Chapter 10
TEN
TWIGGY
I’m going stir crazy, and it’s all Bran Kelly’s fault.
Sitting at my computer now with my back to the man, I shove half a Boston cream in my mouth and try my best to ignore his presence. He sits behind me on the couch, quiet and unobtrusive, yet here.
Watching.
He never stops watching, whether it’s me or the landscape on the other side of the windows that line my small space. I’ve never seen a person with such utter, intent focus, and having it all directed at me is unnerving.
Lifting my hand, I smooth my hair away from the back of my neck, unsure if the prickle of sensation there is from Bran’s steady regard or just an errant hair.
I didn’t sleep last night, images of Bran hovering scant inches above me playing like a movie on the backs of my eyelids. I can still feel his weight pressing me into the mattress, the heaviness of his thighs against mine, and that unmistakable ridge against the juncture of my hips. Craziness.
He should have been too heavy; his solid bulk should have made it difficult to breathe; he should’ve made me want to escape.
Instead, he had stolen my breath for an entirely different reason.
I wanted Bran Kelly.
The idea disconcerted me—for many reasons. He was my cousin’s right hand, deeply ingrained in mob life. This meant he was off-limits.
He was significantly older than me, in his thirties to my twenty-one. I squinted at my computer screen. I wasn’t sure of his exact age…
“How old are you?” I blurted the question without deliberate thought, the sound of it in the quiet room a surprise. Bran doesn’t answer immediately, and I turn to look at him.
“Why?” His expression is guarded.
I turn back to my computer. “If you don’t want to tell me, I can find out on my own, you know.” My fingers fly over the keys.
Bran grunts. “I don’t care if you know I’m thirty-two. I’m just curious why you want to know.”
Thirty-two… I look at the date on his driver’s license displayed on my screen. “…almost thirty-three. Happy birthday to Brandon Finley Kelly on the twenty-fourth of December.”
I feel him rise and come to stand behind my chair. “Cut that shit out.”
“Or what?” I don’t know why I’m compelled to sass him, but there it is. He brings out the best in me.
A big hand slinks in front of me and circles my neck, the fingers tangling in my hair and the thumb stroking a spot beneath my ear that makes me shiver. “Just don’t. If you want to know something, I’ll tell you.” His voice is deeper than usual. Or is that just me?
I nod, swallow against the heat of his palm, and force myself to squeak out a response. “Fair enough.”
Bran’s hand slides slowly away after one more stroke of his thumb, and he returns to his seat on the couch. That was the other thing that kept me off-balance—my physical response to him. It was nothing I’d experienced before, and I didn’t have a clue what to do with it.
There were downsides to being a child prodigy.
I’d gone to college when I was fifteen and graduated when I was seventeen after an accelerated program.
I’d never had the experience of dating my peers, either the brief time I attended the local high school or during the couple of years I spent on a college campus.
Not that any of the guys in either space would’ve been interested in me. As quickly as my brain developed, my body developed with equal slowness. I was flat as a pancake until I hit nineteen and suddenly grew a pair of tits.
Now, I was little more than a brain in a woman’s body that had yet to be tried. I had yet to experience all of those things that normal girls were pros at by the time they hit twenty-one.
I blow an imperceptible breath out and will my response to Bran’s presence to settle. There’s too much working against us to even be thinking about this stuff. Even if we were free to explore this weird something between us, he wouldn’t be interested in a virgin.
Irritated with the direction my thoughts have taken, I open a different tab. “I can’t just pack up all my stuff and take it somewhere else, you know. I need to be here so I can work.”
“I’ll make sure you have everything you need to work.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I’m here to protect you, not reassure you or stroke your ego.”
“Stroke my—!”
A knock on the door saves him from almost certain violence. We both go on instant alert, me tensing in my chair and Bran rising and moving soundlessly to peer through the peephole.
“Try not to scare her,” I say. “She’s mostly sunshine and carbs.”
“She’s married to Brodie,” he says. “She’s seen worse than me.”
I’m not sure I agree. Bran has a very specific kind of presence—like a warning sign shaped like a man.
A knock sounds a second later. Three quick taps and a little singsong, “It’s me, don’t shoot, I brought food.”
“Relax,” I tell Bran. “If Henry’s mastered Cotton’s impression, we’ve already lost.”
I undo the locks and open the door.
Cotton breezes in on a swirl of cold air and cinnamon, cheeks pink, platinum hair a tumble under her beanie. She’s carrying a casserole dish swaddled in a towel like a baby.
