Chapter 22
chapter
twenty-two
They were the quietest table at Sichuan Lotus.
The table on the right was a family wearing party hats, the arguing progressively louder the drunker they got. The table to the left was a couple debating the right way to load the dishwasher.
And here they were. Alexander’s family on one side of the table, Tobias and the girls on the other.
Bartholomew—or Bart, as he insisted on being called—had told the waiter to bring them ‘all your best dishes,’ and now they were eating a silent meal of what looked like everything on the menu.
Except Sadie, who was circling her spoon in her dumpling soup, looking increasingly awkward.
“So,” Tobias said when he couldn’t stand it anymore. “I can’t help but notice this isn’t poisoned.”
“It would be difficult to poison you when we never got time alone with the food,” Alexander replied.
“Poison is a coward’s weapon,” Meredith said over him.
Honey snickered into her soup at the ridiculousness of this statement and how intensely Meredith said it.
Tobias wanted to join her in her laughter, but he was having an uncharacteristically hard time finding this situation funny.
Not with Alexander sitting so stiff across from him.
He hadn’t looked at Tobias once since they sat down.
Occasionally his gaze would flicker like he was going to, but then he’d look at his parents, his face melting into something disbelieving and oddly childish.
Then he’d go back to eating, his shoulders straight, his chin up, all neat spoonfuls and no spills.
Tobias couldn’t shake the feeling he was waiting for his parents to compliment his table manners.
“Right,” Tobias said slowly. “So…what exactly is happening here?”
“A truce,” said Bart, wiping his mustache with a folded paper napkin and shooting Tobias the same sunny smile he’d used on the waiter earlier.
He was shockingly personable, especially next to his wife and son.
But there was still an eeriness to it. Meredith and Alexander’s politeness would drop if they got into a life-or-death situation.
Bart’s would keep up the whole time. Tobias had a vague memory of him saying shucks, too bad as he wiped blood off his knife, all those years ago.
“Sometimes you have to work with something bad to take down something worse,” Bart continued. “We take care of business, then we never see you again. Unless we hear you’re stirring up trouble.”
He winked. Tobias had never been winked at when he was being threatened with murder. Muzzle wasn’t a winking kind of guy.
“We killed your cousin,” Sadie started, staring into her full bowl.
Honey cut her off, her mouth bulging with dumplings. “I killed him! Me. Over here.”
“You guys are just going to let that go?” Sadie continued, giving Honey a look that Tobias translated as, don’t start flinging yourself in front of silver arrows for me, jackass.
Bart sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Ah, Eli. He was a bad apple, that one. Never good to have around at family gatherings. I suppose we can let him slide. As long as you keep up your no-violence streak, we’ll stay out of your hair.”
The table went silent again. There was a look of such heartbroken shock on Alexander’s face that Tobias wanted to reach for him.
“But you—” Alexander stopped, swallowing hard. “But I’ve been on my own for three years.”
Tobias’s hand tightened around his chopsticks.
He wanted to dive across the table and shove his face in Alexander’s throat, kiss him senseless, anything to wipe that lost look off his face.
He looked like a kid who had been left at the mall, dazed and heartbroken that the world allowed this kind of betrayal.
Bart grunted into his noodles. “You failed the Proving, bud.”
“It wasn’t because you left them alive,” Meredith said, and paused to glance at the girls: Honey flushed and full of soup, Sadie pale and sallow over her untouched bowl.
“Her alive,” Meredith said. “It was because of your clear lack of dedication. You showed us you weren’t ready for the burden of responsibility that comes with being in this family.”
“Unlike now!” Bart leaned around his wife to give his son a grin. “You’ve done a really good job, bud.”
“Not good enough,” Meredith said, frowning at her husband. “Not yet.”
Alexander twirled his chopsticks anxiously. Meredith dragged her gaze to it, the same way she had watched him twirl the jawbone knife back at the van.
“You still have the knife I gave you for your birthday,” she said.
“You gave it to me,” Alexander said, like it was obvious.
Meredith’s lips twitched in a hint of a smile. The same one she’d been wearing when she hugged him, their stiffness melting into something genuinely warm and loving for two whole seconds, long enough for Tobias to get that ugly taste in his mouth.
She loved him. They both loved him, and that made it so much worse. Love stabbed their hooks all the deeper.
