her hands, the weight of it leaving goosebumps across my over-sensitized skin.
I want more. I need it. But still, my voice is hard to find, a frustrating mix of hoarse and underutilized. “Touch me,” I manage, the crack in my voice a gunshot in the quiet of the blue room.
Her nod rubs my shirt against my sternum, then her fingers slip under the seam, tracing over my ribs, brushing the hair beneath my belly button before dancing up, slowly, carefully, like she’s afraid of spooking me.
I’m not going anywhere. Never again. I’ve run from her since the beginning.
Even when I ran with her, I ran from her.
But I can’t. Not again. Not anymore. It’d be like trying to run from a piece of myself.
Impossible, farcical, and excruciating. So I force myself to move toward her, tugging her shirt free from her sweats, and over her head, my eyes closed, still focused on every point where our skin touches.
Trailing my fingertips from her wrists to her shoulders, down her sides, up the indent of her spine, her fingers unbuttoning the dress shirt I’d been given this morning, dragging it over my shoulders, my undershirt soon falling to the floor with a barely audible whoosh.
Every touch from her burns in the best way possible, taking the rotten, broken bits of me and turning them into fuel for her fight. Fuel she’ll use to fight for us.
“Look at me,” she whispers, her palms flat against my pecs, the back of her neck so goddamn fragile in my hands.
I force my eyes open, the late afternoon light fading quickly as winter approaches. But it’s like my eyes were made just to see her, the curl of her dark eyelashes, the question written in the corners of her eyes and lips, the slight bump on the bridge of her nose that adds dimension to her face.
She glances over her shoulder, asking about the camera, about how vulnerable I’m willing to be when I know we’re being watched. “I don’t care,” I whisper.
“Then what do you need?” she asks, her voice as quiet as my own.
“You. Just you.”
Her hand twists in her sweats just for a moment, before she takes me by the hand and leads me to the bed, tugging me over with a tumble a second before I kick off my shoes.
Hers fly off the other side, and then she’s lying over my chest, her arms squeezing me tight, something too monumental to be called a hug passing between us.
“I need you, too,” she whispers, her voice muffled by my skin.
I keep my arms low, my palms hot against her skin, not wanting to cage her in. Not right now. “I miss them,” I say. “I didn’t think I would, not like this, but I do. Is Jansen?”
“He’s alive, in hiding.”
My breath catches, the revelation light and heavy on my soul. Alive. Hiding. Broken. Saved. He came for her. They’re always there for her in a way I haven’t been. In a way I want to be.
“I’m sorry. So sorry, Clara. I’ve been so worried about the bad stuff for so long that I didn’t leave space for the good stuff to happen.”
She squeezes me tighter, first one drip then a second against my skin, her tears hidden. “I didn’t understand how bad the bad could be. Not until now, until I lived it. I thought you didn’t care. But you did care, didn’t you?”
“More than I wanted to at the beginning, and later, more than I could keep hidden from you.”
She tilts her head, her chin digging into my chest as she looks up at me. “I get it now.”
“I wish you didn’t.”
“I wish I never had to.”
She slides up my body, my fingers slipping under the elastic of her sports bra, locked against her back. She traces my jaw with her nose, her lips pressing under my ear in a barely present brush. “I miss them too.”
She pulls back, those dark eyes taking in information written across my face that I don’t even know I’m communicating, reading what I think about her confession.
I spent a year simply staying away. Two months of being the only shitty option available to her, never clarifying that if this gets better, if her plan comes off without a hitch, that I want a place by her side permanently.
That I’m willing to share that space with three other men.
I never thought that it would work for me.
I thought I was too greedy, too demanding, too protective to trust the person I care about the most with anybody but myself.
But she’s shown me how it would work right from the start.
She hands out care like it’s candy at a parade, her touches, her laughter, her attention all sprinkled with joy and intention.
Meanwhile, I’ve helped her build the family she wants, even when I thought I wanted nothing to do with it, even when I wanted nothing besides her.
We’re a team. A family—the kind I’ve only ever felt with my sister, but so much more than that.
I’m not responsible for them, not the way I am for Mattie.
We’re all equals, able to hold each other up when one of us falls.
We’re something special. And this girl took us from being good at what we do, good for each other, and pushed us right to the cusp of greatness.
Alone, all I can do is shout into a world that doesn’t even listen to the depth of my pain.
Together, I can share it, ease the burden, grow with her, with my found brothers, into a strong net woven from our frayed ends.
“Thank you,” I say, my thoughts needing form as day fades to night outside the windows.
She lifts a brow, the silence of this place sinking into her bones the longer she’s here.
“For helping me learn how much I care,” I explain.
Her lips press into a line as she blinks repeatedly.
I tuck her head under my chin, finally wrapping my arms around her, holding her close. “If we get out of this, is there a place for me? With you?”
Her answer comes almost before I’ve finished my question. “Of course. There always was, Trips. You just had to decide you wanted it.”
“I do. I want it. Not just a business with all of us as tools to be deployed depending on the situation. I want a family, a real one, with you at the center.”
I can feel her swallow, her breath a little shallow. “Then that’s exactly what we’ll have,” she whispers. “A five-person family.”
“The five of us, a family,” I agree.