Chapter 21 Voss
VOSS
A shadow falls over me, and I look up. Jessica stands over where I’m lying on the couch in the loggia outside the bedrooms where she and her friends hang out. Since they moved to the Estate, we’ve all been hanging out here. More than once, we’ve even had Dad here.
“Hey,” I greet.
She gently places her hand on Axl’s back. We’re having skin-on-skin time, so he’s asleep on my chest, and we have a blanket draped over us to keep us warm. Not that it’s particularly cold. And we’re in the sunlight shining in from the big window to make sure he gets some vitamin D.
I don’t try to stop my constant movements with Axl. They’re equivalent to rocking him. Or one of his many carriers that vibrate. I suppose there’s an upside to moving constantly.
“Not working today?” she asks.
“I am working.” I hold up my tablet. “I can work anywhere.”
“Ah. You just choose to take up a third of one floor in the glass building, do you?” she asks as she drops into a chair.
“Yep. Privilege of being the king’s son.”
She snorts.
“How’re your studies going?” I ask.
Jessica slouches, sighing heavily. “God, I’m so damn exhausted.”
“No one promised law school was going to be easy.”
She grunts, and I can’t stop my laughter in response.
“So what’s up?”
“What makes you think something is up?”
“I can count on one hand how many times you and I have hung out alone,” I say. “This is the first.”
“How do you know I don’t just want baby snuggles?”
“Do you?”
Jessica looks at Axl. “Well, yes, actually. But I don’t want to interrupt your bonding time.”
“Come get him,” I say. “I can bond with him anytime.”
She grins as she gets back to her feet. Carefully, she picks Axl up with the blanket and simultaneously wraps him as she does. He’s all bundled by the time she has him cuddled to her chest.
Everyone has a baby face. Not a face that’s perpetually young and innocent, but an expression that covers their face when they look at a baby. That familiar look covers Jessica’s expression as she looks into Axl’s sleeping face.
She sighs, sitting back in the chair she’d taken a few minutes ago. “He’s so damn cute. How does he look just like you and your brothers and not at all like Lor?”
“You think he still looks like Loren?” I ask as I swing my legs around to sit up.
“Yes. Oh my god, it’s almost disturbing.”
“I’m not sure if that’s an insult, but you best not be insulting my kid.”
Jessica laughs. “No. I just mean it’s uncanny, which is kind of weird since Loren doesn’t have a baby face at all, and yet, he’s all I see.”
She’s not wrong. Loren is all I see when I look at Axl, too. There are worse people he could look like, so I’m not upset.
“How’s Brek doing with him?” Jessica asks.
“Fine. Why?”
She looks at me and raises one delicate eyebrow. “Fine? Just fine?”
“I’m not sure what kind of information you’re fishing for, so be more specific and I’ll give you a better answer.”
Jessica rolls her eyes. “You two are dating, yeah?”
“Yes, though the word feels weird since we haven’t gone on a single date.”
“Are you going to skip it and just go with boyfriends, then?”
“I don’t truly see the difference.”
“When you’re dating a girl, does that automatically make them your girlfriend?”
“Unless specified otherwise, yes.”
She’s amused, but honestly, I question how she dates. Maybe that’s why she and Myro didn’t come clean for so long. Dating means something different to her.
“So you’re together. That’s what you’re saying.” There’s no question in her statement.
“Yes,” I confirm.
“I’m guessing that this isn’t casual… boyfriends.”
“Casual boyfriends. Man, I can’t keep up with you. Do you have your own definitions for labels or what?”
She huffs. “Are you aiming for marriage? Family? A forever commitment?”
“Isn’t that the reason to date someone?”
“No. It can be casual.”
“I think you’re using words to describe what I call hooking up, which, by definition, is emotionless and stringless. It’s transactional pleasure.”
“Yes, we’re using different terms. Now that we’re on the same page… answer my question.”
“I already did. The only reason to commit to someone at all, even in the first step of boyfriends, is with the intent to make a life together.”
“Is Brek on the same page?”
I’m about to say yes when I think that perhaps he uses words much like hers. Maybe his idea of boyfriends isn’t with the intention of reaching forever together.
“You haven’t had that conversation,” Jessica guesses.
“I haven’t, but I suppose only because it didn’t occur to me that he doesn’t think about these things in the same way I do.”
