Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
SILAS
We were gathered around the table.
Yeah, the plan was to pack Brinley’s things and take her back to the club, but I doubted one more meal could hurt all that much.
Seemed a dick move, depriving her of this delicious meal.
God knew Meems would read me the riot act if I did, anyway, and I’d always fancied myself a decently intelligent man.
I knew how to save my own ass, at least.
Brody strolled in five minutes late. Smug smirk on his face when he glanced between me and Brinley who sat on my left.
“Glad to see you could join us.” Meems arched a brow at my middle brother.
He gave her that charming smile. “Had a little something I was attending to at the club.”
Elena spluttered around a sip of her iced tea. “Something? More like a someone, I’m sure.”
He grinned. “A man never tells.”
She barked in incredulity. “Oh, I’ve heard all about your conquests. So gross.”
He waltzed to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and guzzled half of it. “You’re just sad you aren’t getting any.”
A growl ripped out of me, and the dude actually had the decency to look contrite. “Sorry, Prez.”
“Just eat your dinner,” I grunted, and he took his seat while I itched like a fiend in mine.
Trying not to turn my attention to Brinley so I could watch her wrap that tempting mouth around her spoon.
Kept glancing that way, anyway, teetering between the swells of lust that continually erupted when she’d moan around the metal and the fucking gooey feeling I got every time she reached over and helped Kai get a little chunk of food into his mouth.
Most of his stew had spilled out onto his tray, and the kid was using his chubby fingers to try to chase down the little pieces.
Half of them ended up on his shirt.
“Here you go, sweet boy,” she murmured as she hand-fed him a piece of carrot.
I wondered if she’d do the same for me.
“Fank foo,” he told her, showing her the orange, mashed-up mouthful around his tiny, gapped teeth.
“You are welcome, punky boo.” She poked his belly from under his tray.
“I no punky boo.”
She tickled him a little more. “Yes, you are, you’re my little punky boo.”
He squealed in delight, and the air was shifting again.
An ebb and flow that only amplified with each pass.
Energy subdued but far too alive.
Thick and murky yet swimming with light.
Brinley groaned and sat back in her chair and set both of her hands over her stomach.
She’d changed clothes, dumped that dress, though what she’d pulled on wasn’t any safer for my sanity. Black leggings and an oversized beige tee, cropped and with the neck cut out of it.
One bare shoulder peeked out to taunt me into rebellion.
“Oh my goodness, Meems, I might say this every night, but that one was by far the best. I’m so stuffed I think I could burst,” Brinley told her.
Meems beamed.
Brinley might as well have told her she loved her.
“Wait until you try the pie. It’s apple.”
Of course, it was.
Clearly, my entire family was trying to drive me off a cliff.
Brinley groaned. “Sweet torture.”
She didn’t know the half of it.
“I’ll slice it,” Elena offered, jumping up from her seat. She danced into the kitchen, twirling as she went, sliding all over the wooden floors on her fuzzy socks.
Affection had me shaking my head. “You’re going to slip and fall on your ass.”
She swung open the freezer door and pulled out a gallon of vanilla ice cream as she did a little dip. “Pssh… You know nothing, dear brother. I am the epitome of grace.”
Brinley peeked over at me with those hurricane eyes. Amusement and warmth and that protective affinity streamed out of her.
And somehow, she was the one who saw I felt exactly the same.
My chest tightened.
Tightened to a gutting extreme as I got stuck there under the power of her stare.
Brinley finally pulled away, clearing her throat as she pushed from the table. “I’ll help.”
I did my best not to follow her trail as she moved into the kitchen area.
A vain attempt since Elena tossed the foil cover off the fresh baked pie, dipped a fork into it, and brought it to Brinley’s lips. “Here, taste.”
Brinley obliged, taking it into her mouth, the longest groan rolling out of her.
My brain computed it as the same damned sounds she made every time she came. Like what she was actually moaning was my name.
“This is literal heaven,” she muttered, trying to cover her mouth as she chewed, and gave Meems her baker’s praise.
Meems shrugged, eyes darting to me for a beat before they were back on Brinley. “Stick around for a while and you’ll know how to bake one of those for yourself.”
My logic recoiled against it while my stupid heart shouted, ‘yes, please’.
Brinley lightly chuckled. “I am no baker, Meems. You’d better not get your hopes up so much when it comes to me.”
Slyness crept in Meems’s features. “Oh, sweet one, my expectations are high.”
