Chapter 24
AREK
As soon as my chin hits Kylen’s dick, I move back up his body. I kiss just below his sternum and look up into his face when I realize he’s still now. His eyes are wide. Unseeing.
“Kylen?”
He doesn’t answer, and I push away from his body a little more to give him some space. As I have so many times before, I wrap my hand along the side of his face. I’m far better at guessing someone’s mood when I’m touching them.
Kylen isn’t breathing. He hasn’t taken a breath since… when? He isn’t breathing! But he has a pulse. I feel it under my hand when I drop it to his neck.
His lips part, and a breath rushes out. I release my own in response.
“NO!” he suddenly screams, and I back away from him entirely. His next words are quieter. Shaking. Pleading? “No, please! Don’t. I don’t want you to. No, don’t touch me!”
The darkness inside me that’s generally reserved for murdering people who hurt my sister opens its eyes and gives a warning hum.
“Kylen?”
He suddenly jumps from the bed, grabs some clothes from the floor, and races out the door as he struggles into them. For a split second, I stare after him. Then I’m on my feet and dragging shorts over my legs as I follow him.
I’m not in the least bit surprised when I see him spill through his sister’s door. By the time I get there, he’d dove behind her and was practically hiding like a beaten dog. Kole looks startled. She twists, but Kylen remains hidden. Visibly shaking.
Kole’s eyes turn to meet mine, and I recognize the look in her eyes this time. Murderous. I don’t care about Kole, though. I watch Kylen for what feels like an hour or more before I determine that what he needs right now isn’t me. He needs his sister.
I suppose I understand that. There are times when the only ones I want around are my siblings.
Sometimes, only Orev. I never have to explain myself to Orev.
He doesn’t feel the need to understand why I’m angry or fill the silence with assurances.
He’ll let me sit there, fuming, until it either passes or I need to get up and do something about it.
Kylen is safe with Kole. I’m confident that no one will bother him while he’s hiding behind her.
Reluctantly, I turn and allow him to work through it how he wants to. That doesn’t stop the anger from flooding me so violently that I stop at the foot of the stairs until my vision clears of the red haze threatening to turn black and dooming.
How dare someone hurt him! I’m relatively confident of that now. I’ve never put my mouth where he expressly told me not to. I know that whatever he was remembering isn’t because of me. Even if I’m the trigger that made it come to life again.
Irritated, I go back to my room and find a discarded shirt to pull over my head before slipping into sandals.
I grab my phone and head outside, stopping just long enough at Kole’s door to see that Kylen is still where I left him.
Kole is twisted now. As Orev would, she doesn’t speak.
She shields him from the world and gently brushes her fingers through his hair.
There are no questions. No encouragement to talk. No assurance that everything will be alright. She’s simply there for him, and I respect that. That’s what I would want.
Grudgingly, I leave the door and head downstairs and outside. Out of the house, where I’m sure no one will overhear me as I place the call.
My sisters’ faces pop up first, Rosalie in the middle of a yawn. “Arek,” Rosalie says through the yawn.
Then my twin’s face joins us, and his greeting is, “What’s wrong, Arek?”
His question changes the mood of my sisters. I can see the shift in the way they’re looking into their phones.
“I need you to find out who hurt Kylen in the past so I know who to punish,” I demand.
“What happened?” Adalaide asks.
I close my eyes for a minute before repeating what happened.
Kissing. Fooling around. I got too close, and he…
got freaked out. I try to explain what I saw in his face.
How his expression changed. I sort through my memories of my siblings and cousins, trying to find a memory that encompasses the way he just…
disappeared inside his body. He was there, but not.
I hovered just over his face, but he didn’t see me at all. He didn’t hear me when I said his name.
None of my memories match it. Good, but also less good, because I don’t know exactly what I was looking at. Something we’d already briefly touched on when I asked my siblings why a guy wouldn’t want his dick sucked. Why would it be a hard limit?
“Kylen Whitaker,” Orev repeats, and I can already hear his fingers moving over a keyboard. “Birthday?”
