Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
THANE
Opening my eyes is harder than the leg day my trainer, Ivan, put me through last week, and my throat burns like the one time I allowed Rafe to get me drunk in college. After throwing up in my trash bin, I never did anything in excess again.
“How are you feeling?”
Rolling my head to the left, I blink a vision into focus. Lottie? What the hell is she doing here?
I glance down at myself in a paper gown that’s partially covered by a blanket made of sandpaper with a pillow lying across my lap hiding an unfortunate erection, then around the room I don’t recognize.
“We had to bring you to the clinic. Rafe couldn’t find your EpiPen, and the hospital was too far, but Dr. Diggle took good care of you. They, uh, had to pump your stomach and give you epinephrine, but he said you’ll be fine.”
The memory of a squat, smiling woman shoving food into my mouth makes me groan.
“I want to assure you the Scuttlebutts have alerted the entire town that you’re allergic to peanuts, so that will never, ever happen again. Poor Mrs. Perez is beside herself.”
Poor. Mrs. Perez.
My insides have been twisted around and put back sideways, but yes, poor Mrs. Perez.
She really should learn not to stick her fingers in strangers’ mouths.
Would Rafe say that was sarcasm? I’m pretty sure I nailed it.
“K—Kara?” I ask. My throat feels as though it went through a cheese grater.
“She’s at home with Rafe. He’s really very good with her, by the way. He tells me you’ve been friends since college. Which is funny because I didn’t even know you had any friends. There’s nothing online, and you didn’t indicate any friends when we met. You know, briefly at my nanny match event. Or in any of the messages since. Please don’t sue me.” Her words are one long run-on sentence that I struggle to follow.
“Why would I sue you?” Maybe I’m forgetting something else that happened after my throat closed up.
“Um.” She bites her bottom lip, and I adjust my hips when my cock strains for her. Boners are only acceptable in very specific situations, and this is not one of them, so my inappropriate condition needs to stay concealed.
“Well, you did almost die in my office.”
I point to a cup of water beside her, and she holds it up to my lips. She smells like lilacs. I’ve never especially cared for floral scents—they typically make me sneeze, and I find them to be incredibly overpowering—but I like this on her.
After a long sip through a straw, I pull away, and she sets the cup down.
“Why would I sue you? That pushy old woman is the one who shoved poison into my mouth.”
Lottie’s expression shifts to one I haven’t learned yet, and its annoying as fuck. I’ve managed fourteen years of adulthood just fine hiring other people to figure this shit out, but because I want the best for my little sister, now I’m going through hell.
It doesn’t seem fair. My father should be the only one experiencing discomfort.
“You can’t sue Mrs. Perez, Thane. She’s seventy-seven years old and practically a town treasure.” There she goes with another tone I don’t understand. This was so much easier when I didn’t have to focus on this shit—when all words sounded the same, and as long as they weren’t too loud, I could simply pick out the useful information.
Rafe calls it my unfortunate party trick learned from childhood trauma, but what the hell does he know? He plays with toys all day.
“I won’t sue her.” I cross my arms over my chest.
“Why are you using an app to read faces and understand tones?”
“I don’t understand your question.” I loathe unnecessary questions, even from her, and this is self-explanatory.
“I assumed that’s the type of stuff you learn before you’re even old enough to understand that you’re learning from the world around you.”
“Does it appear to you that I have those skills?”
She shrugs. “Honestly, I just thought you were rude when I first met you.”
That doesn’t sit right with me, which is unusual. I don’t generally care what anyone thinks of me.
“I’m not rude.”
“Then what are you?”
“According to Rafe, he believes I experience the world differently than others—whatever that means. Another doctor said I have a sensory disorder, and yet another said I was just fucking lazy—his words, not mine. But luckily for me, they all agree that having a traumatic childhood and growing up with computers for companions didn’t help my situation. I haven’t needed any of these skills until Kara.”
Or you.
The volcano in my chest burns. Where are my antacids, Siri?
“I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure Kara doesn’t end up like my father.” Or me.
“So…you don’t experience the world in the same way that I do? How is it different?”
Where is my damn phone? The urgency with which I want to understand this woman is making my heart rate monitor beep excessively.
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been you.”
“Right. Not rude. But…”
I want to know how she planned to finish that sentence, but we’re interrupted by Rafe and Kara.