Meredith twirled her spoon. “How often do you polish it?”
“Every day,” Alexander replied immediately.
“Bone and blade?”
“Of course.”
Alexander spun his chopsticks again. For a moment they just smiled at each other, twirling their utensils in such an identical way it made Tobias’s stomach lurch.
She was probably the one who taught him to do it.
She probably taught him how to polish that knife, how to sharpen it, how to cut a femoral artery.
He imagined Meredith with that tight smile as she watched him stab that knife into a training dummy.
Because they had literal training dummies at that house, Alexander had told him the other day.
He even had a favorite, whom he dubbed ‘Edgar.’
“You were always good at weapon care,” Bart said brightly. “Never needed to remind you about it. Not like...”
He trailed off. Alexander’s smile slipped. The girls traded a confused look. Alexander had never told them about Samson, the dead older brother he still felt guilty over.
“Well,” Bart said. “I knew you were still making us proud, while you’ve been away.”
Alexander stared at him. “Really?”
“Yes!” Bart nudged his wife, who was frowning at a woodchip on her chopstick like she was judging its structural integrity. “We talked about it all the time. Didn’t we, Mer?”
“We discussed it,” Meredith said. She hesitated. “It will be good. Having you back home. We…missed you.”
The look on Alexander’s face broke Tobias’s heart. The uncertain joy of being told the very thing he’d been waiting so long to hear.
I might lose him, Tobias realized. He’d really thought he had a chance.
The way Alexander kept looking at him these last few days, he thought he was pulling Alexander out of the knots his family had bound him in.
That he would finally get to tell Alexander he was his mate and get happiness, not revulsion.
Tobias cleared his throat. “On that note, I have to go beg my boss to give me my job back. Peace.”
Alexander frowned. “We told them you were in the hospital. Did they ask for proof?”
They had not asked for proof, though his boss was still miffed at him for that first unexplained no-show. Never mind that Tobias had been unconscious that whole time.
“I can forge a hospital statement,” Alexander continued. Then he glanced at his parents and his concern smoothed out into that haughty look Tobias hated. “If I have the time. We have bigger issues to deal with.”
Tobias grinned at him. Apparently, the bitterness shone through, because Alexander suddenly looked uncomfortable. He ducked his head and stared into his noodles. Tobias wondered if that was a family thing: if you didn’t want to deal with something, you just didn’t look at it.
Maybe that was why it was disconcerting to find Meredith staring at him so steadily. She did want to deal with him—that much was obvious. Her eyes were pale and cold and strangely eager, sending a shiver down Tobias’s spine.
He tossed up a peace sign. “Girls. Alex. Alex’s parents. Don’t kill anyone while I’m gone.”
Then he ducked out of the restaurant, hoping he still had time.
Maybe he could save Alexander from himself. He just had to get him away from his parents first.
Tobias went to the LIV-MART and piled a bunch of clothes into the cart.
Then he grabbed more first aid supplies, thinking fondly of the giant kit Alexander brought with them in Steve-van.
Then, on a whim, he grabbed a shitty lockpicking kit for kids.
Alexander had taught him the basics after he went over how to hotwire cars, a lesson which Tobias retained none of because Alexander looked stupidly sexy when he was stripping those wires.
He arrived outside his apartment ready to come up with a plan to get Alexander away from his parents.
He could already sense through their bond that he’d gone back to his apartment instead of following his parents to their hotel, which was good.
Maybe his parents’ grip on their kid was looser than he thought.
He lifted his hand to the lock, then froze. There was someone in his apartment. He could smell her, icy and clean, but not Alexander’s natural clean. This was a cold, stinging clean that made him think of chemicals.
He opened the door and peered in.
Meredith White was sitting on the arm of his couch, facing the door.
There was no silver crossbow in her hand or knife twirling between her fingers.
That didn’t mean she didn’t have something strapped to her ankle, but it did mean she wasn’t pouncing on him straight away.
If she was, she probably wouldn’t wait for him to close the door.
“Mer,” he said, panicking and dropping into a half-curtsey he quickly pulled out of once he realized it looked stupid, not snarky. “What a pleasant surprise. Can I call you Mer?”
“You may not.”
“Cool,” Tobias said, dropping the bags next to the door. “What brings you around, Mer? Wasn’t expecting you. Guess you were the one who taught Alex all the fancy lockpicking, huh?”