36. Esperr
ESPERR
It’s been two days since I went back to work.
Two days of being thrown back into early mornings, sore feet, and that particular exhaustion that comes from being on your feet for more than twelve hours straight after a week of doing absolutely nothing.
The city picked itself back up from the storm faster than I expected, like everyone decided the second the roads cleared that they’d been still long enough and needed their morning coffee.
I sit on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand and pull up Oliver’s name.
Oliver calls every few days to make sure I’m breathing and that no one has found me. I once called it hovering, but he said it was more like the habit of someone who has spent years making sure the people he’s responsible for stay that way—alive, in one piece, and off of certain radars.
The fact that I haven’t heard from him in a few days has been sitting at the back of my mind.
I press call, not giving myself a chance to talk much out of it.
Four rings, and then I’m sent to voicemail.
My brows pull together, and I fall back onto my bed, staring at the ceiling.
It’s probably nothing—Oliver has a life outside of me, a whole operation he runs, and people who need him in ways that have nothing to do with checking on a girl hiding in plain sight.
Missing one check in doesn’t mean anything.
I wait for the beep and then freeze the moment it does.
Clearing my throat, I try again, “h–hey, ugh, it’s just me. I was just um… well, checking in. Give me a call when you get a chance.”
I hang up and drop my phone next to me.
That voicemail was terrible, and I hate it.
Oliver is fine; he’s busy—that’s normal, people get busy.
And what’s worse is I can feel Zyran staring at me from the doorway.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say rather too quickly.
I hear him laugh, but I don’t even need that to know he heard exactly how unconvincing that was. The bed shifts as he drops his weight and lies down beside me.
“Would you like to try that again?”
Despite myself, I still smile and look over at him lying there, hands folded on his stomach, and something about the absurdity of it loosens the knots in my chest just enough that I can breathe normally again.
“Oliver is my best friend,” I sigh, and look back at the ceiling.
“I know that sounds simple, but it’s… it’s hard to explain what he actually is to me.
He’s been there for me through everything, and we do check-ins, usually once a week, sometimes more, but at the very least once a week.
And he didn’t answer, which is—” I stop, feeling the emotions starting to bubble up and clog my throat.
“I mean people get busy… that’s a normal thing that happens. ”
“It is,” Zyran agrees.
“So it’s probably fine,” I whisper.
“Probably, but if you’re worried, then we can look into it.”
My head snaps to his, finding him already looking at me, and I’m not surprised.
“Let me…let me try him again tomorrow before we go down a rabbit hole.”
He nods once, and with that, I push off the bed and stand, glancing down at myself. I need to focus on something else, anything that’s not Oliver, and right away I’m looking at the fact that I’m not in leggings and a t-shirt like normal.
Jeans that have two holes over the knees, the bottoms rolled a few times, with my usual converse, and a tank top and Zyran’s flannel. I gave up the messy bun and put half of my hair back in a clip—it feels different. And I don’t do well with different things.
I glance back up at him, biting my bottom lip. “Is this okay? For your family, I mean?” I gesture to myself. “I didn’t know what the—I didn’t know what to wear to meet a house full of—” I stop, blowing out a breath. “Is this okay?”
Zyran sighs and then climbs to his feet, crosses the room, and stops in front of me. He stares me down the entire time, his eyes darkening with ease of breath.
“Don’t,” he growls. “Whatever you were about to say about it not being enough, or them not liking you or any of that—don’t.”
My mouth clamps shut, and he reaches out, taking my chin between his fingers, tilting my face up slightly, making sure I’m looking at him and not the floor or anywhere else but at him. He’s making sure I’m not avoiding this.
“You are not walking into that house as anything other than exactly who you are,” he says, bending down slightly. “And who you are is more than my brothers deserve to be in the same room with.” his thumb moves along my jaw once. “You understand me?”
I smile—the small parts of me that are not confident only show their ass at the most inconvenient times.
“Yeah,” I whisper, and turn my head to kiss his thumb.
“Good.” He leans down, kissing my forehead. “Let’s go.”
I’ve been watching it change for the last twenty minutes, the city thinning out gradually until the streets slowly start to become quieter. The houses start to sit back further from the road, and then eventually there aren’t any, and it’s just trees on both sides.
