2. Ordering a Hitman
ORDERING A HITMAN
PARKER
Three Years Back
“What are you doing here?” I ask, pulling the door open. “It’s midnight.”
Anders brushes past me, followed by a gust of cold air and attitude.
“What do you think? I’m mad at my fucking brother,” Anders mutters, equally furious and frustrated. He’s got his grubby little hands on one of my beers before I can even close the front door.
“No way,” I warn. “Give me the beer. If I’m harboring a fugitive, I’m sure as hell not letting him drink my beer.”
He gives me the same defiant look he’s always given me, dismissively shaking his head like I’m joking. It’s not as adorable as it used to be.
“You already have one,” he tells me, nodding observantly towards my fresh bottle sitting on the coffee table.
Anders kicks his shoes off by the door, and I immediately give him a look. Holding his gaze, I flicker my eyes down to his sneakers.
“Whatever,” Anders scoffs. He straightens them out with a grudging precision. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m calling Luca.”
“Dude, relax,” he immediately says, forcing himself to sound nonchalant. “Luca knows I’m here.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
The corner of his mouth curls up into a sheepish grin. “Emelie knows I’m here.”
“Emelie is in France.”
“Oh my God, Pet’ka.” Anders dramatically throws his head back and groans. “I’m eighteen. I can do whatever the hell I want.”
Giving up, I aggressively slump back down on the couch and lower the volume on the TV. He takes a seat next to me, leaving a respectable amount of distance between the two of us.
“So, what happened between the two of you now?” I mutter dryly after he lets out a dramatic sigh.
“Today he told me he spoke to the Dean of Admissions at Carleton College,” Anders tells me finally.
“In Minnesota?”
He gives me a frustrated look and sighs. “Less than an hour away from Minneapolis. A little over an hour from the house he’s building.”
I nod, pursing my lips. “He doesn’t want you going to Georgetown.”
He’s talked about Georgetown for years. Luca of all people should know how hard he’s worked for this.
Anders absentmindedly reaches for a coaster and slides it beneath his bottle. “Like—he doesn’t even think I can handle it. Being far away from him and my family and shit.”
“You wanna know what he told me today?” he asks derisively. “He told me,” immediately interrupting himself with a wry chuckle, “he’s worried I don’t have the emotional maturity to live so far away.” Anders turns and looks at me. “He actually fucking said that to me.”
I’m imagining it, and yeah, I can definitely see Luca saying that to him. The fucker has a short fuse. It’s not some crazy new thing.
“So you’re here to borrow a shovel, or…”
Anders laughs weakly. “Mr. Second Amendment over here and he’s offering to lend me a shovel.
” He’s silent for a moment, sipping on his beer and sitting cross-legged on the couch.
“Okay, but…sometimes when he’s really mad at me,” he murmurs quietly, staring down the nose of the bottle and twisting it back and forth a little.
“Like really mad at me, y’know—” Anders shakes his head.
“He tells me I’m acting just like Rogelio. ”
It crushes me to hear that. I know this kid…turning out like his father is one of his biggest fears. And I know Luca, who says the wrong shit when he’s pissed off even though he always means well.
“Well, you’re not,” I assure him. “Luca just says shit. You know that.”
When he takes another sip of his beer, I think it’s the first time I don’t see a child when I look at him. He understands things that before he didn’t and carries himself with a lot more confidence these days.
“I should probably call him and tell him you’re here, though,” I mutter, adjusting my shirt that’s awkwardly been pulled up by the movement of my arm.
“I don’t think you should,” Anders protests. It comes out so soft that it almost works. “I want him to suffer for a night.”
I give him a skeptical look. “No you don’t.”
“Okay, fine. You win,” he rolls his eyes.
I grab my phone and send a quick message to Luca.
Me
Anders is here. He’s staying the night
Luca immediately responds:
Luc
Good. Keep him forever
Me
He’s ordering a hitman on you FYI
Luc
I’ve been waiting for this day for 18 years
Anders stands up and walks past me, gunning it for the freezer. He drops his wallet and keys down on the counter before yanking open the freezer door. A bag of frozen peas immediately tumbles out, but he’s quick enough to catch it before it even hits the ground.
“How do you live like this?” Anders calls out in genuine horror.
“It’s like one of those dementia pictures where you have to spot five real items even though it’s just a bunch of blobs and shit.
” Before he grabs the ice cream, he starts moving things around in there like it’s some compulsive thing he needs to do.
“Just don’t look in the pantry,” I warn. “It might give you a brain aneurysm.”
“Trust me…I won’t.”
I can barely recognize the sweet, sensitive kid he used to be. Now, he has the magical ability to walk into a room and own it with a confidence no one his age has.
When he carries the nearly-empty pint and a spoon back over to the couch, he lets out a deep sigh that reeks of unresolved issues. As the world’s only Anders-whisperer, I pick up on it immediately. “You’re giving me a vibe.”
“I’m fine,” he lies, spooning a heaping mound of chocolate ice cream into his mouth. “I’m not giving you a vibe.”
“You lie a lot when you’re cranky.”
His face drops. “Fine. I don’t know,” he sighs, pursing his lips. “I’m just fucking overwhelmed. Everything just keeps adding up.”