“You look like a raccoon someone dunked in coffee,” she says by way of greeting, eyes sweeping over my face. “Have you slept at all?”
“I napped with my eyes open,” I say. “Hi, hello, come in, this smells amazing.”
“It’s French toast casserole,” she says. “Emergency carbs for when serial killers come back to town and men twice your size move into your living room. I figured all you had were donuts and yogurt.”
She looks past me and spots Bran.
“Oh,” she says, blinking. “Wow. You’re…a lot.”
Bran, to his credit, doesn’t take offense. “Kelly,” he says, standing enough to be polite. “Bran. We met a while back.”
“When you helped save my best friend’s entire existence,” she says. “Yeah, I remember. Hi. Welcome back. Please feel free not to break my cousin.”
“I’ll do my best,” he says.
Cotton sets the casserole on my counter and pulls me into a hug. She smells like sugar and baby shampoo and some kind of expensive organic laundry detergent.
My throat tightens unexpectedly.
“Hey,” she murmurs into my hair. “You okay?”
There it is again. God, I hate that question.
“I have a human wall and French toast,” I say. “I’ve been worse.”
She leans back, searching my face. “You know you don’t have to be strong right now, right?”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m just…busy.”
Her eyes soften. “Busy is your coping mechanism.”
“I like my systems,” I say. “Sue me.”
“I’d win,” she says, then nods toward Bran. “How’s he doing?”
“Standing there like a massive tree,” I whisper. “It’s very on-brand.”
As if he hears us—which he probably does; his hearing is freakishly good—Bran moves to the window, scanning the street. He’s careful not to crowd us in the small kitchen, giving Cotton space like he’s had practice fitting himself into rooms that weren’t built for him.
“You feeding him, too?” she asks.
“He’s already had donuts,” I say. “Did you know he likes donuts?”
Cotton’s eyebrows climb. “He does not look like a man who eats donuts.”
“That’s what I said,” I mutter.
Her gaze flicks between us, something speculative glinting there.
“Oh no,” I say. “Do not start with whatever is happening behind your eyes.”
“I’m not starting anything,” she says sweetly. “I’m just saying, if Kael sent a giant to sit on you, at least he sent one with decent bone structure.”
“I hate you,” I say, which is code for please don’t leave.
She squeezes my arm. “You love me. Now feed your bodyguard before he fades into the wallpaper.”
“You cannot fade into anything,” I inform Bran as we move to dish up food. “You’re like a walking violation of negative space.”
“What does that even mean?” he asks.
“It means you’re very…dimensional,” I say. “Stop laughing, Cotton.”
She wheezes into the casserole.
We eat at my tiny table, elbows bumping. Bran takes up half the available air and most of the bench on his side. I perch on the opposite chair. Cotton sits sideways, one leg tucked up, like she’s getting ready to stay until I kick her out.
It should feel crowded and wrong. Instead, for a minute, it feels almost normal.
“Any word on who she was?” Cotton asks quietly, cutting through syrup-soaked bread.
“Not officially,” I say. “Jack’s playing it close. Which is good. The less the peanut gallery knows, the better.”
“You are the peanut gallery,” she points out.
“I’m the gallery’s weird cousin in the back row who gets to eavesdrop,” I say.
Bran’s phone buzzes. He checks it, expression tightening a fraction.
“Brady,” he says, by way of explanation. He texts something back, efficient, then looks at me. “He’s coming up later. Wants to go over some things with you.”
“Can’t wait,” I say.
Cotton reaches for my hand, sticky fingers and all.
“Hey,” she says. “We got you, okay? Me and Brodie and Shy and Gunner and Jack and this very large loaf of man-bread you’ve been assigned. You’re not alone in this.”
Emotion scrapes at my ribs. I swallow hard.
“I know,” I say, because they need to hear it. “I just—if I can do something, I have to.”
She nods. “Doing something doesn’t mean doing it alone.”
Her words land in the same place Bran’s did earlier, like little weights on opposite sides of a scale I’ve been tilting on all my life.
Useful or loved.
Asset or burden.
I don’t know how to be both.
But as Cotton squeezes my hand and Bran checks the window for the third time in an hour, a tiny, treacherous thought slips in anyway.
Maybe I don’t have to pick.
Maybe I get to be the sharpest weapon in the room and the girl somebody refuses to lose.