Chapter 15
JOSIE
Three hours and several hundred dollars later, we’re headed back up to the cabin. Lanie is waiting for us at the front door, bouncing excitedly as she peppers her “auntie” and “uncles” about what they brought her from town.
Arms laden with bags, Gray stops and raises a brow at little Lanie. “You know you don’t get a treat every time someone goes into town, little girl.”
“Since when?” Lanie shoots back, her tone full of sass.
Gray blinks, but I catch the way her lips twitch before she manages to wrestle her stern expression back into place. “I swear your Daddy doesn’t spank you enough. Keep it up and I’ll send you up to my bedroom for my hairbrush.”
My bottom clenches at the memory of the heavy wooden brush cracking against my bare skin. But Lanie doesn’t even flinch. If anything, she only grins wider.
“Yeah, yeah. So what did you bring me?”
Snorting out a laugh, Gray shakes her head and turns to head toward the kitchen. “Axel! Your little runaway needs her bottom reddened!”
Lanie lets out a shocked gasp. “Auntie Gray!”
A moment later, Axel steps into the living room, seemingly filling the space with his bulk as he crosses his arms and glares down at his babygirl. “What have you gotten up to now, little girl?”
“Nothing! Auntie Gray is just a big meanie-head!”
Sighing, Axel scrubs a hand over his beard. “Why don’t you take Josie upstairs to your nursery and play for a bit? Maybe that way you’ll be able to go more than ten minutes without a spanking.”
Something tells me it would take an act of God to accomplish that, but Lanie is already grabbing my hand, dragging me toward the stairs.
“Stop right there.”
At the sound of my Daddy’s voice, we both stop and turn, though Lanie does so with such an exaggerated sigh I can’t help but giggle.
“What is it now?” Lanie whines, glaring daggers at my Daddy who glares right back.
“You two are to go straight up to your nursery and stay there until a grownup comes to get you. And if you need to potty, just call for me or Uncle Axel. We’ll have the baby monitor so we’ll be able to hear if you need us.”
Heat floods my face. “We aren’t babies.”
Daddy turns his glare on me. “You absolutely are. And if you can’t promise to be good and follow the rules on your own, then you can sit your butts right down here and play in the living room instead.”
Lanie tugs on my hand. “We’ll be good, Uncle Bram, promise!”
I want to argue. Stand my ground and insist I’m not a fucking child, despite their insistence on treating me like one.
But not only is Lanie all but dragging me toward the stairs, I have my own plans to consider. Convincing not just my Daddy, but the rest of the siblings that I’m perfectly content with my new life so they will, maybe, let their guard down enough for me to escape.
The promise of my eventual freedom is enough to give me the strength to nod in agreement. “Okay, Daddy.”
My deceit is rewarded with a wide smile. “Good girl. Go have fun with Lanie and Daddy will come check on you in a bit.”
I allow myself to be pulled up the stairs to where the bedrooms are.
And for the first time, I really notice my surroundings.
There are basically two wings on either side of the stairs, where I assume everyone’s bedrooms are.
If I’m actually going to plan an escape, it would be a good idea to get a layout of the house from top to bottom.
To know who sleeps in which rooms, where any emergency exits are.
Because surely a house this size had more than just two ways in and out in the event of a fire, right?
I don’t know, and not knowing is what gets people caught. So when Lanie pulls me into her nursery and asks “What do you want to play?” I know exactly what my answer is going to be.
“How about hide and seek?”
Lanie’s blue eyes light up so brightly, I almost feel bad for including her in my trickery. “Okay! Um, there’s not a whole lot of places to hide in here, but we can still play.”
I have no intention of staying in her room, but she doesn’t need to know that. The longer it takes anyone to come looking for me, the better. “That’s okay, it will still be fun! Can I hide first?”
“Okay! I’ll count to twenty.”
“Better make it sixty, just to be sure.” A minute isn’t enough time to explore, but hopefully she’ll waste another ten minutes or so searching her room for me.
Giggling, Lanie nods and turns away to cover her eyes. “One… two…”
With her occupied, I hurry out of the nursery and through what I assume is Axel’s bedroom to the hallway.
Peeking out of the bedroom door, I check to make sure the coast is clear before sneaking down to the next room.
It’s set up much like Axel’s and Daddy’s, at least what I remember through the blur of the last forty-eight hours or so, including the attached nursery.
A peek out the window proves it would be too dangerous of a drop to risk, even with the snow, so I immediately reject it as an option.
There’s another bedroom with an attached nursery on the opposite side, though the layout is slightly different. But another check out the window shows I’d be worse than foolish to attempt making a jump for it.
As soon as I walk into the last bedroom in this wing, I recognize Gray’s style, though it’s changed a lot from when we were kids. The one thing that hasn’t changed, it seems, is her love of canopy beds and the ocean, if the blues and greens covering her bed and other surfaces are anything to go by.
A large silver picture frame catches my attention and I wander over to pick up the photo of Gray’s parents on their wedding day. Emotion wells in my chest, so huge and heavy I think it might smother me. In the photo, they’re exactly as I remember them. Bright and happy and so fucking full of life.
What must it have been like for Gray to watch them being murdered right in front of her eyes?
To be sixteen and on the run with six equally terrified older brothers, unsure if they’d ever be able to stop looking over their shoulders, waiting for a man they’d counted on for protection to come find them?
I mourned them, yes, but I was never scared. Never in fear that my own life might be in danger, never worried about who I could trust from one moment to the next.
“Josie!”
Daddy’s voice calling my name jolts me out of my contemplation and I drop the picture frame with a clatter.
“Josephine Elise! Come out here, right now, or you won’t sit comfortably for a week, little girl!”
Fuck.
Panic grips me and I make a dive for Gray’s bed, wiggling beneath the frame and pressing myself as tightly against the floor as I can manage.
