Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“Where are you going?” I murmured, feeling the warm body beside mine shift.
Blinking my eyes open, I could just make out her silhouette in the darkness on the side of the bed. “I need to go get Samantha.”
I bolted upright. “Why? What’s wrong? What happened?
” Had the twins called her? I hadn’t heard the phone go off, but after two rounds of sex, I was feeling the lack of sleep as well as my age.
Hard. It was a good thing Maisy did not ask for another round, because my dick was not rising to the occasion any time soon.
I turned the lamp on next to the bed as I heard her moving around in the dark. She was starting to get dressed. I got up, too, to look for my pareo.
“No, it’s nothing. Go back to bed.”
Holding the tan sarong in my hand, I ran around the side of the bed to stop her in her tracks. “Mase, baby. Talk to me. What’s going on?”
She bit her lip. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.” I had no idea what that meant, and waited patiently for her to continue. “Since the day she was born, I’ve never slept away from her! As much as I love being with you and you holding me, I…”
I understood. “You want her here, too,” I finished for her when she was obviously struggling to find the right words that didn’t offend me.
Her cheeks reddened. “Are you mad at me?”
I tossed the pareo I had borrowed from Aloiki onto the bed before raising my hands to her face and leaning my forehead to hers. “Never,” I assured her. “Go back to bed, baby. I’ll go get her.”
“No,” she shook her head. “There’s no reason for you to be up—”
“First of all, there is no way in fuck that you are wandering down to the barn at night while I stay snuggled up in bed.” I lifted my lips to kiss her forehead.
“Not happening. Secondly, it is my job to ensure you have everything in life that will make you happy and safe. If you prefer Samantha here, if that will make you feel better, then I will go get her.” I kissed her lips.
“But eventually we’re going to have to figure out another bedroom for her. ”
During my absence, Aloiki had kicked Lucifer to the barn to claim the bedroom next to his and Lu’s as a nursery. Maybe I could do the same to the one of the bedrooms on either side of mine, and perhaps even claim the bathroom, too. The others could take a piss out a window for all I cared.
“Are you sure? I don’t mind—”
“I do,” I interrupted. “Get back into bed. I’ll be back with her soon.”
After tucking her under the covers and kissing her again, I picked up my sarong and headed towards the door. I had just cracked it open when I heard a soft, “Tangaloa?”
I glanced back to the bed. “Yeah, baby?”
“Mahalo.”
“A‘ole pilikia,” I responded with a smile.
The mile-plus hike down to the barn in the middle of the night wasn’t pleasant, and I certainly was not going to make Maisy walk it with or without me.
Fuck that. Besides, the walk would be good for me.
I still had a lot to process. Between Kayl’s betrayal and Maisy’s revelations, plus what could arguably be categorized as the best sex of my life, it had been a hell of a few days.
I was almost to the barn when I realized I wasn’t walking alone. It was a damn good thing the moon was so bright tonight, because I likely would not have survived the heart attack if I hadn’t recognized the twins right away.
“Lesū Kristo!” I shouted loudly into the night. “What the fuck?!” One was walking on either side of me, having snuck up behind me and fallen into step without me even realizing it right away. I stopped walking. “Why are you out here? Where’s Samantha?”
“Relax,” the one on my left waved off.
“She’s with Trudy,” the other one said.
My head swiveled back and forth between the two of them.
Neither was wearing their cuts, so I couldn’t even mentally dub one Thing One or Thing Two.
I was tired and startled enough that I desperately wanted Aloiki to follow through on his threat to tattoo one and not the other so we could tell them apart.
I pinched my nose. “Who the fuck is Trudy? Are you having one of the Club Cunts watch her?” I didn’t know all their names. Actually, I only knew one or two names, and they weren’t even the ones I had slept with.
“Of course not,” the one on my right said, his voice appalled.
“We would never trust her life with a Cunt,” the one on my left added in the exact same tone.
I lowered my hand. “Then where is my daughter?” I demanded. I didn’t even realize until later that the title I’d used publicly claimed her.
“We told you,” the left one said.
“She’s with Trudy,” the right one said.
Holy fuck. I was getting a headache. It would be so much easier if they were just one person instead of making my eyeballs play a tennis match between them.
“For the last time, who the fuck is Trudy?” I growled.