It feels like almost every five minutes I’m checking the time until we are near an hour later and I can’t help myself any longer.
“How far out are they?” I ask, changing positions in the truck for the billionth time.
“We’re almost there.”
I nod and look back out the window.
The trees have gotten thicker on both sides, and the road has narrowed, and everything suddenly feels much further from the city than the drive time would suggest.
“Did you grow up out here?” I ask, as my thumb begins to pick at the skin surrounding my nail.
“No.” He glances at me, eyes peering down before he reaches across and grabs my hand, squeezing it. “We built this place maybe ten years ago; we needed somewhere that made sense for all of us, and that way we could stay together.”
“Makes sense…”
“Private, enough land for Slater, and enough space for Rhys and his computers, and enough space between us that we didn’t feel like we were sitting on top of each other.” he shrugs a shoulder, running his thumb over my knuckles. “We didn’t exactly grow up somewhere that felt like home.”
I look at him, realizing that I actually had no idea how he grew up. How did he get into killing people for money? Are these his actual brothers? Or is this more like brothers-in-arms type of shit?
“Your parents?” I blurt out.
“Uh, they’re not in the picture. But that’s kind of a long story,” he mutters, and the way he says it tells me it’s a door that he’s not ready to open just yet.
“Are they actually your brothers? I mean, Cyran, sure, cause twin and all that… but uh, are they blood?”
“Yeah, they’re all blood. It’s Slater, man’s thirty-nine; Raiden, at thirty-five; Rhys, at thirty-three; and Cyran and me. He’s five minutes older.”
“Ahhh,” I smile, nodding my head. “So you’re the baby; you know, weirdly, I see it. And uh, the work?” I turn in my seat slightly to face him, holding his hand in my lap. “How does someone even—” I stop, trying to find a way to ask that doesn’t sound like an accusation.
“End up doing what I do?” he finishes, peering at me from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah.”
He’s quiet for a moment, hand tightening on the wheel before he slows down.
“When you grow up without anyone looking out for you, you figure out pretty fast what you’re good at,” he sighs.
“And what I was good at was making problems go away. Slater was the first one to…go into that side of business, and well, the rest of us sort of just followed.”
“Makes sense, a family business.”
He almost smiles, and then he’s turning left onto a dirt road, and a large gate comes into view through the trees. Just as we approach, the thing swings open and Zyran drives through without even stopping.
The drive winds through the trees for longer than I expect, and the house stays hidden until the last moment, and then it just appears.
I don’t say anything for a second—it’s big, but not in a showy way, not the kind of big like they’re trying to prove something.
But more like a farmhouse sort of way, with dark wood and river stone, a wide front porch with a swing sitting between the two bay windows, and tall windows that catch the light.
Wow, it’s beautiful. A chimney rises up the roofline, smoke curling out of it into the cold air.
The trees sit close on either side, and the house appears in the middle of them like it grew there, like it was always going to be exactly here.
Zyran pulls up in front of the house and cuts the engine, all while I sit there looking at the house through the windshield.
“This… this is not what I pictured,” I mutter.
“What did you picture?”
I blow out a breath. “I don’t know, something darker… definitely not this.”
He looks at the house, frowning a bit. “Raiden picked the paint.”
I turn and stare at him. “Raiden?”
“That man has opinions about colors, and yeah, just don’t bring it up.”
I nod, and then Zyran’s out of the truck, rounding the front before pulling my door open and helping me out. He leads the way through the freshly shoveled snow walkway up to the front porch.
The moment the door swings open, the smell of something cooking reaches me—garlic and something sweet, honey, maybe. I don’t know, I can barely cook myself.
My stomach responds immediately, and it’s loud enough that Zyran glances back over his shoulder at me.
“Come on, let’s see if Raiden’s got any cooking done.”
The living room is the first thing I see—it’s large and open with a sectional that wraps most of the far wall, big enough that I find myself counting the seats out of habit.
Ten to be exact. Two matching chairs are off to the right, a coffee table with a couple of mugs on it that nobody bothered to take to the kitchen, and a TV on the wall.
Stairs sit along the far left going up and are open and wide enough that two people could walk side by side without touching.
It looks like somewhere people actually live, not like it’s for show.
I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does.