Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Freedom Mansion
Eden
“Tea.” I place the I NEED TEA RIGHT MEOW cat mug on the nightstand.
Robyn pauses just for a moment in her frantic scramble through her suitcase, before shaking her head.
“I don’t have time.” She runs her hand through her tangled hair.
“I can’t be late for this meeting. Why didn’t anyone wake me?
Shit, why didn’t I set an alarm? I blame Shay’s misguided challenge that we should try to christen every single room in one night.
It was a valiant effort, even if we failed. ”
I don’t reply.
Partly, because my mind has short-circuited on her rejecting tea — ridiculous.
Mainly because the words burn my throat.
I didn’t speak until I was twelve. It took years of support from my twin and adoptive parents to put more than two words together.
I cross my arms.
I’m dressed in a gray t-shirt and joggers. The wooden floor is cold against my bare soles.
My neck and shoulders are tense with pain. My temples throb.
I squint against the light, shuttering my expression to hide how much the light is hurting me.
The others don’t need to worry about my bullshit today. I can handle it.
I’ve always coped with pain.
The post-concussion syndrome from my injury on the ice wasn’t caused by a single fracture to my skull but by all the other blows before that.
I can no longer skate because of the damage of beatings when I was a kid that cracked, shattered, then burned me to ash, before I was reborn again from the flames.
The bedroom — our bedroom — is painted sky blue.
A mirrored closet runs along one wall. A door leads through to a luxurious en suite. I can hear the cascade of water inside the en suite from the shower.
Shay must be taking a shower. He’ll be out in a couple of minutes because he’s as quick at washing himself as he is at skating. He should compete professionally.
Do speed showering contests exist?
Robyn definitely wouldn’t win.
She’d be better in the indulgently long bubble bath contest, especially if they include being served by naked men with champagne.
Shay is never more settled and happy in himself than when he’s playing Robyn’s servant, kneeling by her bath and handfeeding her chocolates.
Except, he’s not playing.
He’s fucking owned by both Robyn and D’Angelo. I don’t know if they realize just how much they could wreck my brother.
It scares me.
Having moved in together, however, some of the fear has melted from me.
My brother and I could always be kicked out, but D’Angelo designed this building just for us.
He built an entire library with a nook that feels like a nest.
I used my first salary to buy myself a single bookcase. Yet D’Angelo has gifted me a library.
Can I finally trust Shay’s ownership and my new love?
The four-poster bed that I slept in last night with rumpled silver silk sheets and piles of velvet cushions dominates the center of the room.
Metal handcuffs that are lined with leather do in fact hang from the oak headboard. In fact there are what look like handcuff points for restraints on both the headboard and baseboard that made Shay’s pupils dilate when he saw them.
A mural of an oak tree spreads across the far wall with painted robins hopping in its branches. D’Angelo had it specially commissioned by his artist friend.
He has a lot of friends like Shay used to.
Possibly, real ones.
Only, Shay’s mates were never true friends. They used him, and he let them because he wanted to please them. He was scared that he’d be rejected, abandoned, or turned over to people who would hurt us even worse (like we were by our parents), if he didn’t.
No one wanted to be my friend.
Sometimes, I’d watch people in class at high school, assessing how easily they’d chat to each other. They made small talk that I never understood.
I’d tilt my head, as they joked and laughed.
Back at home, when I was alone in the bedroom that I shared with Cody, I’d practice laughing in a mirror.
But silently.
I didn’t understand the other pupils’ jokes but I could learn to laugh along. Perhaps, one day they would notice me and then I could pretend and share my laugh that was normally caught behind my teeth.
Except, they never did.
I’m learning that isn’t friendship.
Plus, Shay’s desperation to please, his clown class act, wasn’t either.
Cody and D’Angelo are showing me that not in words but by their actions.
I trace over the robin tattoo on my arm.
My Robyn.
The woman who I’d burn the world for.
Should I tell Robyn that I’m busy categorizing my Burn List?
The dark romance book that I read last week would advise that she’d find it hot to know the people I’m ready to burn for her sake.
My brow furrows.
Is dark romance a reliable guide to women? Would Robyn prefer to know who I would murder for her, over drinking my tea?
Unlike Shay who has dated and fucked a lot of people, my Robyn is my first girlfriend.
My first kiss. My first everything.
With her, I no longer feel like only my twin’s shadow.
I stroke the tattoo thoughtfully.
