Chapter 3 #3
My ire fades; I appreciate that she’s protective of him, at least. It helps, even though I won’t tell her that.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Just keep him off my ass, okay?”
“Oh, he’s still asleep.”
I lower the bottle from my mouth. “He is?”
Macon’s always the first one up. I mean, usually. Glancing at the clock on the wall, I see it’s after eight.
“Is he worn out?” a voice teases, heading into the kitchen.
I look up to see Clay stroll in dressed in pink boxer shorts and a white tank top, followed by my sister, whose hair looks like it just orgasmed.
Clay takes a glass out of a cabinet. “What the hell were you guys doing half the night?” she asks Krisjen. “Making a baby?”
Krisjen’s expression changes like there’s a smile about to burst across her lips, and the light just starts to dawn in my head before Clay sees it, too, and screams. “Oh, my God!”
I wince, her shrill cry slicing into my eardrum.
She wraps her arms around Krisjen, rocking her side to side.
“I didn’t…” Krisjen blushes and then laughs. “Shhh.”
Liv joins in. “Krisjen!”
“Keep it down.” But she can’t hide her happiness. “We just started trying, okay?”
“That’s so exciting!” Clay squeals.
I push off the counter. “Oh, Jesus.”
Sour taste in my mouth, I dump the rest of my drink into Krisjen’s potted fig tree in the living room before I climb the stairs to escape their joy.
That’s all we need. Another screamer in the house.
And what about Macon? Is she thinking of him? He has the same problems our mother did, and having children only worsened her health. It’s why he denied himself a woman of his own for so long. He didn’t want to do to his own family what our mother did to ours. Albeit unintentionally.
But the truth is, I’m the only one without something. Army has his son. Trace has his dream, Liv has Clay…
It’s hard not to feel like I’m stuck when everyone else keeps moving.
I don’t want anything, though.
Just control.
I don’t want love, and I don’t want someone’s heart. I don’t want children, and I don’t want memories. My parents’ blind love for each other killed them. No one lives happily ever after. No one.
I pause halfway up the steps, feeling the long, thin split in the wood under my feet on one stair in particular. The memory of my mother’s crying drifts through my ears, and I remember it so clearly, because this was the step where I stopped.
I heard her that day, and I backed down the stairs, and I never saw her again.
I swallow the lump in my throat. That day taught me one thing: holding too tightly to things you can’t control pulls us under right along with them.
If I don’t change, what will happen?
I’ll be alone.
And I never disappoint myself.
Heading to the shower, I stop at Macon’s open door, seeing him lying across the bed, the top button of his jeans open. He stares at the ceiling, and I almost start to back away.
Army comes up behind me, dressed in black cargo pants and a black shirt with matching tie. His badge sits pinned to his chest.
He starts laughing. “You okay?” he asks Macon.
“Girl’s trying to get pregnant in one night,” he grumbles. “I swear to God.”
I relax a little, hearing his joking tone.
“What do I do if she wants sex again?” he asks.
Army chuckles behind me. “Tell her you need to refill the tank.”
“Tell her no,” I retort.
But my oldest brother sighs. “I don’t think I can.”
I shake my head. Exactly. When Macon’s on, he’s on. He scares the shit out of CEOs and old men who’ve seen war. He can’t seem to get control of his own wife, though.
“Shipment’s coming in at midnight,” Army reminds us.
Macon still rests on the bed. “Warn them a storm is on its way.”
“Will do.” Army wraps his belt around his waist, fastening it. “Can you drop Dex at Jasmine’s?”
Macon nods, knowing it’s routine to take the kid to the babysitter’s, but still, Army makes sure to ask.
“Toss his bike into your truck,” Army tells him.
“Got it.”
Army heads down the stairs, on his way to work, and Macon rises off the bed.
“I need you available tonight.” He lifts his brown eyes to me. “We’re doubling our orders in the summer months now.”
Trace runs a bar in St. Carmen but also the attached storehouse that supplies the liquor he sells.
Which we get on the black market and supply way cheaper to all of the establishments in town.
Shipments come in by boat, and Army directs the cops he can’t trust away from whatever route we take to drop it off at the storehouse.
“Okay,” I say.
He goes into his bathroom, and a moment later I hear the shower run.
To the right of the door, above, is a three-foot-long beam that stretches across the corner, one wall to another.
That’s where they found my mother, and I haven’t been in this room much since.
I don’t know why he sleeps in here, even if it is the primary bedroom, but he loved her the most, I guess.
Callum’s mother died in the house he lives in now, too. It was something we shared.
Thunder cracks overhead, and I tilt my head back, listening until I hear the rain hit the roof.
The storms have started.