My chest burns again. Maybe they tore up my entire chest cavity when they pumped my stomach.
“You’re awake.” Why does Rafe always have to state the obvious?
“We were just talking…about…” Lottie doesn’t finish this sentence either.
“How you’ve all decided that I’m different.” I scan Rafe’s hands, then Kara’s, hoping one of them is carrying an Amazon package full of antacids, but they’re both empty-handed.
“Jesus, Thane.” Rafe drops into a chair along the wall. “That’s not what I said at all. I said how you experience the world is different than the majority, and how you’ve compensated so long for that is through knowledge. I never said you, as a person, were different .”
I ignore him. I don’t particularly care for semantics, so I nod at Kara. Her face is scrunched up in a strange way, and her eyes are a horrible shade of red.
“Do you have allergies?” I ask her. This is probably something I should know.
“Ugh, Brad. No. You scared me. I was crying.”
Huh. “But I’m fine.”
“When people care, they show it in a number of ways.” That’s Rafe’s psychotherapy voice.
Fucking exhausted, I drop my head back to my pillow.
“I don’t mean to sound rude here, but…Thane seems pretty, I don’t know, normal to me. No-nonsense for sure, but not…” Lottie again loses the rest of her point.
“I love it when people discuss me like a lab rat.” Pinching the bridge of my nose, I try to squeeze them out of existence. It doesn’t work.
“He is normal,” Kara says.
“How his brain processes certain stimuli is different than the majority.” Rafe clarifies. “And how he grew?—”
“I grew up isolated from other people. My father thought I was weird, and he shouted commands so often I didn’t realize he had an actual speaking voice until I was ten.”
Rafe has told me ad nauseam that I’m not weird, but I’m fine however I am, weird or not. Normal or not.
“You’re not weird, Brad.”
I study Kara’s face, then quickly shift my focus to the cement-block wall painted a horrific shade of gray that reminds me of death. I’m frustrated with myself, not her. Not understanding things makes me feel stupid, and that makes me angry, but I can’t be angry with my baby sister.
“You’re annoying, yes. The most frustrating human I’ve ever met, yes. The?—”
“Okay, Kara.” Rafe holds up a hand to stop her. “We get the picture.”
If anyone is weird in this room, it’s Rafe and that soft voice he uses. It reminds me of the one time I tried yoga. The second the woman leading it tried to adjust my hips, I was out of there.
Rafe is the one still wearing a damn sweater-vest, after all. That is weird.
My head throbs. “When can I get out of here?”
Rafe smacks the bottom of my feet that hang over the edge of the bed by close to a foot.
“Am I in a children’s bed?”
“Sort of?” Lottie says, then scrunches up her nose. What the hell does a scrunched-up nose mean? It would be super helpful if there were a Google Translate for facial expressions.
Fuck, that’s a great idea. “Sort of is not an explanation, Lottie.” I could build a facial reader. I own all the technology.
“Don’t bite her head off, geesh.” Kara gives Rafe a high five and I sit up, remember my predicament below the belt, and roll to my side. Now I understand why the pillow was there. “You’re the stalker who moved in next door to her, not the other way around.”
“Sorry.” Lottie’s face is as gray as the wall behind her as she points to my crotch. “That was, ah, that was me. I wasn’t sure what to?—”
“You put a pillow over my boner?”
“Ugh, gross. Sister’s ears, Brad. Sister’s ears.” Kara exits the room with arms flailing. Seems a bit dramatic, but whatever.
Lottie closes her eyes, and I look at Rafe.
“I assume she’s doing something to gather patience.”
Rafe and I both stare at Lottie again.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Also, there’s a YouTube channel for kids that showcases emotions and how to handle them. Rowan was telling me about it last month. I’ll find it for you.”
“It’s for children.” Now I’m offended again. I’m not a child. “And I wasn’t biting your head off. That’s how my voice is.”
She throws her arms into the air. Are all females dramatic, or is it just my sister and Lottie?
“Fine, I won’t help,” she says. Rafe nods toward her as though he expects me to do something. “But you’d better be prepared for the Scuttlebutts when you arrive home tomorrow. They all feel terrible. And do not even think about being rude to them, shutting the door in their faces, or telling them to go away. You moved in next door, and this is your punishment for being a stalker.”