I stare into my phone screen and then scowl. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Rosalie repeats, clearly disapproving.
Closing my eyes, I try to remember if I’ve ever seen them celebrate birthdays.
I can’t say that I paid the Whitaker twins a considerable amount of attention prior to getting together with Kylen, but I don’t remember their birthdays.
The frat tends to have cakes or cupcakes at the very least when a birthday comes about.
“I think during the weeks we’re not at school,” I say, opening my eyes again. “I think Kylen would be happy to let a birthday go by without anyone noticing, but Kole wouldn’t. She’d demand a crown and to be carried around on their shoulders for the day. Probably the entire week.”
“What about his family? Where did he grow up?” Orev asks.
I sigh in frustration. “He has an older brother. Lathan, I think. He has six fathers. He… lived in the same neighborhood as Nolan, and Nolan has hockey player uncles. Owen Vincent and Caulder Haines. We just talked about this because I said something about Okello being Uncle Elgin’s child or… something. We were at the hockey game.”
“You know more about Nolan than you do Kylen,” Rosalie chides.
“First, I’ve been friends with Nolan longer. Second, it was relevant to the conversation at the time since we were at a hockey game.”
“Got him,” Orev says. “His birthday is June seventeenth. They live in Sun Haven and have for most of their lives. Which means they attended Glensdale school district.”
I nod. “Find whatever you can find. I don’t care what it is. Even if it’s nothing more than a whisper. I need to know who hurt him.”
Orev inclines his head as his fingers still move over the keyboard. His face is washed in the electronic light of his computer, making him look pale and sickly.
“What else do you know?” Rosalie asks.
“Nothing, I think. Our days aren’t filled with conversations about our childhoods. I guess they should have been.”
“Are you okay?” Adalaide asks.
“I’m angry. Since I have nowhere to point my anger, I’m primarily angry at myself.”
Adalaide smiles softly. “I always wondered which of our brothers would fall in love first.”
I don’t respond. I’m not sure how to anyway, so I don’t guess.
“We’ll call when we find something,” Rosalie says.
“Thanks.” I don’t wait for more conversation and end the call.
My hand drops to hang at my side, and I look around.
It’s late enough that the campus is deserted.
Silent. It’s a little eerie with the scattered streetlights covering all the paved sections and casting the spaces beyond into deeper darkness.
Tipping my head back, I stare at the inky sky littered with stars. They don’t seem to twinkle right now. They’re still. Little pinpricks watching the world below. Recording everything they witness, but telling no one.
My eyes close as I remain right there. With my head tilted backward and my eyes closed, the position begins to challenge my equilibrium, and I sway.
It’s a stupid, inconsequential thing, but I focus on that sway and righting it without opening my eyes, just to give my brain something to focus on so it doesn’t stew on my anger.
I have a feeling that my anger is not going to lessen anytime soon. My brother will find who I’m looking for. No matter what it is, he’ll find it. And I’m not going to like what he finds.
“Arek?”
Juno’s voice is unique. I’m not sure why, exactly. Then again, I think all my cousins’ voices are unique. I can easily distinguish who’s talking without looking at them. I suppose that’s because I spent so long studying them.
“Juno,” I return.
His footsteps rustle through the grass until he stops right in front of me.
Since he’s so close, I bring my head back to its normal resting position and look at him.
Juno looks exactly like Uncle Brek, one of his fathers.
It’s actually very disturbing. All his pictures to date, regardless of age, we have to really look at the surroundings and clothing to determine who we’re looking at.
It was a game we played often as children—is this Uncle Brek or Juno?
When you remove the background entirely, there’s almost no indication.
“What’re you doing out here?” Juno asks. He glances around. “Alone in the dark in the dead of night?” He raises one eyebrow.
“What are you doing out?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I’m heading to the bar just off campus to play pool. Want to join me?”
I glance at the frat house. Kylen isn’t going anywhere. I’m positive that he’s safely tucked away behind his sister right now.
“Fine,” I agree.