Turned out, Trudy was a tan, rust, and black nine-foot carpet python. I stood in the doorway in shock and terror at the sight of my little girl curled around her like she was a fucking stuffed snake from the toy shop.
“What the fuck?!” I barely had the wherewithal not to shout. I was not overly familiar with snakes, though I know enough not to startle one. What I didn’t know was how to safely get my daughter away from one when they were both sound asleep. At least, I was pretty sure that snakes slept.
“Better than any guard dog,” the twins said proudly together.
I had no idea if they were geniuses or clinically insane. Maybe a bit of both.
As comfortable—and arguably safe—as Samantha looked, I still had promised her mother that I would bring her back up to the house. “Um, how do I…?”
I had never been in the twins’ bedroom before.
They’d moved into the loft when Aloiki had first hired them, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why it looked funny up here.
There was only one bed, which Samantha and, uh, Trudy now occupied.
One bed, two brothers. I tried my damnedest not to judge situations.
They were adults and they could do as they pleased, but it made me damn curious about their past.
Together, they walked over to a large tackle box—and I swore the damn thing moved before either of them touched it. The fuck? What were they keeping in there?
A small trapdoor at the bottom of the trunk opened up, and a second later, the fattest rat I had ever seen managed to squeeze its way out of that tiny hole. And just before the twins closed the trapdoor again, I saw a human finger try to follow it out.
My eyebrows shot to the barn roof. “Do I want to know?”
They sat down in unison on top of the tackle box lid. “No.” Lesū Kristo, and these two had been babysitting my daughter all day?
The rat squeaked. The snake—Trudy—picked its head up.
I had no idea if it was accurate, but I remember watching or maybe reading somewhere that snakes didn’t have good hearing.
But they were experts at detecting prey and sensing heat.
Samantha did not budge as Trudy slithered out of the bed, slowly working her way onto the floor.
Fuck, she was long. She had a good width to her too, maybe the size of a beer can.
The rat continued to squeak while fighting to escape the room.
What the hell was in that trunk that had scared the rat? Or should I ask, who?
Trudy struck, and in a single heartbeat, had herself coiled around the rat.
The twins preened like proud parents. With the snake thoroughly occupied—I hoped—I skirted around the foot of the bed to gather up Samantha. She barely budged as I brought her to my chest, resting her cheek on my shoulder.
“Uh, mahalo. For, uh, you know, babysitting,” I said to the twins awkwardly.
“Any time!” they chorused, and with identical smiles, waved at me.
We were slow moving the next morning, but I managed to get Samantha and Maisy occupied before Aloiki hunted me down. He wanted to go see Kalea. I was a bit surprised he hadn’t yesterday while I was talking with Maisy, but I didn’t question him.
We parked in her driveway behind her cage. I dismounted, ready to head to the door, but then realized Aloiki was still sitting on his bike, staring at the house.
“I haven’t been a good brother.” I was shocked by his words.
Aloiki wasn’t the sort who doubted himself.
“Makuahine and Makuakāne were great parents, and suddenly I had a sixteen year old to raise. I let you step up because you were the more reliable of the two of us, but I never thanked you for it.” His hard eyes fell on me.
“And I’m not going to now. I let you seduce and marry her. That was thanks enough.”
I snorted, because only Aloiki would view my failed marriage to his sister as some grand appreciation on his part.
“I didn’t see it. With Kayl,” Aloiki added. His eyes went back to the house. “I’ve been pissed at her for hurting you, but she was still my sister. But it turns out she needed both of us, and we weren’t there.”
Aloiki was echoing my exact thoughts. “He was our friend since we were eight years old. Why wouldn’t we have trusted him? Until a few days ago, I couldn’t tell you a single instance where I didn’t trust him. It’s going to take a while for both of us to get over it.”
“And her,” he tipped his chin towards the house. “We both falsely blamed her.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. Both of us only wore our shorts and cuts for this ride. “We also both lied to her and kept a lot of secrets from her. If we hadn’t, she wouldn’t have kept certain secrets from us.”
Aloiki looked back at me. “Fair enough.” His jaw tightened. “I feel like I keep failing, and I don’t like it, brother. First Nishi and now Kalea. How do we fix this?”
“I talked to Neo and Mako this morning over breakfast. Neo is going to transfer all of Kayl’s assets to Kalea. It won’t make up for what he did or took, but it’s a start.”
Aloiki nodded his approval. “And Mako?”