“I pie!” Kai smacked both hands on his tray, a lucky deterrent from the implications my grandmother was all too eager to toss around.
“Don’t worry, it’s on its way!” Elena sang, cutting a tiny piece and spooning a dollop of ice cream onto the top.
“I get pie, Wena?”
She danced back up to the dining table. Tapped his nose as she set the small serving in front of him. “Absolutely! Because we only get the best things in this house, isn’t that right?”
Elena headed back to the counter, and the second she walked away, Kai picked up the little plastic bowl and basically buried his face in it.
Laughing, I reached across Brinley’s empty chair so I could help him. “How about we do it like this, buddy?” I situated the chunky plastic baby spoon into his chubby hand.
Then Brinley was back, setting a plate of pie and ice cream in front of Brody. “There you go, Brody.”
“You spoil me,” he teased with a grin. But it was soft.
No question, Brinley’d had an impact on every person in my family.
“We all deserve to get spoiled every once in a while,” she said.
“Be careful, or we’re going to get used to it.”
He sent her a wink, though there was nothing flirty to it.
Just approval.
The truth that she fit.
She shifted and set one in front of me.
I didn’t know if it was her or the mouthwatering scent of the pie that assaulted my senses.
Apples and almonds and cream.
She eased back and started to round my chair.
And I felt the faintest flutter of fingertips running through my hair at the nape of my neck.
The only girl in the world who was gaining the power to touch my soul.
I guess I should have fucking expected this penalty.
“You don’t need to do those,” I mumbled as I slowly crept up behind Brinley where she was facing away at the sink, handwashing the dishes.
In that moment, I felt exactly what I was.
The villain.
A wraith.
A reaper sent to slay.
I stopped when there was five feet between us because I wasn’t sure I could get any closer and still get out what needed to be said.
Trying to work up the nerve to do what was right when every molecule that made up my being swore that it was wrong.
Half the lights had been cut, and only a bare glow from the fixture over the sink illuminated the space.
Everyone else had piled in the family room to watch a show with Kai before his bedtime, except for Brody who had gone running back to the club so he could devolve back into the revelry he thrived on.
Head down, Brinley shifted on her bare feet. “I don’t mind.”
Her voice was quieted. Muted. Filled with a timidness I’d never heard in it before.
Like she knew what was coming and she hated it every bit as much as me.
“Didn’t bring you here so you had to work.” I grunted it into the dense air.
How her laugh was both throaty and tinkling, I didn’t know. From over her shoulder, she cast me an affected smile, those wild curls swirling all around her stunning face. “I’m just earning my keep, remember?”
There was no taunt to it. It was a true question. Wondering what was really happening here.
“You are more than sufficient.”
She was too much. Too gorgeous and too good and too real.
A frown notched deep into her brow. “But I’m not, though, am I?”
I guess she had figured out how to read me in a way that no one else could. She already knew what was coming.
“It’s me who’s not enough, Brinley.”
She released a choked sound. “That’s strange because when I’m with you, I can feel all the empty places that have been aching inside me being filled. And it feels like enough. Like more than I ever hoped or expected.”
Torment gnarled my insides.
“I’m not the kind of man you come to rely on, Brinley. Not the kind of man you should tie yourself to.”
She huffed with a shake of her head as she rinsed the last pot then set it into the drainer. “Probably not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”
Fuck. What had we done? Hating each other one minute. Then somehow, in the blink of an eye, we’d ended up here. But I guess that’s why we fought each other so hard at the beginning.
Our spirits had known the danger the other posed.
I hesitated.
Warred.
Unsure of what I should tell her.
What I could let her in on.
I refused to burden her with the full truth of who I was, but I knew that I could trust her fully.
And it was time to stop keeping her completely in the dark.
Unaware and unprepared.
I needed her to know that this was coming up on a quick dead end.
“It goes down three nights from now.” Every word was gravel.
Brinley bowed, hands curling into the edge of the counter as she faced away.
Breaths shallow as she dealt with what should have been a boatload of relief yet so clearly hit her with the force of a sledgehammer.
Both of us were fully aware of exactly what that statement meant.
I wavered, trying to work up to the words, lips so fucking dry I could barely force them out.
“Think it would be best if we packed your things and took you back to your room above the club. Mission is going to be precarious, and I’m going to need to be at one hundred percent. Can’t afford distractions right now.”
It was such bullshit.
A pathetic excuse.