14. Nora
Chapter Fourteen
NORA
Flynn stood at the kitchen counter, eating cheese like everything was perfectly fine. I had to admit, even though I loathed to do so, my mood was better after my night with Gabriel several days prior.
I hadn’t planned it that way, but it turned out I needed to go to Anchorage for several days to run errands for the resort and pick up some construction materials. We had this idea to build a viewing platform near the main lodge where moose and other wildlife often passed through.
When I heard my brother Grant grumbling about needing to go, I jumped on it. As much as I’d savored my night with Gabriel, I was bordering on panic. Finding an excuse to be out of town for a few days bought me some time to gather myself emotionally.
Unfortunately, that time also freed me to stew over Flynn saying something to Gabriel about us. My mind replayed my conversation with Gabriel the following morning, yet again.
“He told you what?” I’d asked.
Gabriel eyed me, and I hadn’t missed the cautious look in his gaze. “He’s the one who asked me about you. You know I wouldn’t say anything if he hadn’t. I couldn’t exactly lie. He’s my friend, and you’re his sister.”
As I’d stared at him, I felt caught between my conflicting impulses.
All this time, we’d tried to keep our friends-with-benefits arrangement private.
I was the one who’d demanded my family not know about it.
Yet when I’d told Gabriel I wanted more, he was the one who said he didn’t want to screw up his friendship with Flynn.
He’d claimed it was too complicated. That was only one of his excuses.
The other was that he could never be serious.
It just wasn’t something he could do, or so he’d said.
A part of me wanted Gabriel to want to talk to Flynn. For his feelings for me to be so powerful that he had to break down and tell him. Yet my strongly ingrained need for privacy rose up forcefully. The need to control what my brother knew about my personal life.
I’d looked up to Flynn for my entire childhood.
After our mother passed and he came home, I’d been a teenager awash in a confusing jumble of grief and anger.
To have him show up and basically function as a father had been hard on us both.
Both of us could be stubborn. Years had passed since then, and I felt differently.
With maturity and context, I could look back and laugh a little at how much we’d clashed.
Now, we could even joke that I’d been his practice for Cat.
“You’re gonna break that coffee mug if you keep holding on to it that hard.” Flynn’s voice broke into my train of thought.
I glanced at my hand to see my knuckles were white where they curled around the mug.
I lifted my eyes to his and shrugged. I eased the tight curl of my fingers and set the mug on the counter.
I opened my mouth to speak before pausing and glancing around.
The kitchen at the resort was the heartbeat of this place as far as staff went.
At any given moment, any one of our friends or family members could come traipsing through here.
Considering my feathers had been ruffled over Flynn’s intrusion into my privacy, I didn’t want to deal with someone else appearing in the middle of this conversation.
Nothing but quiet reached my ears, so I turned back to Flynn. “Why the hell did you talk to Gabriel about me?”
My brother held my gaze steadily. With a subtle quirk of a brow, he shrugged. “Because I felt like it. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Anger and defensiveness twisted inside my chest. “I can take care of myself, Flynn. I don’t need you interfering in my life.”
“Interfere? What the fuck, Nora? You’re my sister, and Gabriel is my friend. I’m not trying to get in the middle. I’m just not sure I trust him not to hurt you. He already has.”
“He’s one of your closest friends. How can you say you don’t trust him?” I wrapped my arms around my waist, gripping my elbows.
“Oh, I trust him, generally speaking. He’s just not known for making a commitment. To anyone. You haven’t spoken to him in months. Which, I have to say, has been impressive,” he offered dryly.
Unbothered by my anger, he snagged another slice of cheese off the tray sitting on the counter, waiting calmly for my reply.
I hated how calm Flynn was. He was always calm. The only time he wasn’t was when it came to Daphne. I resented his calmness, and I didn’t like admitting it, but a tiny corner of my heart was envious of what he had with Daphne.
As the oldest, Flynn had always seemed removed from the chaos my father created for Grant, Cat, and me.
He was Flynn’s stepfather, and so somehow, Flynn seemed separated from the emotional tumult.
By the time I was old enough to think more clearly about my father, Flynn was off in the Air Force.
Then he reappeared after our mom died, the one stable force in our lives.
