50 #5
You don’t have to do that, I think, hoping she’ll be looking into my mind.
She is.
I know. I do not have to do anything. I do what I want.
Do you? Do you really want to be sitting straight enough to make your back hurt? Will you not relax?
“I am,” she snaps out loud, and all heads whip her way.
“Fuck’s sake. Cooper, what did you say now?” Scotty sighs, rubbing at his forehead.
I glower at his assumption, but, to be fair, I’m aware that I am a common instigator and this is yet again my doing, so I only huff and say, “She doesn’t look comfortable.”
Everyone’s eyes slide back to our Bonded.
She scowls. “I am perfectly comfortable. Stop staring, or I will pluck all your eyeballs out and make cocktails with them.”
“Nice try, Havoc, baby, but I know you love my eyes too much to do that.”
“And mine!” Tiger pipes up, widening his blues and leaning over Alby to shove them in HC’s face for emphasis.
“Yes. So much so that I could be tempted to make said cocktail for other reasons, too,” she deadpans.
Gawking, Tiger stage-whispers, “Holy shit, did Ezzy just make a joke?!”
Lips tightening, Vengeance goes back to eating painstakingly elegantly, always dabbing her spotless lips after every few of bites.
I exchange a look with the others, brows up to get my point across.
Scotty blows out a huge breath, shakes his head, but thankfully agrees with me and speaks up. “Ezla, Love . . . you can relax with us. We don’t give a shit how you sit unless you look uncomfortable, which, currently, you do.”
Her scorching-hot glare slowly lifts to him from her plate, fist clenching around her knife like she’s imagining stabbing it into his forehead a couple hundred times.
His gaze remains steady on her, unwavering in the face of her silent death threat.
“If you’re really comfortable, that’s fine.
But this is a family dinner.” I don’t refute that.
We are a family. An unexpected one, but a family, nonetheless.
“A true one,” he adds without speaking of the disease of a sperm donor she was promised no mention of, but we all know he’s meaning to get it through to her that that man is not her family, that he’s not the example of how any member of one’s family should behave.
Her gaze roams around the table, and Alby goes bright red and wide-eyed when it finds him, a reaction he continues to display even though it’s almost been a month since he met Ezla now.
Then again, we all still have extreme reactions to her, and I don’t think that will ever fade.
We have something special here. Something that will never lessen or get old.
Her brow crinkles. “But you are not my family.”
Ouch.
Matching winces crease the expressions around the table.
But I don’t think she actually meant to be cruel there—it’s more that she’s not thinking about this right.
Scotty confirms he believes the same when he says, “Love, you don’t have to be blood to be family.
We can choose our family. Especially if your given one is .
. .” He doesn’t need to say anything else and can’t without breaking his promise.
Vengeance considers this. “I did not know that.”
Something pained flashes through Scotty’s eyes to mirror the cinching in my chest.
“Well, now you do!” Tiger beams, a wide smile replacing his own sorrowful expression. “And you’re the heart of ours.”
“I do not have a heart.”
Tate smirks. “Of course you do—I have it.”
She glares. “You cannot claim something I do not have to give.”
His eyes darken, and he sinks his teeth into his lower lip. “Hmmm . . . but I know you have one—I could feel it against me when you were grinding all over my cock.”
Alby hides his face in his hands.
“Hm.” Vengeance selects her favourite dismissive response when she doesn’t want to give any more input.
“Yeah . . . it’s mine, alright,” Tate rumbles, obsessively taking in every atom that makes up our Bonded.
“It is not.”
“Then it will be soon.”
“No.”
“Havoc, baby, you know I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth and off the edge—”
“Okayyyyy!” Tiger interrupts before this can escalate further.
Honestly, even though Scotty’s the one who’s always attempting to keep everyone civil and defuse situations, it’s his younger brother who’s consistently successful without fault.
“We’re all crazily in love with Ezzy! So let’s talk about the ball we’re taking our Bonded to—"
“No. I take you. No one takes me anywhere.”
“I beg to differ, Havoc.”
“Same, Love.”
“Me too, Wifey!”
“I also agree—it’s us escorting you,” I add my own opinion, and, taking a page out of Tiger’s Plans-to-Woo-Our-Bonded book, I drawl, “Is that not what royalty deserves?”
“Hmm . . . I do see where you are coming from.”
“Yes, Wifey! And just think of the way we’ll get out the limo—”
As Tiger launches into an enthusiastic monologue of exactly how our “fabulous night of magical wonder” will go, I keep my eyes on Ezla, and I don’t miss the way her spine has loosened for the first time, nor the way her lips twitch.
As though she could almost smile as she listens to him speak.