Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
TWIGGY
As grand as it is, I know Cotton’s house will smell like soup and laundry and crayons. It’ll smell like home.
Bran opens the truck door for me, and I start to stomp up the front steps like I’m not relieved to be here.
I am, though. I also refuse to admit it out loud.
A patch of black ice on the bottom step catches me off guard, and I flail, flapping my arms and bending at the waist until I manage to catch myself.
“Please tell me you’re not going to try to carry me,” I warn him when he comes around to my side, hands outstretched.
He arches a brow. “You going to wipe out on purpose just to prove a point?”
“I’m not that dumb,” I say. “But statistically speaking, stairs plus ice plus my track record is a risky combo. I don’t need to break both our necks.”
He huffs. “Please.”
He lifts me like I weigh no more than a toothpick and settles me against his chest. My legs go around his waist automatically, and my hands clutch at his shoulders. “Bran…”
“Hush.” Eyes focused over my shoulder, he walks up the porch steps.
Cotton must have been watching from the window, because the door flies open before we can knock.
“Savvi’s made soup,” she announces. “Shoes off, please, or she’ll kill you. I don’t think I want to know what this is.”
She’s barefoot, hair in a messy bun, leggings and an oversized sweater that says NOBODY LIKES A HALF-ASSED JINGLER.
I shove against Bran’s chest, and he lets me slide down. Am I imagining it, or is there some reluctance in how his grip loosens?
Dismissing that thought, I roll my eyes. “You know you don’t have to try to mom me, right?”
“Somebody does,” Cotton says. “You’re pretty damn feral. Come inside.”
Bran stretches in the foyer, his henley pulling taut across his shoulders. Catching my eye, he smiles a little, as if to say, “finally.”
I have to grin. Cotton’s family estate, a sprawling equestrian farm, is one of the few places the poor man doesn’t have to try to physically shrink himself to avoid knocking into walls and doorways. He probably feels like he can finally breathe.
“Kitchen,” Cotton directs, already padding away. “We have soup, grilled cheese, and about eight million cookies Saoirse decorated like crime scenes.”
“On brand,” I mutter, following.
The Gallagher kitchen is all warm wood and marble and miles of countertop. Savvi, their longtime housekeeper, is busy pulling a stack of plates from a cabinet.
There’s a crock pot on the one, a giant pot on the stove, and a tray of cookies iced within an inch of their lives. Three of them are definitely supposed to be snowmen. One looks like a penis, and two look like accidental autopsy photos.
“Saoirse has your flair for drama,” I tell her.
“She has her father’s complete lack of artistic restraint,” Cotton corrects. “Sit.”
She points me to a stool at the island like she’s seating a toddler. I plop down and pull my laptop bag onto my lap out of habit. Bran gravitates to the opposite side of the island, standing at first like he doesn’t dare commit to furniture that might break under his glower.
Cotton notices and pats the nearest chair. “It’s structurally sound. Brodie sits in it all the time.”
“I’m good,” Bran says.
“You are absolutely not hovering in the kitchen like an ominous gargoyle,” Savvi says. “Sit.”
To my surprise, he obeys.
He lowers himself carefully into the chair and somehow manages not to make it squeak.
Cotton ladles beef-and-vegetable into bowls and slides one to each of us, then plunks down a plate of grilled cheese triangles between me and Bran. It’s disconcerting, watching a man built like a battering ram hold a mug of hot soup in both hands like he’s afraid it’ll break.
“Eat,” she says. “Then you can obsess over murder again. Preferably in that order.”
“Murder is not the obsession,” I say. “Preventing murder is the obsession. Completely different vibe.”
“Call it whatever you want,” she says. “Your brain still forgets your stomach exists if you don’t force-feed it.”
She’s not wrong.
I dip a grilled cheese triangle into the soup. The first bite is hot and salty and comforting in a way that makes my chest ache.
Bran tears his sandwich in half like he’s testing the structural integrity of that, too, then eats it in one bite. Cheese strings. Strong hands. Way too much for my overstimulated brain to process.
“So,” Cotton says, sliding onto the stool beside me. “You and Bran.”
I almost choke. “What about me and Bran?”
She flicks her gaze between us. “Big, broody, Kael’s favorite wrecking ball. Tiny, over-caffeinated raccoon. Forced proximity. Emotional danger. I read books, Gentry.”
“This is real life,” I say. “Not one of your smutty paperbacks.”
Her eyes sparkle. “First of all, you should be so lucky. Second, you can’t pretend this isn’t at least a little bit tropey. He literally carried you over ice earlier.”
“Oh, my God. He was making sure I didn’t break something, so Kael didn’t have to break something of his!”