“I think he might,” Jessica says. “I’ve observed that guys love to pretend they’re all about being a player, but in reality, it’s women who prefer to keep it casual.
My besties, for example. With the exception of Haze, maybe, none of them has ever wanted casual.
Briar and Levis have been planning a family since they were six.
Briar more than Levis, but still. Oakley has always wanted to be the center of someone’s world. ”
“He certainly got that.”
She snorts. “Haze… I think he spent so long not wanting anything because anything he wanted might cause his family to turn their bullying onto him that he didn’t actually know what he wanted. Thus, the misunderstanding and whatever with Imry at first.”
“And Brek?”
Jessica shakes her head. “Has he told you about his parents?”
“I’ve gleaned some things over the last couple of years, but he doesn’t seem interested in talking about them, and I’m not about to force it.”
She inclines her head. “Good. Don’t. Suffice it to say, he’s not had a great home life.
No matter what he did, he was never good enough.
The Hollerans pride themselves on being the best at everything, and Brek rarely comes out first. He does really fucking well at everything he puts his mind to, but there’s usually someone who manages to outdo him, which means he’s never good enough for his parents. ”
I frown. “That’s shit. They should be fed to the pig.”
Jessica smirks. She doesn’t realize I’m serious. Bruno will eat anything, except shoes. He doesn’t like shoes. “What has he told you about… himself?”
“Do you think we sit in silence?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes. “So he told you he’s aroace?”
“Demiromantic and graysexual. Yes.”
I’m relieved when she smiles. “Then I think you know why Brek never truly thought about a future outside of the six of us. Being aromantic, for him, meant he didn’t need or want a partner. He wanted his best friends.”
“I’m pretty confident that he wants to be with me.”
“He does,” she agrees. Her eyes meet mine, and she smiles. “I think being with you woke something up inside him. It’s made him rethink how he sees his future.”
“This is a very long way to tell me something, Jessica.”
“You’re so impatient.”
“What is it you want to know? Out with it, woman.”
She glares in my direction. “You have a kid. I want to know how he’s handling that.
Is he warming up to parenting? Or are you two keeping the two parts of your lives separate?
If you’re going to be together, you can’t keep Axl separate.
We’ve never truly had reason to be around babies before Emerson, so I can’t honestly imagine how he’s handling this, Voss.
I’m worried that somehow Axl’s existence will scare him away from you, and I want to know how you’re going to handle that. ”
“See? Was that so difficult to say?”
Her lips press together as she glares at me.
“He doesn’t volunteer time with Axl. He doesn’t initiate picking him up.
He doesn’t change him or bathe him or feed him.
However, he also doesn’t move away when I have Axl.
He’ll cuddle up with us. He has no complaints when I bring Axl into his room at night, even when Axl wakes up.
He doesn’t talk to Axl, but he still says goodbye and hello before leaving and coming back.
He’ll hold Axl when I place him in his arms, and he no longer looks alarmed. ”
Jessica laughs. “I can imagine that expression.”
“Oh yeah. I wish I’d taken a picture. Axl might as well have been a bomb. He was absolutely terrified.”
She continues to grin.
“We’re doing fine, Jessica. It’s slow, and I think we’re both okay with that. Axl needs a lot of attention, which means Brek doesn’t have my full attention, and I think that suits him well and gives him time to examine how he feels on any given day. But we’re doing good. We’re happy.”
She sighs. “Good. We worry about him.”
“I know you do. He knows you do too.”
Jessica nods.
“He loves that you worry about him, but I think it feels suffocating at times.”
“Yeah, I know. We’re trying to back off a little.
We recently had a conversation, and it’s brought us back into a good place.
All six of us. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still worry about him.
Even considering the hell that Haze lived in, we’ve all worried about Brek more than each other.
Haze was always strong enough to protect himself.
Brek was broken down from a very young age, and no matter how we tried to keep him together, I’m not sure he was ever really whole. You know?”
“I do,” I agree. “I think you’re right. I understand why you all hover and push the way you do, but I think that puts more pressure on him.”
“That’s why I’m glad you’re in his life now,” Jessica says. “He told us you helped him understand the shift in his aroace. He didn’t want to talk about it at all with us, but he was willing to talk about it with you.”
“That hurt, didn’t it?”
She gives me a sad smile. “It did, yeah. But it’s not about us.
