Chapter Seven
Stellan’s duplex caught Laramie off-guard.
She made her way to a trio of pictures hanging in the hallway. Stellan was on the phone, ordering pizza, and the sound of his low voice drifted through the home.
She cocked her head as she studied the picture of three young men on the bank of a river.
One was holding a rope swing, and the one on the other side was holding a walking stick.
In the middle, the boy looked vaguely familiar.
She squinted her eyes and studied him. His eyes were light brown, and his hair was longer, and messy from swimming.
The smile was bright and happy. All three boys looked similar, like they were brothers.
That one in the middle though…
She moved to the next photo that was hung in a simple, rustic wood frame.
It was an old eight-by-ten of a woman sitting on a couch, leaned over a coffee table, eating a meal in front of the television, and the long-haired boy sitting beside her, arms around her waist as he smiled brightly at the camera.
Stellan’s mom? The woman looked detached, and distant, but maybe she was just caught off-guard when the photo had been taken.
The third picture was of a wedding. The three boys had turned to men and were all standing at the front by a preacher.
All three were staring down the aisle. All of their eyes were unnaturally bright.
Two gold, one frost blue. The groom was smiling, and the second blue-eyed brother looked emotional.
The third—Stellan—had a soft look in his eyes, but no smile.
He had his hands clasped in front of him.
“Pizza’s ordered,” Stellan said from the mouth of the hallway.
“Are these your brothers?” she asked.
He came to lean against the opposite wall as the photos and looked at them with an unfathomable expression on his face. “Brothers from the before,” he said, pointing to the first picture. “Mom,” he said, pointing at the second. “Brothers now. Dame got married at the end of last year.”
“That’s Dame?” she asked, pointing to the groom.
Stellan nodded. “Then Mars. Then me. Always in that order.”
She didn’t understand that last part. “You mean Dame is the oldest? Mars is the middle?”
“We’re triplets. Hierarchy had to exist after…well…after everything got messed up.”
“Is this your mom?” she asked softly, gesturing to the middle photo.
Stellan’s lips twitched at the corner, and he made a strange sound in his throat. He seemed to tic, uncontrollably, jerking his head to the right three times, and then he asked, “Do you want to see something else?”
“Okay,” she said, taking the hint.
He didn’t want to talk about the woman in the photograph.
He led Laramie to the bedroom at the end of the hallway and pushed open the door.
The walls had been painted beige in here, instead of the gray of the rest of the home.
The comforter and bedding were different shades of brown, and in the corner of the room was a stick.
She studied it. The stick had the same Y-shape at the top as the boy holding one in the first picture.
“Is that from the picture with your brothers?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you keep it for a good memory?”
“That picture was taken the day before we died,” he said solemnly, turning toward her. His eyes had cooled, and he stared at her as if daring her to dig deeper into this one.
“You…you died?”
“We all did.”
The stick just sat in the corner of the room, taunting her. “You kept the stick as a memory of the day before something bad happened?”
“No. I kept it as an anchor to the old me. It doesn’t work. Sometimes I think of burning it.”
“But…how could you die? You are right here. With me.”
“Too deep,” he said.
“Mmm,” she uttered. “I thought you liked big conversations, not shallow talk.”
“What is your favorite color?” he asked.
Laramie dropped her head. “Okay. I’ll stop asking about it.”
Stellan squared up to her and cupped her face, pressed his thumbs right under her jawline, lifting her gaze to his.
He was tall, and she had to look straight up.
Those unnatural bright gold eyes searched her face, and then he leaned down and kissed her.
It was the consuming kind. His kiss chased all coherent thought from her mind.
He eased her back to the bed and pulled his white t-shirt over her head.
And just with that signal that he wanted her, Laramie’s body responded. She reached for him, pulling him down with her as he eased her onto the bed.
There was no way he could fuck her again this soon. Right?
But as he pushed his jeans down and kicked out of them, she could feel his hard cock again.
He rubbed it against her a few strokes, then eased to her entrance and pushed into her.
Laramie clung to him and wrapped her legs around him.
There was no foreplay, no fanfare. He grabbed her discarded phone from the bed and propped it up behind her, turned on the video function and hit record.
And then he fucked her, chest up, abs on display.
This coupling was fast, like he was making a point.
He hit her just right, faster, deeper, and she came in a rush, gasping out his name.
And a few strokes later, he drove deep into her and froze, then bucked powerfully into her as he filled her again.
And then he nipped her throat as she laid there stunned, her body buzzing with a high that only Stellan could give her. He kissed her lips once, then reached over her to the phone, and turned off the video.
He handed her the phone and pulled out of her, then stood. “Look at the video, Laramie.” His tone had taken on a darkness she didn’t understand.
She did as he said and opened up the video. The angle was of his body taking up most of the frame as he fucked her, his body flexed. She was shocked at how good he looked on top of her from this angle.
She’d never had a video of her like this before.
He pointed to the phone. “When you start thinking you want answers to deep questions, look at that. That’s what we are.” He shook his head. “No deeper.”
And he left her alone in that bedroom as a hollowness overtook her stomach.
The sound of the shower filled the duplex, and slowly, Laramie sat up and set the phone next to her.
No deeper.
Her reflection in the dresser mirror caught her attention. He was setting a boundary. They were fun. They were sex. They were hanging out, and companionship.
No deeper than that.
And now it was up to her to decide if she was okay with that.
She thought about the reasons she was here. Thought about the hard moments, and the good moments. She thought about how lonely this place had been over the last month, and she didn’t want to go back to that.
He needed her as some sort of distraction for whatever had happened to him, and she needed him for a similar reason.
They could both make each other’s heads go quiet.
So…okay.
They could exist like this.
No deeper.
Just fun.
It felt safer like this anyway.
She could do that. She could be tougher.