Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

EMERSYN

O ur first dance lesson was an unparalleled success. We danced on and off for a couple of hours. We moved together until we were both dripping with sweat. For nearly all of it, Freddie kept his hands on me. He gripped my hips, he moved with me, his chest “near” but not against my back.

When I switched so we were almost chest to chest, he didn’t back off. If anything, he seemed to lean into the dance more. We cycled through so many songs until we were just dancing, no form, no discipline, and no expectations. We danced and had fun.

After, Freddie needed a break. Overstimulation was a thing. It had happened to me before. We’d done a lot of touching. While I let him control the majority of it, there were still moments where I’d taken over and guided his hands on me or I’d put mine on his. The best part was he followed me up the stairs and dropped a kiss on my lips before he ducked into his room to shower.

That… that had been epic .

Riding that high, I slipped into my own room for a shower and to change. Jasper still wasn’t back, but there was a message from Mickey. He would be back in the late afternoon and volunteered to pick up our favorites from the Thai place. The fact the guys’ orders ticked up on the screen just made laugh.

It was so normal. Our normal, and I loved every moment of it. I wanted to soak in these moments. The jokes. The teasing comments. All over dinner orders. Jasper had even sent in his own Thai order, which had prompted me to do the same. If we had to postpone our date again, we’d make it up to each other. We always did.

Still, it made me smile as I added my requests, before I ducked myself into the shower proper. After I’d cleaned up and blown my hair dry, I got dressed in comfortable clothes. The dance capris and an oversized t-shirt were ideal.

Socks were my concession to the rough floors downstairs. I had no plans to go out. The sitting room was empty as I made my way through it and out the door.

More changes were taking place throughout the upstairs. We’d converted Milo’s old room and added more space to it so when he came with Lainey and the other guys, they had their own space. Theo needed his space too, but the guys had finished that before Theo arrived to stay. The last was a storage room and armory that was locked and coded.

Every change converted the place into a home. Liam still had his apartment. He had several properties. So did I, but I didn’t care about them so much. Mickey had his string of safe houses, and bolt holes he could use when he was moving abused women and children into safety.

But the clubhouse had become our real home. I was riding those warm thoughts as I descended the stairs and headed for the kitchen. I needed something to eat and it would be a few hours before dinner. If we had the frozen pizzas, I could put one of those in the oven. The guys teased me, but ever since I’d discovered a deep fondness for the frozen pizzas, they were always in stock.

Theo rose as I crossed the living area and I slowed. He had a game controller in hand and sported a pair of headphones. “Hey, she’s here, so I’m going to take a break.” He paused for a moment, then snorted. “I’ll be back in a few, don’t start without me.” Then he pulled the headset off.

“Levi?” It was a guess, but he and Bodhi’s younger brother had formed a bond long before we found them. The game system had arrived along with instructions for the accounts Bodhi had set up for the boys. It had amused me, we had a game system of our own, but the guys hadn’t wasted any time setting this up for Theo, and he’d been in front of it as often as he could.

“Yes,” he said, his mouth tightening and his chin raising. Oh, he expected me to tell him off or something.

“Cool,” I said, then motioned to the kitchen. “I’m going to get some lunch. Hungry?”

I wasn’t going to discipline him. That wasn’t what he needed from me. Honestly, I wasn’t at all sure what he needed yet, or what I did for that matter. He was my brother. A younger one. Like me, he’d been kept in the dark about the existence of anyone else, even our father. A man he was far better off not knowing and one I wished that I had never met.

“I could eat,” Theo said as he followed me. Like Milo, Theo was tall. At the rate he was growing, I had a feeling he’d be as tall as Vaughn. He was already a quarter of an inch taller than Freddie. It was sometimes a challenge to remember he was only fourteen. Just barely fourteen at that.

Once in the kitchen, I poked around in the freezer and found a nice stash of my favorites. “Pepperoni okay? Or do you want Hamburger? Or Sausage?” I held up each of the boxes one at time. “There’s also a little bit of everything, which is my favorite.”

