27. Caroline
CAROLINE
I wake up in the middle of the night shivering, gasping. The man’s face sends me to hell in my nightmares, and I wake up there, in the brothers’ guest room.
This time, when I wake up, I’m wrapped up in something soft and warm. Someone’s hoodie. Rian’s, I think. It smells like cedar and clean laundry.
For a few long minutes, I let myself believe I’m just a tired mom who fell asleep after a long day. That I’m safe. That the man who helped me pull the trigger didn’t whisper, “Good girl,” in my ear while someone died in front of me.
But I’m not safe. And I’m not okay.
I sit up slowly, the memories rushing back. The gun. The blood. The way my fingers trembled afterward, like my body couldn’t decide whether to scream or shut down.
The way Declan’s arms around me felt good, safe even, and I allowed myself to relax in them. I allowed him to kiss me. No, that isn’t true. I didn’t just allow him to kiss me. I kissed him back.
And Rian, wrapping me up in a hoodie, the hoodie he’s put on me now, guiding me slowly to the couch and lying me down on my side. Getting me water and softly pushing my hair off my sweaty forehead.
How can these men ruin my life, and it still feels so good when they touch me?
“You did good,” he had said. None of them had left me in that moment, mocked me, or called me weak. They forced their father out of the room. They told him to leave me, and they watched me fall apart and tried to put me back together.
Now, I can feel Rian behind me on the bed, his hoodie draped over me again. It’s the same position I was in that night on the couch. He leans over me and looks into my face. I’m prepared for him to give me the same speech he’s been giving me for days, or weeks now.
But he doesn’t. He sits behind me quietly, and eventually, I look up at him. His eyes are softer than I remember them being before all this, like he’s laid down a piece of his armor.
“You didn’t want to do it,” he says.
“No.”
“And even if you did it to survive, or because he made you, it still feels like you did it.”
I nod. My throat is sore, like I’ve been screaming in my sleep.
“Do you feel like a murderer?” he asks.
I nod again.
He brushes a piece of hair from my cheek and says, “I’m not going to tell you that you aren’t. Maybe you are. What I will tell you, Caroline, is that if you hadn’t done it, you’d be dead. You chose life. You chose your boys.”
“It didn’t feel like much of a choice.”
“Sometimes they don’t.”
I meet his eyes, then look behind his shoulder and see his brothers behind him, watching us.
I move into a position where I’m sitting up.
I crawl into his lap and wrap my arms around his neck.
I blink fast, trying to hold back the tears, but one escapes onto his neck.
He readjusts so his hold is even steadier.
Kellan and Declan step toward us and sit on the other edges of the bed, reaching out to comfort me, their hands rubbing my back and petting my hair as Rian holds me tightly.
We sit in silence for a while. Then Kellan says, “The first time I killed someone, I couldn’t sleep for two nights. I thought I’d never eat again. I washed my hands until the skin cracked.”
“What happened?” I ask him, turning out of Rian’s hold and settling into his lap, my arm still poised around his neck. His touch is comfortable, easy, casual.
Kellan chuckles low and shrugs. “I didn’t have half as good a reason as you did. I mean, in a way, I had the same reason, I guess. Da asked me to. So I did. But no one was holding my finger, there was no one in my ear telling me I had to. I was just…asked. So I did.”
“You grew up around violence,” I say quietly, nodding. My finger traces circles on Rian’s shoulder.
“I did. Is that an excuse?”
I blink at the question, confused by it. “What do you mean?”
“Is it different? Is it better that I was raised in it than that you were thrust into it? Does it change your opinion on it?”
“My opinion? I?—”
“Am I a good person and you’re a bad person? Because I was raised up like a working dog and you were just given a gun?”
Declan interrupts quietly, “The first time I killed someone, I thought about killing myself afterward. All night long, I thought about it. I came home and ate dinner and watched TV thinking about it. Went to bed thinking about it. The next morning, the thought wasn’t so loud, so I didn’t.”
I look at him. Really look. I didn’t expect that.
Everything about him exudes the attitude of a man who enjoys what he does.
He blinks at me slowly. His jaw is set hard, his eyes blank and darkened.
Then he adds, “I was ten. Da asked me to kill our mom. She was sick and wasn’t getting better.
He couldn’t bear to look at her. Even then, he saw something in me.