It’s about Brek. He needs something all his own, and that’s you.
That’s why I’m asking all this. He’s let you in, and he’s never let anyone else in, Voss.
No one outside of the five of us. Not to put pressure on you, but that’s a really big deal.
That’s why I’m asking about your future with him. ”
“If I told you it was just hooking up? Then what?”
“Then I’d have to kick you in the teeth because he’s let you in and that means something to him, even if on a subconscious level, and you’d need to get your head out of your ass so you don’t hurt him.”
“Wow. One-sided concern.”
She rolls her eyes.
My phone pings, and I look down. My smile climbs when I see a text from Brek. It fades when I see that his car won’t start. He assures me he’s got a ride home, so I let it drop.
“Brek’s car won’t start,” I say.
Jessica tilts her head. “That’s a new car.”
“Yep, I’m sending a message to Rod in the garage. He’ll go take a look at it.”
“Rod.”
I meet her eyes once I’ve sent Rod a text. “You do realize there’s something like 800 employees here, right? Including the vendors and contractors. You can’t possibly know all of them.”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
“It is.”
We spend the next hour talking about the employees. Just those that work in the outer buildings—the garages and the stables. The landscapers. The gardens. The barns. All the places that she doesn’t see on a daily basis.
When I glance at my phone, I realize it’s been an hour. I send Brek a text asking him where he’s at. No answer.
“What’s wrong?” Jessica asks.
I shake my head as I call him. The phone rings and rings and rings before going to voicemail. “Nothing,” I answer.
“Brek home?”
“No, but he should be. An hour ago, when he texted, he said his ride was already there. It’s been three times the time it takes for him to get from his office home.”
“So call him.”
I meet her eyes, frowning. “I did, sunshine.”
“He didn’t answer.”
“No, I’m sure everything is fine.” Even as I say it, I continue to text him and wait. I call and wait. I allow another thirty minutes to go by before the knot in my stomach is too big to ignore.
“Where is he?” Jessica asks.
“I can find out, but don’t ask questions. Now isn’t the time for that.”
She certainly doesn’t like that answer. Her lips press together tightly, but she doesn’t say anything. Only nods.
I tap through my apps until I find the one where I can track Brek’s phone location. There’s a very long list of people I can track, and I turn them all off except Brek. Then the map comes up. It takes eight very long seconds before his dot shows up on my screen.
He’s moving in the wrong fucking direction. West on route 40 instead of east. Away from Van Doren Estates, and he’s been heading that way for a long time.
“Where is he?” Jessica repeats.
The dot is on the move. Traveling at sixty-eight miles per hour.
“I’m going to find out.” I drop the phone into my pocket and get to my feet. I take Axl from Jessica and head for the nursery.
“I’m going with you,” Jessica says as she follows me down the hall.
“Fine. Keep calling him.” There’s a nanny in the nursery, just as I knew there’d be. I hand her Axl. “I need to go. Don’t let anyone take him. He’s due for a feeding in an hour.”
“Yes, sir,” she answers.
“Thanks.”
I don’t bother telling anyone where I’m going as I stop in my room and grab a shirt. Then, I’m racing down the stairs to my car with Jessica on my heels.
The phone goes in the cradle, and I have the map up. The dot has moved from the highway, going about ten miles an hour slower. We speed down the road after him in silence.
Jessica continues to place call after call to Brek. Her phone isn’t on speaker, but I can still hear the ringing before it’s interrupted by the click of his voicemail.
The dot stops moving. I continue to speed toward it.
By the time we pull into the parking lot of a truck stop, I feel sick and panicky. “Keep calling,” I instruct as I throw the car in park and grab my phone.
Jessica remains on my heels as I zoom in on the dot and move toward it. My heart races until all I can hear is my pulse in my ears.
We’re moving toward the trees.
Jessica continues to dial. Her phone lights up with Brek’s face on it as the call waits to be answered. Over and over and over.
We break into the treeline and pause. There’s buzzing. We look around the trees, waiting to see something awful. His body. Blood.
A light breaks through the leaves on the ground, and I walk toward it. Bending down, I dig it out. A phone. With Jessica’s face flashing on the screen. The call ends, and the screen reads 61 missed calls.
“Where is he?” Jessica whispers as she stops at my side.
The screen on Brek’s phone turns off. I look around the trees, dread overtaking me.
“I don’t know.”