I frown. “What things?”
“I don’t know,” he sighs like he’s thought about this too much. “Just things.” The fact that he can’t even come up with the words to explain it just tells me he’s been sitting on this and overthinking it for a while now.
“I get that,” I say softly, lightly shaking my head and smiling gently at him. I put my hand on his shoulder and give him a friendly squeeze. “You don’t have to deal with things like that all on your own.”
“Well, I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to help.”
The kid has never known how to accept the help people are offering to give. It’s like he finds shame in being given things he never asked for.
“That’s what we do for the people we love—and love isn’t an obligation.”
Anders lets out a deep breath like he’s giving himself time to fully take it in. The idea that there are good people in his life who would never want to hurt him…I can tell he’s having difficulty reconciling with it. He’s always carried more than he should when it comes to stuff like this.
“Anyway,” I sigh, changing the topic. “I am, in fact, obligated to tell you that if any more beers go missing overnight—” My mouth pulls into a grin once I see him trying to call me old and lame through brainwaves.
“Hey now…I’m very serious. Get it through that pretty little head of yours that in this home, we don’t touch things we shouldn’t. ”
Anders snorts, his face brightening up the entire downstairs. “You know, I have a really funny dirty joke—”
“No, no, no. Please spare me,” I blurt, standing up.
He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “God, you’re so lame. This is why you’re dying alone.”
“Damn,” I mutter. “Have you ever said one nice thing to me?”
Anders doesn’t answer.
He walks the empty pint over to the garbage and tosses it away, shifting over to the sink to wash off his spoon. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he says, turning to look at me. “You know how he is.”
“Yeah, I do.”
Anders leans against the counter. “If I stay here then I won’t hear the end of it. He’s just gonna keep hounding me until I cave.”
“He’s not making you do shit,” I point out. “You’re eighteen.”
Something stirs inside me. Maybe that came out wrong. Anders doesn’t seem to pick up on it though, so maybe I’m overthinking. It shouldn’t matter as much as it does to me that he’s eighteen now, but my brain for some reason keeps getting caught on it whenever the thought crosses my mind.
“You have a full ride,” I continue a little more carefully this time. “You can stay in the dorms. Or here if you want. Find a job if you need more money. I know you’ll make this work, Anders.”
“What if he’s right, though?” he asks in a voice so low it’s practically a whisper. “My entire family is moving half-way across the country.”
“You have me,” I remind him. “I’m contractually obligated to be here for the next few years, so I guess I’m all yours.”
“Ah. Right.” He widens his eyes. “I have a babysitter. Luca might actually love that.”
“Problem solved, then?” I laugh.
“Problem solved,” he mutters sarcastically. “You have saved the day, Petchka. My hero.”
I exhale softly and shake my head at him, patting him on the shoulder and pulling him in for a hug. Which I’ve done thousands of times.
So why does he immediately tense up in my arms? Why does the room feel super quiet all of a sudden?
My body is hyper-aware of the way his body feels pressed against mine. He’s taller…stronger. All filled out now. Still just as warm. At some point, he stopped looking like Luca’s kid brother, and I’m trying very hard not to think about when that happened.
I hate the way I get chills the moment he hugs me back and sighs like he’s needed this hug all day. I hate the way my hand automatically finds its way to the base of his head when he rests his cheek against my hard chest.
And I fucking hate the way that my body hums most of all. It’s like something wrong snaps into place. It fits, but it doesn’t feel quite right.
I have to make sure he’s cared for. He depends on me. That’s all this is.
Anders hugs me even tighter after a moment, like it took him a minute to work up the courage.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him carefully.
“Honestly…” he sighs. “You’re the only person who makes me feel like this,” he whispers to me.
“Like what?” I whisper back against my better judgement.
“You just make all of the annoying shit in my head stop rambling. Honestly, you’re the only person who does.”
I shouldn’t be that person for him. Not when Luca kills himself every day over the fact that Anders would rather talk to anyone else before he ever opened up to him.
It’s different from my team needing me. With hockey, being a captain means working together to act as one.
With Anders, it feels terrifyingly easy to forget where the line is supposed to be.
Especially when my mind is trying to convince itself he’s deliberately trying to shift it over.
He deeply inhales, holding me just a little tighter. “Oh, Parker,” he whispers to himself.
“Hey,” I murmur softly, trying to hide the cold dread in my voice.
He doesn’t immediately let go.
Something panicked lurches through me. “Listen,” I tell him while trying to sound as comforting as possible. “I love that I can be that person for you.”
“You are,” he nods, finally loosening his hold on me.
Maybe it’s all in my head.
Anders gives me a devastatingly tender look with too much left unsaid. Because he knows he can’t say what I think he wants to say.
“You go ahead and head upstairs to bed,” I tell him, trying to sound as normal and composed as possible. “I just have a few things I need to check on.”
“Okay,” he tells me softly. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, sweetheart.”
I don’t seem to be able to breathe properly until I hear the guest bedroom door click shut upstairs.
This…is the furthest that will ever go. It’s dangerous for so many reasons, but the reason that scares me the most is how good it felt to be needed.
Needed by him.