He knew I wasn’t like everyone else. So, he asked me, and I did. ”
He doesn’t have tears when he tells me. A chill zips through me, and Rian’s hand splays out against my waist, steadying me against his shudder.
Declan notices, and his hand reaches out for me.
He tucks my hair back behind my ear and stares off into the distance, like he’s reciting the memory from a trance.
I rasp, “I’m sorry.”
He continues, “Our athair was right about me, though.” He looks into my eyes. They’re so empty, gazing deep into mine, like he wants to have me with just a look. “Because the second time I killed someone, I liked it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because—”
Kellan finishes for him, “Because if you hadn’t gone along with it, your kids would be left with us and with him. You did the right thing, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
Rian turns my face toward him and adds, “And you didn’t break like he thought you would.”
“Maybe I did.”
“No,” Declan interrupts, his hand on my chin, turning me toward him.
“You’re coming out of this someone newer and stronger, you’ll see.
” His finger drags along my jaw, and my breath stills in my chest. I’m still in Rian’s lap, and I feel the tension in his body as Declan touches me.
It’s subtle, just his fingertips squeezing me, but it’s there.
Declan leans forward to kiss me, and my heart stutters. My brain goes completely blank, but my body knows what to do. I lean toward him too, even as Rian’s hand slides down my back, hesitating, unsure if he wants to let go of me or hold on even tighter.
He chooses to hold on tighter, and his fingers dig into my lower back as Declan cups my face with his hands, his rough hands with long fingers and bitten nails.
His kiss is needy and deep, and heat builds between my thighs as I give in, leaning so far forward that Rian holds me around my middle to keep me from falling into Declan.
It’s a kiss as passionate as the first kiss we shared. It’s like his lips hold the key to mine. My hands find his hair instinctually and wrap around his curls, my face at home in his palms. I find belonging there.
Rian inches my shirt up around my waist, and I raise my arms to let him pull my shirt up over my head. Declan and I break the kiss for a moment while he slips my shirt off.
My heart is pounding wildly in my chest, so hard I can feel the blood rushing in my ears. Am I really going to do this again? I can’t catch my breath from the thudding in my sternum, and Rian kisses me, really kisses me, before I can think any harder about it.
While Rian connects with my mouth and our moans intermingle, he lowers me down to the bed gently, his hand spread across my lower back.
I smooth back his auburn hair, and I’m looking at those green freckles in his eyes and thinking about the fear they filled me with not so long ago. When I thought he was Paul.
Rian’s elbows are on the bed on either side of my face, and he looks me square in my eyes and whispers, his voice silky with tension, “We’ll protect you. No matter what happens, from here on out, we’re together in this.”
He disappears down my body, his hands sliding down my stomach as he finds the waistband of my pajama bottoms. I feel a small shiver of embarrassment that I’m still wearing them, but I know they don’t care. They saw me in the depths of despair, and they pulled me out. They aren’t judging me.
He slides my legs out of my pants as Declan unbuckles my bra and delicately removes it. He tosses it aside and murmurs with a hard expression on his face, “You won’t need protection, Caroline. You’ll be strong enough on your own.” And he leans over to kiss my neck.
I’m nude under their watchful eyes. They undress me together, like I’m something fragile, even though they’ve all had me before. But this is different. This is surrender without choosing. This is everything at once.
Kellan sits back, watching from the foot of the bed, eyes dark and full of intent. He doesn’t touch me yet, and that restraint does more to my heartbeat than anything else.
I lock eyes with Kellan as his Rian pulls my underwear to the side and parts my thighs, his mouth hot and wet where I’m already soaked. His tongue enters my wanting, wet hole. My eyes close for just a second, and my mouth falls open as a moan tumbles out of me.
My hands move down to the back of Rian’s head, holding him against me while his tongue works like he knows my body better than I do. I arch, moan, and Declan reaches for my hardening nipples.
Kellan’s full, peach lips part just a fraction, and I see him swallow hard, but his blue eyes stayed trained on mine.
I want him to join, to touch me, but he stays just out of my grasp.
When I look down, I see that his hand is wrapped around his cock, slowly running the length of it.
It’s shining with pre cum dripping down the shaft.
Rian’s tongue reaches deeper inside me, and with a hoarse voice, I half moan, half say to Kellan, “Please. Come kiss me.”