I have an overwhelming urge to smile. Since it doesn’t happen often, I enjoy the moment and her reaction to it.
“Thane,” Rafe says. “I don’t believe she’ll appreciate your humor right now.”
“You think this is funny?” she asks.
My smile drops into my gut. It’s an odd sensation, and I’d prefer not to have it again.
“How has he lasted thirty-two years without ever having to do this—this kind of self-work before?” Lottie stands, gathering her things, and that uncomfortable sensation in my chest starts up again.
“He started his first company at sixteen, Lottie. Before that, his interactions with people were very limited. They sent him to college to learn social skills, but he chose to build more computers and apps and God only knows what else. It’s simply never mattered enough to him before.”
“I can speak for myself.”
“Is that true?” She frowns again.
Is it? I hadn’t really thought about it. “Probably.”
“And you’re doing it now because…”
“My sister needs me, and the only way to keep her with me is to get glowing remarks from my babysitter.”
The corners of her lips tilt up. Happy . The word holds the power of a sledgehammer.
“Thane, you’re witty without knowing it, have dry humor without meaning to, and you love your sister enough to go through some really uncomfortable shit. You might be slightly stalkerish, but I don’t think you’re a stalker. You’re a brother with a big heart trying to break free.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
“She likes you,” Rafe says under the guise of a cough, which is even more stupid because she could obviously hear him.
“I do. But that can change quickly if you’re rude to the Scuttlebutts. They may be annoying, but they keep this town running, and they’ve always been good to me, so don’t do it.”
“The very definition of scuttlebutt is gossip. They’re the gossipers of the town.”
“And they love it,” Lottie says with a crooked smile she’s never given me before. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Thane.”
She floats out of the room, and my mood instantly plummets.
“You’ve really dived deep into the middle of the ocean here, haven’t you, my friend?” Rafe takes the seat Lottie vacated, and I want to tell him to get the hell off it, but now that he’s there, he’s covered it in Rafe-germs anyway, so I keep my mouth shut.
“There’s no ocean near us. There’s a lake behind the house though.”
Rafe pulls his chair closer to my bed. “I mean, you moved to a small town where everybody knows your name, to be next to a woman who intrigues you enough to memorize her reactions. How many are you going to research as soon as I leave the room?”
Now how the hell did he know that?
“Six,” I mumble, staring at the death-colored wall. His reaction will be smug—it’s the only expression my father ever wears, so I know that one well.
“I thought so. This is a lot of change for someone who plans his day out by the minute and with as little human contact as possible. Is it overwhelming?”
“No.”
“No? That’s surprising. Then when you reflect on this day, what are your thoughts?”
“I have a lot of thoughts. I need to change the locks on my door and install locks on Lottie’s door. That her coffee table was unbalanced and needs a leg to be leveled. That Kara’s face changes when Lottie’s in the room. That I have to figure out what to do with a screaming ratdog. Wait…” I glance around the room. “Where is the pest?”
“Mrs. Perez is puppy-sitting overnight. She’ll bring her home tomorrow and will probably issue several apologies.”
“Fuck, this is exhausting.”
“What is?”
“Dealing with all these people. Seeing their faces and listening to them when they talk.”
“That is exhausting, especially when you’ve trained your brain to only pick out the facts. There will be a steep learning curve for you, and I suggest you take baby steps. And just so you know, bullying someone out of their house so you can buy it and live next door to Lottie is not taking baby steps.”
“I bullied no one. I gave an offer that was more than fair, and when he countered, so did I.”
“Right. Well, we’ll come back to that one. Have you been using the flash cards I texted you after your last custody hearing?”
Those might be the worst of all. They’re so overexaggerated I can’t take any of them seriously.
“Yes,” I lie. I built an app last week that recreated them all in video format without the clown-like poses.
“Okay. Well, I’m going to find Kara and get her home. Remember, take it one task at a time so you don’t become too overwhelmed. You’re doing great.”
When he stands there staring at me, I say, “Thank you.”
“What do you know? He does have manners.” Rafe laughs, and it echoes through my mind like a tiny monkey banging on the drums of my frontal lobe.
Closing my eyes, I focus on my to-do list that went from forty-four items to ninety-three in less than a day. And the first thing I’m going to do is upgrade all the locks on Matchmaker Lane.