“This is true,” Bran says.
“Mmhmm.”
Bran lifts his head. “You know I can hear you, right?”
“You were supposed to,” Cotton says. “Maybe if I say it out loud enough, you two will have some cathartic ‘we could die tomorrow’ moment and make my life more interesting.”
“Absolutely not,” I say at the same time he says, “Not happening.”
Our eyes meet.
There’s a beat of silence while we apparently both register that we answered in perfect sync.
Cotton clutches her chest. “Oh no. It’s worse than I thought. You’re already in the banter-bicker phase.”
“We are in the ‘he is here to annoy me and occasionally keep me from face-planting’ phase,” I say.
Bran clears his throat. “We are not in anything. I’m here to keep you alive, and that’s it.”
“There,” I say, pointing my spoon at him. “That. That’s his whole personality. Dour. Boring. And he’s old.”
Cotton leans her chin on her hand, studying him. “You don’t flirt much, do you?”
He blinks. “I’m not fecking old! And I didn’t realize flirting was part of the job description.”
“It’s not,” I say quickly.
“It could be,” Cotton muses.
“Eat your soup,” I tell her.
She grins and takes an exaggerated bite.
The thing is, none of this is flirting. Not really. It’s deflection. Cotton’s teasing, my sarcasm, Bran’s stoic non-reacting—collectively, it’s us building a wall around the fact that a man who likes burying women is typing pet names at me from somewhere we can’t see.
It helps. A little.
“Where’s Saoirse?” I ask, partly for the distraction.
“Preschool,” Cotton says. “Brodie had to fly out to Philly to meet with Kael over something and will be back later this evening. He said to remind you that if you do anything even remotely dumb, he will personally come drag you to his station and handcuff you to a chair.”
“He can get in line,” Bran mutters.
Cotton cocks her head at him. “You two would get along. You have the same ‘I break things for a living and feel emotions reluctantly’ energy.”
“Fantastic,” he says.
She rolls her eyes like she expected that.
We eat. The soup disappears faster than I want it to. Warmth blooms in my stomach, pushing back the jitter.
My phone buzzes on the island, sending reflex and adrenaline jolting through me before I see the screen.
Not Nightjar.
Shiloh: just checking on my favorite pixie
Me: I’m good, with Cotton
Me: and Bran
Shiloh: [eyeball emoji]
Me: please don’t start.
Me: gotta go
Cotton pats my arm. “People worry about you. That’s a good thing.”
“It’s a distracting thing,” I say. “We have enough on our plate without me babysitting my friends’ anxiety.”
Cotton looks like she wants to argue. She doesn’t. She just squeezes my wrist once and then stands to rinse bowls.
Bran watches all of this quietly, eyes moving from my face to the phone to Cotton and back again.
“What?” I ask.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Just…adjusting.”
“To what?”
He gestures vaguely around the kitchen. “To the fact that you come with people. Most of the clients I’ve dealt with are pretty isolated. By design. Easier to guard one person than a whole ecosystem.”
“You say ecosystem like I’m a swamp,” I say.
“A very loud swamp,” he says.
“Rude.”
His mouth curves, just a little. The almost-smile does things to my insides I do not want to analyze.
Cotton claps her hands once. “All right. Logistics. Bran, you’re staying?”
He nods. “If it’s not a problem. You’re more secure out here, and there’s more space.”
“Perfect,” she says. “I’ll get you set up in the guest room. Twiggy, I know you’re going to want computer access, so I already set you up in the office. It has a couch you can sack out on when you need a nap.”
“You did all that in the ten minutes we were driving over?” I ask.
She flips her hair. “I’m an anxious over-prepper. It’s my spiritual gift.”
Something tight in my chest loosens a notch.
“Thanks,” I say, and I mean it in a thousand ways.
She smiles, soft. “Go work. Before you implode.”
Cotton’s office used to be a guest bedroom. Now it looks like something out of a Southern living spread for people with too much money and not enough things to spend it on.
One wall is all built-ins—dark wood shelves lined with leather-bound ledgers, framed photos of horses mid-flight over fences, a few crystal trophies catching the afternoon light.
Another wall is floor-to-ceiling corkboard in sleek brass frames, covered in color-coded calendars and mind-maps that make my heart beat faster in the best way.
There’s a wide window overlooking one of the side paddocks, sheer curtains softening the view.
A heavy antique desk sits under it, polished to a shine.
Opposite that, a deep, overstuffed sofa with navy velvet throw pillows and a folded knit blanket waits under a brass reading lamp—Cotton’s “if you don’t nap I’ll kill you” solution, I’m sure.