I am, on some level, aware that they are likely to find me here no matter how well I hide.
But I have to at least try. Maybe they’ll miss me for now and I can sneak out of Gray’s room and back into Lanie’s nursery and convince them I was hiding there the whole time.
Yeah, right.
As I’m grappling with whether to just show myself or not, the bedroom door swings open and a pair of feet covered in thick socks appear right in my field of vision.
Suddenly I’m that girl in every kidnapping movie, slamming my hands over my mouth and nose to smother the sound of my frenetic breathing, praying my would-be captors won’t hear me.
I watch the sock-covered feet move, slowly crossing the room to open a closet, checking here and there. Then they disappear into what I assume must be another nursery and I realize I might actually have a chance to escape unnoticed.
Moving as quickly as I dare while trying to remain as silent as possible, I wiggle out from under the bed, hope beating painful wings at my chest as I stumble to my feet.
But just when I’m a few feet from the door, a hand wraps around my arm, jerking me backward. And I find myself staring up into my former best friend’s dark, furious eyes.
“What the hell, Josie? You’re supposed to be in Lanie’s nursery. What are you doing in my room?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. “We-we were playing hide and seek.”
Her thunderous expression softens somewhat and instead of fearsome Auntie Gray, I see a glimpse of the girl I grew up with. The girl who used to be right beside me, making trouble, and more often than not leading the charge.
That same hope from before sparks inside me and I cling to it with everything I have. “Please, Gracie. Help me sneak back to Lanie’s room before he notices. I swear I won’t tell a soul.”
I can tell she’s wavering when her gaze darts toward her bedroom door and back to mine. “I really shouldn’t, Josie.”
“Please? For old times’ sake?”
It’s sneaky and underhanded, but I can’t find it in me to feel guilty about it, given everything she and her brothers have put me through.
“I don’t know…”
But before I can push any harder, the door to her room flies open and Daddy steps inside, his furious expression harsh and unyielding.
“There you are, little girl. We’ve been looking for you.”
Bram
Relief floods me at the sight of my sister holding my naughty babygirl by the arm. Everything in me wants to run to her, to scoop her up in my arms and squeeze.
But I force myself to stop in front of them and pin her with a stern look instead. “Where are you supposed to be right now, little girl?”
Eyes downcast, she shrugs, and I have to fight not to smile at how fucking cute she is. Cute or not, she broke the rules and I can’t just let that go. “Look at me, Josephine.”
She huffs out a breath, a clear indication she’s not happy about her circumstances, but she does as she’s told, peering up at me through her lashes. “Yes, Daddy?”
Fuck me, she’s adorable. “Where were you told to stay when you came upstairs, Josephine Elise?”
“In Lanie’s nursery. But we were just playing hide and seek! We weren’t being naughty!”
I can almost understand her logic. Almost. “Be that as it may, you were given very clear instructions to stay in one place and you broke the rules, so now you and Lanie are both getting your bottoms spanked.”
“No!” Panic flares in Josie’s eyes. “Daddy, no, that’s not fair! Lanie didn’t know I was gonna sneak out!”
“Sneak out?” I parrot back, raising my brow at her. “So you knew you were doing something naughty and you did it anyway.”
I had been holding out some hope that she’d simply gotten carried away with their game. But one look at her face tells me that no, that wasn’t the case at all. She was up to something, though I’m still not sure exactly what.
“Um, well, it sounds bad when you put it that way…”
“It sounds bad, because it was very naughty.” Glancing over, I catch Gray’s unusually sympathetic expression and my stomach twists.
“They were just playing a game, Bram. Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on them.”
Fuck. She got in Gray’s head already.
It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to Gray’s position. She’s younger than Josie and when they were kids, they were as close as sisters. Closer, even. I can imagine it’s difficult now for her to step into that Auntie role.
But having multiple Little girls underfoot will be absolute chaos if we aren’t all on the same page. “Colt!” I call over my shoulder without taking my eyes off my naughty babygirl and her reluctant auntie. “She’s in here!”
My twin appears in the doorway, the same relief I felt a moment ago on his face. “Thank god. Josie, we were so worried about you, sweetheart.”
“Take Josie and Lanie both downstairs and put them in the corner to wait for us. I need to talk to Gray.”
“Daddy, please.” Josie’s bottom lip trembles and fuck me if I’m not tempted to give into that precious pout. “Lanie didn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t deserve to get spanked.”
“Then you can spend your time in the corner thinking about how your actions affect others. Go, Josephine, before I decide you need your bottom paddled before and after your corner time.”
She shoots me a furious glare, but she doesn’t fight Colt when he grips her arm to take her downstairs. With them out of earshot, I turn my attention on my sister.
“You can’t do this, Gray. I know you’ve missed her and I know this is a weird-as- fuck situation. But you can’t play favorites with her.”
Gray’s expression hardens. “I’m not playing favorites. You’re just being unreasonable.”
“Really? So if it were Lanie we’d caught out of her nursery and hiding out in your bedroom, you’re telling me you wouldn’t have already blistered her bottom with your hairbrush before Axel even got his hands on her?”
A muscle in her jaw jumps, but then she sighs, her shoulders falling forward. “I hate it when you’re right.”
Some of the knots in my stomach loosen and I can’t help but grin. “You’d think you’d be used to it by now.”
Rolling her eyes, she plants a hand on my shoulder and gives me a hard shove. “Fuck off, Bram.”
I take a moment to enjoy our return to our usual sibling bickering before sobering. “Seriously, Gray. We both know if it had been Lanie rather than Josie, you would be reacting very differently and we can’t have that.”
Mouth twisting up in a pained grimace, she nods. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have contradicted you like that in front of her.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. But I think I know how to fix it.”