“I’m not twisting your arm,” Juno says as he returns to the sidewalk. I fall into step beside him.
“Not the right amount of enthusiasm?” I ask.
“No. Try again.”
“Oh, yes. I would love to go to the bar with you, Juno,” I say, mimicking one of my sisters as best I can.
Juno snorts. “Cute.” He shoves me playfully. “What were you doing outside?”
“Talking to my siblings.”
“Miss them?”
I’m about to tell him I don’t, but… “It’s weird to miss someone,” I comment instead.
“Why?”
“Because I know where they are. I can talk to them anytime I want. I can see them when I want to by making video calls. I can go home when I want to. Why should I miss them?”
“Because you can’t touch them.” He grips my hand briefly.
Something catches in the streetlamps, and I twist my hand to take his, pulling it up to examine the beads around his wrist. I raise my eyes at the strange combination of metal and plastic beads with no pattern and a headache-inducing mix of colors.
Juno laughs. “Envy made it for me. I promised that I’d wear it all the time, and she has Axl sending me texts to prove I’m wearing it.”
“You’re letting a child dictate what you wear?”
Envy is the daughter of his older brother, Axl.
She randomly showed up at the Estate seven years ago when she was three.
Apparently, Axl wasn’t taught to wrap it as a teen, and baby mama showed up demanding that Axl take his kid because she’d already lost her high school experience or whatever.
I wasn’t present at that moment. My information was relayed by the fourth or fifth recount of the incident.
Juno gives a pointed look at my shirt. “Who did you let dictate what you wear, Arek?”
I glance down at my tee that reads, ‘Milk me.’ “Not the same thing. Not only is this something I welcome—it’s a suggestion and a request—but I have no shirts other than the ones my siblings used to replace all the ones I’d packed.
Most places on campus have a strict clothing requirement rule, unfortunately. ”
Juno laughs.
While I suspect he spends the next few hours talking about anything and everything random to pull me from brooding on my mood, I appreciate the reprieve. My mind is never far from Kylen, my need to see him and make sure he’s okay, but I appreciate the distraction all the same.
By the time we head back to campus, it’s close to one in the morning.
Juno wraps his arms around me, and I roll my eyes.
My cousins are so touchy and huggy. When he doesn’t let me go for several minutes, I think he thinks I need the hug.
I suppose he’s not wrong. His familiar embrace allows me to relax for just a second.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him I’ll walk him back to his dorm, but I know he’ll flip me off. All my family is fully equipped and trained to protect themselves. My possessive protectiveness is my form of affection, according to my parents.
The frat house is silent. This time of night is one of the few hours each day when there isn’t noise coming from all parts of the house.
I stop on the second floor long enough to check in on Kylen, but Kole’s door is shut.
Though I hate everything about not being able to put my eyes on him, I don’t intrude.
I head to my room upstairs instead. Kole is nothing if not fiercely protective of her twin.
I’m positive he’s safe there for the night.
Meanwhile, I try to push my anger away. As furious as I am about whatever darkness took place in Kylen’s past, right now I’m pissed at myself.
I shouldn’t have gotten so close to his dick with my face.
He’s reminded me not to suck his dick many times, and I should have stayed far away for his comfort.
My feet freeze as I step into my bedroom. The lamp beside my bed is on. Kylen is sitting on my bed, buried in my hoodie, his knees pressed to his chest, and his chin resting on his knees. He doesn’t see me at first, but when his eyes shift to the door, his head snaps up, gaze locking on mine.
As much as I’d like to touch him to make sure he’s okay, I don’t move as he stares with wide eyes. His lips part, and the room is so quiet that I hear his shaky exhale. “Hi,” Kylen whispers.
His voice is enough to unstick my feet from the floor, and I quickly cross the room.
Kylen uncurls and practically leaps off the bed.
I catch him in my arms, and he wraps around me, burying his face in my neck and clinging to me like my sisters used to hug my dad Oakley when they were crying when we were young.
I hug him tightly and refuse to ever let him go.