Thick in the midst of my grief over her loss, I’d had to deal with my annoyingly calm and steady older brother.
We’d clashed for a while with things finally settling down in the past couple of years.
“I can take care of myself,” I muttered, feeling the heat burning on my cheeks.
“I know you can take care of yourself, Nora,” Flynn returned, still freaking calm. “I’m assuming if your feelings weren’t hurt, you would’ve actually been speaking with Gabriel these last few months. What happened anyway?”
“How do you know anything happened?”
My brother raised his eyes to the ceiling, letting out a slow, controlled breath as he leveled his gaze with mine again.
“I’m not stupid, Nora. Maybe I didn’t pick up on it right away, but I eventually gathered you two had some kind of arrangement.
I didn’t talk with anybody other than Daphne about it because I know how insanely private you are.
I didn’t want it to turn into an argument between us.
Then you stopped talking to him. Now, you’re talking to him again.
Maybe I’m missing most of the details, but I can deduce that something happened. ”
“So what?” I grumbled, annoyed by how perceptive he could be. Although I supposed it didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice something was up with Gabriel and me.
“Just tell me what happened, Nora,” he pressed.
“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, then why the hell did you start this conversation?” Flynn retorted, narrowing his eyes.
“Because I didn’t appreciate you saying something to Gabriel about us, which tells me that you had a conversation with him about it.”
At that moment, as bad luck would have it, my brother Grant came walking in the kitchen from the back hallway. His alert gaze landed on Flynn and me immediately, bouncing between us before he stopped beside Flynn, eyeing me warily.
Grant was a slightly younger version of Flynn. They shared the same dark blond hair and glacial blue eyes. Grant was a little lankier in build and a more easy-going guy than Flynn. He was always quick with a smile and a quip.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, tightening my arms around my waist.
“Uh, okay.”
Flynn, because he was an overbearing ass sometimes, offered, “Nora is pissed at me because I asked Gabriel about them.”
Grant pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Oh,” was all he had to offer in response.
“Don’t you dare talk to Gabriel too,” I said.
Grant glanced back at me. “I wasn’t planning to. I mean, I’ll kick his ass if he hurts you, but otherwise, I’ll leave it be.”
“Oh, my God,” I muttered as I turned and stomped out of the kitchen.
I crossed through the main room at the resort, angling over to the staircase and jogging up it quickly.
I’d come over here for the yoga class. Last summer, we made arrangements for Gemma, a local yoga teacher, to come out once a week to teach a class to the guests.
She also held one for the staff afterward.
I walked along the wide hallway on the upper floor, passing the rows of doors that led into the guest rooms, slowing as I approached the rec room she used for her classes at the end of the hall.
Her soothing voice carried out to me in the hallway. Leaning my back against the wall, I slid my hips down to the floor and rested my forehead on my knees.
“Now, let’s start with one full breath. Breathe in through your nose, come up slowly and bring your breath all the way into your belly. Count to four and hold. One, two, three, four. Now, let your breath go on the count of four, three, two, one,” Gemma said to the class.
I breathed along with her instructions from the hall, trying to ease the anger and frustration spinning inside me. I hated knowing that Flynn was right. Obviously, I’d stopped speaking to Gabriel for a reason. Obviously, Gabriel still had the capacity to hurt me.
Yet I wanted him too much to keep him at bay.
At the sound of light footsteps approaching, I lifted my forehead from my knees, looking down the hall to see Daphne walking toward me.
She stopped in front of me, her perceptive gaze skimming my face quickly before she turned and slid her hips down the wall to sit beside me, mirroring my pose with her knees pulled up. She rested her chin on her hands folded over her knees and angled her face to look at me.
“What’s up?”
Daphne had this way about her. When she first arrived at Walker Adventures as a guest last year, I’d liked her immediately, although she came across as rather buttoned up and prissy, even prim at times.
As I’d gotten to know her, I’d discovered she was fiercely loyal and kind, and she had a silly side that only came out around those who knew her well.
She’d been through her own trial by fire when she lost her son to a rare form of brain cancer when he was only five years old.
In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, she tended to charge at life, and she held those close to her in her embrace and was fiercely protective.