13. Killian
13
KILLIAN
Jake doesn’t make it through the door before I swoop down on him. If he thinks he’s going to get away with kissing her like that and then making like nothing happened? He’s got another thing coming.
“Saw you with Vanessa out there,” I tell him, blocking his path up the stairs. With one foot planted on the bottom step, my oldest brother looks up at me, clearly incredulous.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I guess you must have short-term memory loss, then,” I fire back. “Probably from the kiss.”
His cheeks darken for a moment, and he goes to barge past me.
“Come on, I saw it!” I call to him as I follow him up the stairs. “It’s chill, I’m not jealous, I just want to talk?—”
“Not jealous about what?”
Mason emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, a flood of steam following him through the doorway as he comes to see what the commotion is about.
“Nothing,” Jake growls quickly, but I’m not going to let him play this off.
“Oh, just that Jake and Vanessa were making out on the front step a few minutes ago.”
“We weren’t making out!” Jake protests. “It was just a kiss…”
Mason laughs, his eyebrows rising. “Damn, so she’s really making her way through all three of us, huh?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, lifting my chin as I lean up against the wall. Jake has one hand on the door, and it’s clear he wants nothing more than to vanish from this place and this conversation, but he knows Mason and I will get it out of him one way or another.
“I mean, we hooked up the other day,” Mason tells us casually. “And she was with Killian too. And now she’s kissing Jake?” He lets the words hang in the air. “Yeah, sounds like she’s on a mission.”
“Maybe she’s already completed it,” I suggest, turning to Jake. “How long were you down there at her house? What were you doing?—”
“I was just there to help her fix her stove,” he replies, holding his hands up in protest. “Nothing else. She offered me lunch, we talked a little?—”
“Talked? Like you did an interview?” Mason asks with interest.
Jake shakes his head. “No, no, just like…like normal people,” he replies.
“And then you kissed,” I say.
“And then we kissed,” he concedes. “It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Nothing more to it than that. I’m not going to turn it into anything it isn’t…”
“Relax, man,” I laugh. “I’m not saying that you have to go make an honest woman of this girl or anything. I’m just saying, we should be straight-up with each other about what’s going on. Keeping secrets around here is the best way to get into trouble. So we stay honest, yeah?”
“Agreed,” Mason replies, and he looks over to Jake. “You on board with that too?”
“We shouldn’t be getting involved with her at all,” Jake mutters.
I stare at him for a moment.
“I’m sorry, the hottest woman in the state moves in across the forest from us, and we’re meant to just pretend like we don’t see it?” I protest. “No. I’m not going to let you fuck this up for me with your overthinking?—”
“But it’s not just her, is it?” Jake counters, his head flipping up to meet my gaze. “It’s her daughter too. Her family.”
“They’re just going to be here for a few months,” I point out. “It’s not as though we’re going to get into anything life-changing in that time, is it?”
“Yeah, that’s how it starts, and then…”
He shakes his head, his expression dark. I know what he’s thinking about. The same thing he’s always thinking about, the same thing that brought us here all those years ago. Letting people into our lives, getting close to them, and then…losing them. In the worst way possible. In the way that changes things forever, for the rest of your life, and gives you no chance of escape, no matter how hard you might search for it.
“Hey, man,” I murmur to him, and I plant a hand on his shoulder. “You deserve to relax. We all do. If she wants this, and we want this, then what’s the problem?”
“Agreed,” Mason replies as he heads back into the shower to finish up. When the door is closed behind him, Jake shakes his head slightly, clearly not convinced.
“If we get into something with her, and something happens…”
“Hey,” I cut him off before he can go any further. I know that indulging his anxieties only makes them worse, and the last thing he needs right now is encouragement.
“We’re fine,” I remind him. “She’s fine. And you need to get some rest, okay? You’ve got an early patrol tomorrow. Need you to be well-rested.”
“Right, right,” he mutters with a nod, shrugging me off. Turning his attention to his duties is usually enough to keep him in the moment, though I know it won’t last forever.
I watch as he heads into his room, and I pause there for a moment, leaning in the doorway. Sometimes I worry that he’s too far gone. That there’s some part of him that won’t come back from the day it happened. I can still remember it—I was on leave at the time, staying over with a friend before I drove home for summer break, and the smell of smoke woke me, even from a few dozen streets away.
And losing them…fuck, it’s never easy losing parents, but losing them , of all people. Theo and Jamie. Our foster parents, the parents who had taken us all in together, even when nobody would—even when the thought of re-homing these three surly brothers who had just lost their mother must have seemed like the least appealing thing in the world at times. They were there for us when nobody else was, only to die that way—it was twisted. Even to this day, it feels like vines curling in my stomach, the painful press of memory and grief weighing heavy on my shoulders.
I make my way into my room. No point standing around feeling sorry for myself about it—Theo would never have stood for that. No, I can almost hear his voice telling us that that wasn’t how we raised you.
But maybe Jake is right. Maybe there’s something about getting involved with this woman that is going to land us all in trouble. Because there’s got to be a reason she left everything behind to bring her daughter out here, especially for the first time. And her writing this story on us could leave us vulnerable to having shit out there we don’t want the rest of the world to know…
I push the thoughts to the back of my mind. I’m the only one who seems to be capable of not overthinking this, and I am not going to lose that title anytime soon. No, when I said that all I wanted was a little fun—and that seemed to be exactly where she was too—I meant it. I don’t want to forget that.
And I don’t want to forget the look on her face when she pulled back from that kiss either. Because there’s something about seeing her that needy, that wanting, that does a number on my nervous system—and I’m not sure I want her to know about the power she has over me just yet.