15
GOLDIE
I quickly close the window and jump into bed, pulling the covers over me and gripping them tightly around my neck. Shit. Shit. Shit. Maybe they didn’t see me. Maybe I can get away with it if I just act naturally and pretend nothing happened.
The sound of a door banging downstairs makes me jump. My nerves are so on edge that I can barely breathe. Footsteps climb the stairs, and my heart beats with each thud.
I’m a stupid woman for getting myself into this situation. A stupid woman who has put her sexual desires before her safety.
When the key turns in the lock, I brace myself.
Robert’s handsome face comes into view. “You settling in okay?”
He’s seriously making small talk with me after what I just saw .
“Err…yeah. I guess.”
“Sorry about that. I just had something I needed to do.”
I blink slowly, baffled at his behavior.
“Something naked in the woods with your brothers?”
Robert stills, his hand on the door handle.
“Naked triplets in the woods and bears. Lots of giant brown bears.”
Robert’s shoulders rise, and he inhales a deep breath. He doesn’t look happy that I’ve been snooping, and I draw back even further against the headboard, cowering at his disquiet.
“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath, shaking his head. “This was a bad idea.”
“This?”
He runs his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up. “I’ve put you in danger.”
“I seem to be in danger everywhere.”
Robert rounds the bed and sits on the edge, near enough to touch me. “Goldie. When you snoop around, there’s a chance that you’re going to stumble upon things you’re not supposed to know. Things that are better kept a secret or things you’re not ready to hear.”
I let the covers fall so that my hands rest in my lap. “Yeah, well, I’m named after the nosiest girl in fairyland. Goldilocks’s whole personality centers on her curiosity.”
“And look where she ended up.”
“Running from the bears,” I say, shaking my head. “I’ve done that once already this week and survived.”
“What if the bears don’t want you to run?” Robert says softly.
“Well, of course, they don’t. They want to eat me. It’s a whole lot easier to eat something if it stays still.”
Robert makes a choking sound. “Goldie. You know how, in the story, Goldilocks samples all the things in the house. The porridge, the chairs, the beds.”
“Yeeesss,” I drawl.
“Would you like to do that here?”
I’m flummoxed for a moment. I’m hardly going to go around testing furniture. Is he planning a porridge-making contest with his brothers and needs a judge? This is all getting very surreal, but maybe, instead of my mind whirring over so many strange possibilities, I should just get on and ask him to elaborate.
“What are you saying? You keep talking in riddles, and I don’t get what you mean.”
“I mean, do you want to stay and see?”
“See what?”
“If you like it here.”
I cock my head to the side as Robert smiles and shrugs. He’s very laid back for someone who has just invited an almost stranger to move into his home after what was supposed to be a one-night stand. Very laid back for someone who was so nervous when his brothers returned.
“What?”
“Look, it’s not safe for you to go home, and I had a great time tonight.”
“I did, too, except for the part where I was locked up.”
Robert grimaces. “That was for your own safety.”
“In case of what? I wandered off and got eaten by bears? From your weird, aggressive brother with the color-changing eyes?”
Robert stiffens. “You wouldn’t get eaten by bears around here,” he says with apparent certainty. Does he not know anything about wild animals? And why is he avoiding eye contact?
“And your brother?”
“You know how in fairy stories people fall in love at first sight, or they’re destined to be together… they just feel it in their hearts?”
“Yeah,” I say, wondering why our conversations always seem to end up back in fairyland.
“Well, that’s what my brother feels about you.”
“About me?”
Robert nods. “He’s the eldest, the one who senses that something is—” He trails off, disturbing his hair again with frustrated fingers. His mouth opens around a word he doesn’t speak. Then he sighs as though he’s resigned to whatever comes next. “Fated.”
“Fated?” My eyebrows fly up. Just when I thought this was as strange as it was going to get, it gets stranger. This really is the maple syrup on the porridge. “Hunter believes we’re fated to be together. Me and him?”
“You and all of us,” Robert says. “I know it sounds crazy. I know that it’s not something you hear every day. But that’s why he’s the way he is about you. It’s a kind of madness. It’s why I didn’t want to bring you here just for me. It isn’t fair. Not when he’s experiencing this… this frenzy.”
The more time I spend with Robert, the more I worry that these brothers have been isolated out here for so long they’ve turned strange. People aren’t fated to be together. It might be a common idea in tales of old and epic romances, but not real life. Real life is dirtier, grittier, and darker. There are no happy-ever-afters. Not really. It’s just luck when you find a person you get along with enough to stay in a relationship with.
“None of what you’ve just said makes any sense. Human beings don’t just see someone and know they’re meant to be together for life. They certainly don’t change eye color because of it.”
Robert stands and strides over to the window, pulls the drapes open, and gazes at the view I’d been studying earlier.
“What you’re saying is right. Human beings don’t just see someone and know they’re going to be together for life. At least, not in the way that Hunter does.”
“So why did you tell me that’s what happened?”
“Human beings don’t,” Robert says, turning to face me, his expression about as serious as I’ve ever seen it. “But we’re not human beings.”