“Pepperoni,” Theo said after a beat. “Also, can’t you get pizza delivered?”

“Yes. But it’s not the same.” I carried the two boxes over to the stove before I started it to get it preheating.

“Yeah,” Theo said slowly. “I can tell. Those are flat and kind of disc like and not at all hot, steamy and fluffy like the other stuff.” It was impossible to miss the sarcasm underlining every word.

“You don’t have to eat one,” I said as I stripped mine out of the plastic and set it on the cookie sheet.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it, but that’s… that’s weird to eat that when you could just order one.”

“I like them.” I stripped his out of the plastic and set it up too. Now I just had to wait for the oven to beep that the preheat was done. This was one of my favorite parts. Kellan had been teaching me to cook, but I’d mastered this and I liked being able to fix them myself.

He wore a troubled expression when I glanced over at him. As if suddenly aware of my scrutiny, he folded his arms. “Sorry.”

“For what?” I glanced at the temperature on the oven before focusing on Theo again.

“For—” He hesitated. “I don’t know. I guess I sounded rude. So, sorry.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?” Theo repeated.

“Yep,” I told him. “Okay. You thought you were rude, you said sorry, and I’m okay with it. All good.”

The oven beeped and I happily twisted to slide the pizzas in to heat and then set the timer. It was a silly bit of accomplishment for me, but I did like that I could do it. Theo watched me with a frown like he couldn’t figure me out. Rather than walk over to the table, I bounced up to sit on the counter. His scrutiny might be a bit uncomfortable, but like his earlier puzzlement, it didn’t bother me.

But after a bit of a prolonged silence, I canted my head. “Is something wrong?” Because he had Levi waiting out there for his game and he was just standing here.

“No,” he said quickly. Almost too quickly. Then he frowned. “Why are you hard to talk to?”

“I didn’t know I was difficult to talk to.” I shrugged. “You’re still getting to know me so that might be it.”

“But you’re my sister.” He formed the pair of syllables like he was examining them, trying to understand what they meant.

“Milo is our brother,” I pointed out and the lines around his mouth tightened. “It’s okay if you don’t like him right now, I didn’t like him much the first time I met him as an adult either.”

The swift anger melted away. “Wait… the first time you met him? Didn’t you grow up together?”

“Nope. Our mother died and we were put into foster care. Then I was adopted, cause I was a baby, and he stayed in foster care without me. I didn’t even know he existed before a couple of years ago.” I shrugged. “Pissed me off so much that this big brute was trying to tell me what to do and who I could and couldn’t be friends with and was so damn bossy.”

Affection swirled through me.

“He was such an ass, but… he loved me. It took some getting used to and I’d been an only child for so long. Family… family was hard for me. It took Milo and me some time to work things out. But he’s the best and I adore him. There isn’t anything he won’t do for the people he cares about. Whether you like it or not, you are in that category now.”

He huffed out a hard sigh, then leaned back against the table. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to know yet. You’re more than welcome to be here. You’re family. My baby brother.” His grimace at the description made me laugh. I rather liked it. “The Vandals already think of you as one of them.”

“You think they’d let me join?”

“Join?” I raised my brows.

“Be an actual Vandal, do jobs, and stuff. I know not everything you guys do is legal. Or maybe it is, but it feels like it isn’t. I think I could be good at it.”

Lips pursed, I studied him. “You’re a little young to be going to work. You need to finish school. Take the time to enjoy it. Play games with Levi. Text Andrea. Grow up without having to look over your shoulder.”

He couldn’t quite suppress his flinch. I knew something about that too. “Why is everyone so invested in school?”

“Because education is important. I never got to finish. I did get a GED but that was because I was always on the road, always performing. Who I am is an aerialist and a dancer. I love to dance. I love to fly. I could go to school, and maybe someday I will. There’s lots of stuff I could study.”

