CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kol
QUICK, SOMEONE SNAP A PIC OF ME FOR MY PROFILE” Maverick ordered, lifting the beam higher as he stood in the center of the garage apartment. “I look fuckin’ ripped.
“Wylder scoffed. “Is this for your desperation app?”
Mav glared at our eldest brother. “That’s rude. There are plenty of people looking for lasting connections on there.”
Dex let out a snicker. “The app is called Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
Mav just shrugged. “Seven minutes to forever. Now, someone take the damn photo.”
“I’ll do it just to shut you up so we can get moving.” I snapped a shot and then shoved my phone back into my pocket.
“Someone else,” Maverick begged. “Kol is the worst with tech. He probably cut off my head or got an angle that gave me five chins. You’d think he was geriatric with his fumbling and bumbling.”
I glared at Mav. “I might only be the second oldest, but I can still kick your ass.”
Wylder pressed the nail gun to the beam in strategic places. “Remember when Kol lost his password keeper?”
Dex gave an exaggerated shiver. “Who keeps passwords written down in a notebook?”
“Not Kol anymore,” Mav said with a laugh.
“I still haven’t forgiven you,” I clipped at Dex.
“Hey, you needed to learn a lesson,” he defended. “That shit isn’t safe.”
“Oh, I did learn a lesson. I keep them locked in my safe now,” I informed him.
Dex’s jaw dropped. “You got a safe to lock away your passwords instead of just using the software I bought you?”
I shrugged. “My system works.”
“Daddy!” Skylar called as she tromped up the stairs.
“In here, Little Princess,” I called.
She appeared in all her badass princess glory. She wore sparkly, bright-pink tights with mud on the knees, combat boots, a sweatshirt that read It Wasn’t Me, and a Nerf gun strapped to her front and fairy wings on her back. Skylar, through and through.
“Can Owen and I have an alpaca rodeo?” she asked nonchalantly as her bestie appeared at her back.
I arched a brow. “What does an alpaca rodeo entail?”
Sky shrugged slightly, making her fairy wings dance. “Like we could ride them and shoot at targets.”
“And do jousting like in medieval times,” Owen threw in.
“That sounds sick,” Mav called. “I’m in.”
I glared at him. “You are not in. No one is in. All of those activities sound like they’d put you at extreme risk. Plus, you can’t ride an alpaca.”
Skylar frowned. “But they like me. They almost never spit at me.”
“I like it when they spit,” Owen said with a grin.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, searching for something that might help me win this battle. My hand dropped. “It’s not good for the alpacas. Their backs aren’t made to hold a human’s weight.”
“It would hurt them?” Sky asked, instantly worried.
“It would.”
“We can’t do that,” she said quickly.
“Naw, bruh, we can’t,” Owen grumbled. But then his face lit up. “What about on horseback?”
We only had six horses on the ranch, nothing like the spread Aster’s family had next door. They not only had cattle but also a horse-breeding operation.
“O,” Dex said. “You don’t know how to ride.”
“I could learn,” Owen shot back.
Dex shook his head. “Not in a day. You want to learn? I’ll get Aster to give you lessons. She’s the best.”
Mischief lit in Maverick’s expression. “I can take him to lessons.”
“Mav,” Dex warned.
“What? The Ice Queen can’t object to me dropping off my soon-to-be nephew at lessons,” Maverick argued.
“No, but she can shoot you in the balls,” Wylder said.
I had no idea what had happened between Mav and Aster. They’d been thick as thieves for years. She’d been the one person who seemed to be able to reach him after everything happened. But something changed at the end of high school. They went from the best of friends to enemies in a flash.
Skylar frowned. “Why would Uncle Mav bring balls to horseback riding lessons?”
I glared at Wylder. “Thanks for that.”
“Hey, I didn’t curse,” Wylder shot back.
Skylar grinned, revealing another loose tooth. “My swear jar is so full, I’m gonna get the new supercharged Nerf gun in no time.”
“Such great influences on my daughter,” I grumbled.
“Hey,” Maverick said, affronted. “I’m a great influence.”
Dex just stared at our youngest brother. “You are the absolute worst influence in the history of influences.”
“Uncle Mav’s the best,” Sky cut in. “He taught me how to jump off the hayloft.”
The room went quiet.
“Maverick,” I snarled.
Uncle Waylon broke into the room, breathing heavily. “These little whippersnappers are fast.”
Skylar giggled. “Sorry, Grampa Way Way.”
“What do you say we go look for Bigfoot?” he suggested to Skylar and Owen.
“Sick,” Owen muttered. “Let’s do it.”
“Yeah!” Sky cheered.