The bedroom is flooded with pale sun from both the arched windows that look over the orange rose garden below but also the skylights.
Shay lay on the bed last night in wonder staring up at the moon and stars.
He grasped my hand; I could feel the tremor running through him. “We can stargaze every night, Dee. Jude gifted us the bloody stars.”
I focus on the tea, nudging the mug towards Robyn again.
In a panic, she ignores it, however, along with the breakfast tray of muffins, pastries, and fruit that I got up at dawn to bake.
My throat feels like it is closing up. I can’t force out any words.
Waking up this morning in the same bed with Robyn in our first home together is like a promise that Shay and I have finally found a place that we belong.
A promise that I am finally a real person.
My hands clench at my sides.
I don’t know what to do with this emotion.
For most of my life, I have been numb. It’s Shay who is filled with an intense eagerness to experience everything that life can throw at him.
All I want is to protect him. To make him smile.
And now, to do the same for Robyn.
Yet my therapist has been asking me for months about what I want.
What I need.
How am I meant to know?
Only, when I woke up this morning in this new house that D’Angelo said belongs to all of us, with my arms around Robyn, being able to feel my brother alive and safe, maybe I began to know.
Robyn is only dressed in pink socks, a red thong, and a mismatched white sports bra.
She is crouched next to the polka dot suitcase with clothes strewn across the floor.
I pick up a strawberry, before holding it firmly in front of her mouth.
Robyn stills and then glances at me sheepishly. “Thanks.”
She bites into the strawberry, licking my fingers as she eats it.
I draw in a sharp breath.
She sucks my fingers into her mouth, pretending that she is merely sucking the juice from them. When she looks at me from underneath her eyelashes, my cock hardens.
I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, before reluctantly pulling back and reaching for the mug. “Drink. Careful, it’s hot.”
“I’d obey him if I were you,” D’Angelo drawls. “He gets all English and bossy about wasting Earl Grey.”
Robyn sips the tea. “Hmm, perfect.”
I glow with pride.
D’Angelo looks elegant, sprawled in a highbacked duck egg blue armchair by the window. Morning sunlight streams over his tousled hair and the diamond cufflinks that he is adjusting in one of his favorite navy suits.
He crosses his legs. “Interesting look you’re going for there, principessa.”
Robyn draws back and collapses with a groan over her suitcase. “I’m sure that my clothes are cursed. Everything is mismatched. I can’t find anything. Dad will be lucky if I don’t simply turn up in my hockey puck bikini.”
D’Angelo’s eyes light up at the same time as mine do.
Before either of us can say anything, she holds up her hand.
“Yep, I wore it once because I lost a bet with Neve. Nope, you can’t see me in it now.”
“You didn’t say that we couldn’t see you in it later.” D’Angelo smirks. “Something to look forward to after coach busts my balls.”
I carefully place the mug back on the nightstand.
“We don’t know what the crisis is,” Robyn says. “Maybe Dad has called the whole team in.”
D’Angelo fiddles with his right cufflink three times.
“He didn’t. I checked with the rest of the guys in the team chat last night.
They say that they don’t know what’s up.
Grayson wrote that they’ve only heard good things from the staff.
Lucas has connections on the board. He sent me a private message.
He said that there is a lot of pressure on the board because the next games are crucial, but at the same time, they’re as chill as they’ve ever been, which isn’t saying much. ”
Robyn frowns. “This is about Heine.”
D’Angelo’s lips thin. “It’s about me.”
“I laundered and ironed everything,” I blurt, forcing out the words, although it’s hard. “Your clothes had no order. Now, they do. Bottoms on the left. Tops on the right.”
“It sounds like a club I know,” D’Angelo mutters.
“I already hung your dresses in the closet. I’ll sort the rest out for you later and—”
Robyn grabs my hand. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t criticizing. This isn’t your fault. It’s just that I’m not used to things having an order, and…” She gestures at herself. “Clothes chaos is the result of my morning panic.”
“You’re a fashion rebel. I like it.”
D’Angelo snorts.
Robyn tilts up chin. “You hear that? A fashion rebel. If I could only find my pants…”
I pluck an apple off the tray and throw it across to D’Angelo. He casually catches it and takes a crisp bite.
He’s easy to feed. He only eats apples for breakfast.
Like a horse.
Feeding people makes me feel safe because I spent too many years of my childhood scavenging for food, while Shay cried from hunger pains. Too many years terrified that he wouldn’t wake up, when we went to sleep each night.