Chapter 16 #4
“He should be,” Caleb says. Relief knocks the wind out of me a little. Cassius said so when he called, but he lives in a world where should seems to be a flimsy word, and hearing it echoed helps.
“Does he text or call you while he’s away?” escapes before I can tuck it in.
“Yes,” Atlas says, and Adrian and Caleb both tilt their heads at him like disapproving owls. Whoops.
“He checks on you all day,” Adrian adds.
“And all night,” Atlas groans, but he doesn’t sound angry.
“But, won’t call me?” I hate how small that sounds. He promised honesty and faithfulness, not a bedtime routine.
“You should tell him you’d like calls,” Adrian says. “He’s afraid to spook you.”
“Spook me?”
“If he’s too much too soon, you’ll run. Or something along those lines,” Adrian says.
“So just tell him that regular calls and texts won’t spook me?”
“Precisely,” all three brothers say together. If it wasn’t so unnerving, I’d laugh.
We eat breakfast together, and I ask a lot of questions.
So many, that at one point Adrian threatens never to speak another word as long as he lives.
I push anyway because the alternative is ignorance and the ghosts are loud today.
One stands by the threshold. He’s dripping, furious, mouth forming the word bathtub without a voice.
I look away, press my thumbnail to my ring finger to ground myself.
I also want to know these brothers. I want to love them in the way Cassius does.
They’re loyalty to one another is inspiring.
I can’t think of a single person that I’d die for.
Cassius. Now. If it came to it, I’d rather die than live in a world without him.
“I need to know things,” I whine. “I don’t know how to be his wife.”
“It’s not our job to teach you,” Caleb says.
“It will be if he keeps leaving,” I say, swallowing my sadness. “I wasn’t raised in this. I don’t know how I fit. I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“He wouldn’t choose to leave you,” Adrian says. “He has to.”
“I know that.” I swallow again before continuing so I don’t cry. “I need to know how to act, what to do.”
“You just act like you,” Caleb says. “If anything goes sideways, you don’t know anything.”
“I truly don’t know anything.”
“Not right now,” Adrian says. “But someday you might. If the day ever comes where you’re being questioned, repeatedly ask for Eland, our cousin. He’s a lawyer.”
“And what about people who aren’t in law enforcement?” I ask.
“No one will touch you,” Atlas says. “If they’re stupid enough to try, they’ll die.”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“You will do this,” Adrian says. “You will figure it out. Don’t worry if it doesn’t happen overnight.”
“I don’t know if I want to do this. I want to be with Cassius, but I don’t want all the bad to taint what I see when I look at him. I don’t want the fear. I don’t want to start liking the way it feels to live in the dark.”
“He’ll carry the dark,” Caleb says. “He always has.”
My fingers square the napkin under my coffee, edge to edge.
“What about what he needs?” From the look on their faces, the question surprises them as much as me.
“Doesn’t he need somewhere to set it down?
Someone to be soft with him? He said I make him weak.
” I count five in, five out. “Maybe I’m supposed to be the place where weak isn’t a sin. ”
“Yes, be that. He needs that. He needs you,” Adrian says, without hesitating, and not an ounce of doubt in his voice.
I line my mug with the table’s grout, let the words settle. Being with a man like Cassius, I’m learning, is made of two things: saying yes, and surviving the spaces between.
The brothers hang out after breakfast and after Logan arrives they move to leave as one.
Mugs in the sink, chairs nudged back into line, a last look passed between them like a wordless benediction.
Leather and citrus, sugar and coffee, and the faint tick of Adrian’s cane on tile.
The front door opens and all three step out at the same time, gone in a single wingbeat.
The second the door shuts, I ask Logan to stay on the couch and run to the hallway. A hand sticks out of the guest room and curls, beckoning. She really is ridiculous.
I slip inside and she shuts the door without a sound. The room smells like cedar and mint tea.
“Why hide?” I ask.
“Because it’s easier.”
“Easier than what?”
“Being seen,” she says, like it’s obvious.
I hesitate, then push. I don’t want to ruin this friendship before it’s begun but I need to know. “Why do you stay away from his brothers? You clearly care about Cassius. You came here for me.”
Her shoulders go still. “Brother,” she corrects, voice flattening. “I avoid one brother, because when you let people close, you hand them things they can use against you.”
I nod, throat tight. “Love is a weakness.”
Something in her eyes softens. “Sometimes,” she says. “But unlike Cassius, I’m not afraid of being weak.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Making him weak. Making him a target.”
The words land heavier than they sound. I don’t know Sava, not really, but from the way she moves, I’d bet she isn’t afraid of knives or blood.
It feels more like she’s afraid of being the reason someone she cares about takes a bullet meant for her.
The thought slides under my ribs. I think of Cassius, of all the ways I could be the soft spot that gets him hurt, and my chest goes hot-cold, hot-cold.
I realize it then. I’m not afraid of bleeding. I’m afraid of being a lever someone grabs to hurt him. Love is a weakness. And I don’t want to be the one they use to reach him.
And yet I can’t make myself walk away. Since him, I’m braver than I ever remember being.
Even the dead seem to point me toward him, like every whisper and flicker exists to herd me to the same streetlight.
Alone, I could be ordinary and safe. With him, I’m something else.
We’re something else. Something bright, volatile, impossible to ignore.
Maybe that’s how love outruns weakness. It won’t ever be harmless, but nothing worth risking everything for ever is.
When both the living and dead both tell you to turn back, that’s when you know you’ve found something worth following.
“Will I see you again?” I ask.
“Count on it,” she says, stepping in, one arm sliding around my shoulders in a quick, bracing pull. She leans in, breath warm at my ear. “With him, you’ll never be alone again. With me, you’ll always have a friend. Lock up behind me.”
The overhead light doesn’t blink. The dead don’t argue with her. That scares me more than if they had.
The latch clicks a second later, and I’m left staring at the door, wondering how she already knows me well enough to say exactly what I need, like we’ve been walking toward this moment for years.