“No firearms,” I ordered.
Uncle Waylon looked affronted. “I would never harm a Bigfoot.”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Wylder muttered.
Dex struggled not to laugh. “Have fun, you crazy kids.”
As they filed out of the room, I turned back to my brothers. “Come on. All we have left is the finish work.” But that could be deceptive. It was important to get it right, so it could take forever. “I think we can get it done in another day or two tops.”
Dex stared at me for a long moment. “Yeah, if we work around the clock.”
Wylder’s gaze changed, taking on that studious quality. “What’s the rush, anyway?”
I shifted slightly, moving my weight from one foot to the other. I might as well let the cat out of the bag. “Nova’s going to move in here.”
Everything went dead quiet.
It was Mav who finally broke the silence. “Seriously?”
I gave a chin lift of assent. “Yeah. She needs her own space.”
“Under your roof?” Wylder challenged.
I couldn’t help but bristle at Wy’s words. It was as if he was saying I was doing something wrong. “You have a problem with that?”
“I don’t, but Orion might.”
My back molars ground together. Our middle brother didn’t want anyone but family on ranch land. It had taken him repeated dinners and Brae besting him in a hot-sauce-eating competition to get him to soften toward her. But he’d avoided Nova altogether. Every time she came for dinner, he ditched.
Maverick grinned and held up his phone. “Don’t worry. I already texted him.”
“You’re a goddamned shit-stirrer,” I growled.
Mav just shrugged. “Chill. You know you’ll need to have it out with him eventually, and at least this will get him out of his hovel.”
Orion’s house was hardly a hovel. It was huge—which was ridiculous for a man who didn’t let any of us inside. But since the incident with our father, Orion didn’t like to feel fenced in.
“I needed some time to prepare,” I shot back.
“Nothing’s going to prepare you for Rion’s wrath on this one,” Wylder said. “You know that.”
He had a point.
I heard an engine in the distance and knew it had to be our brother. Another handful of seconds passed, then a door slammed. I winced at the fury behind the sound. And it was only punctuated by heavy bootsteps on the stairs.
Orion filled the doorway. He had a good inch or two on the rest of us, his shoulders wider and his whole frame slightly more menacing. And the dark-hazel glare he cut my way told me he was not pleased with me.
He brought his pointer and middle fingers together with his thumb in a harsh movement. I knew the sign was ASL for no. And, of course, that was all Orion would say.
When he stopped talking after killing our father, it had been a slow retreat. At first, he would write, and then he learned to sign. But over time, he slowly communicated less and less. And when he did, he kept it as brief as possible.
I signed as I talked, a habit I’d picked up so Orion never felt like the outsider. “You don’t get to just say no.”
“No.” Orion made the sign again.
“This isn’t an autocracy,” I shot back.
Orion’s hands moved faster as he continued. “I’m not having a stranger on this property. No one lives here but family.”
“She’s not a stranger,” I argued. But that wouldn’t win Orion over. Because we all knew the truth: anyone could turn on you. So, in Orion’s mind, the fewer people he let in, the better.
I tried a different tack as he glared at me. “She needs this.” There was an almost pleading tone to my voice. “She said she can’t breathe. She needs a safe place where she can start to stretch her wings a little more. She’s not ready for an apartment in town. There are too many potential triggers.”
Dex bristled beside me. Not in a way that said he was shocked, but that he was worried. Still, he didn’t say a word.
A hint of indecision played out across Orion’s expression, but he just shook his head. “I’m sorry. No.”
“She told me she’s scared.” Guilt pricked at me for sharing something Nova had told me in confidence. But I needed him to see. To understand.
Orion scrubbed a hand over his face, but he wasn’t saying anything now.
“Please, Rion. She needs this. And I think I do, too. I need to know she’s safe and healing. What I saw when I found her … it still haunts me.”
He stilled, his eyes locking with mine. “She stays two hundred yards away from my house at all times.”
“She can do that.”
Orion jerked his head in a nod. “Fine.”
Relief swept through me. “Thank you.” I winced, glancing around the room. “Can you keep this under wraps? You can share that Nova’s living on the ranch but not over my garage. It’s a gray area with me working the case.”
Gray area was stretching it. If she found out, Sherri would reassign my ass so fast, my head would spin. And that was if she didn’t suspend me.
Mav gaped at me. “When do you ever dabble in the gray?”
I met his stare head-on. “When it means doing the right thing.”
“Fair point,” he mumbled.
My gaze shifted to Dex. “Hold off on telling Brae. Nova wants to be the one to talk to her.”
He studied me for a long moment. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Hell. I hoped I did, too.