Scrubbing his hands over his face, he went silent. I could practically feel the agitation rolling off him in vibrating waves. “I don’t—I don’t want to go to some private school where I have to live with other people.” Those words came out so harsh, with each syllable dragged as if against his will.

That alone decided me. “You don’t have to.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You don’t have to go to a private school or a boarding school. You can go to public school right here or we can look into homeschooling, though I hated my tutors back when I had to deal with them. We can certainly afford to interview whoever we want for the job.”

The relief on his face and in his eyes was hardly manufactured. Then again, neither was the suspicion sliding into his gaze. “Why?”

“Because you said you don’t want to go somewhere that reminds you of where you were held.” I could ignore his flinch or wait him out. I chose the latter and when he finally met my gaze again, I nodded. “You told me what you need, and what you want. This isn’t a prison, Theo. We may just be getting to know each other, but I will never force you to do something that makes you suffer.”

He cut his gaze away, discomfort radiating over him.

“You have to have an education though. You have to know how to handle contracts, how to deal with people, business, and just getting through the day. You might stay here with us for the rest of your life if you want, but you’re going to be really bored if you can’t figure out what you want to do. Then there’s Levi and Andrea.”

That jerked his attention back to me. “What about them?”

“They are going to go to school. Maybe a boarding school, maybe not. Boarding schools are pretty normal for families like mine was and Lainey’s is. You’re going to miss them, but you also don’t want to feel like you’re left behind either.”

His stare bored into me and I couldn’t really tell if he was angry, sad, frightened or maybe all three. Had I pushed it too far? I wanted to be as honest as possible. It worked for me and Milo. Even when the topics were uncomfortable. I didn’t hold back and neither did he.

Even when he mentioned how he was going to have sex with Lainey. Ugh. I was happy for them, but I did not need details. The oven timer went off and I jumped. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone in reacting to the sudden noise. The smell of the pizza hit me at the same time and my stomach gurgled.

Once I had the pizzas out, I hunted up the pizza cutter. My second favorite part about cooking my own pizza.

“I don’t want them to go to those schools either,” he admitted after that protracted silence. “I don’t want anything to happen to them.”

“Trust me, those schools will be vetted and if I know Lainey, there will be security on campus for them. Discreet, but present. At least until she’s reassured herself that Andrea will never go missing again.”

Theo frowned. “Are you going to send security with me too?”

“Maybe.” I cut his pizza first then mine. “Depends. We protect our own, Theo. You’re ours.”

The explosive sigh he released made my heart ache for him. I had some ideas of what his life had been like before we found him. That made my heart hurt for him. We were also trying to build bridges over the chasms between us. Fractures in the bedrock of who we should be to each other.

If he’d been with Milo or me, we’d have done everything we could to protect him. We weren’t there then. We were now.

“I’m going to go tell Levi I’m going to have lunch with you.” He hesitated. “If that’s okay?”

“It’s more than okay, but I can always take the pizza out there and watch you guys play if you want. I don’t know much about the game, but I am very good at cheering players on.”

Theo laughed. It was a rusty sound at first, but it came out a little more warmly by the end. “I don’t mind just eating lunch, but there were new levels that came out today and a whole new area opened up…” Animation bled into him. It was like watching the sun come out on a stormy day. “It’s pretty bad ass, I can show you how to play if you want to learn.”

“Maybe next time.” I loaded our pizzas up on plates. “Grab some sodas and let’s go see this game.”

The animation remained as he stared at me. It was like he was trying to decide if I was serious, and then finally he grinned. I swore it was the first time I saw a real smile on him. While he did look like our father, it wasn’t King I saw when I looked at Theo. I never would either.

“Thanks, Em—” Another hesitation. “Should I call you Ivy too? I know that’s what Milo calls you.”

“You can call me whatever you want,” I said.

“I like Em,” he offered. “But Ivy feels more personal.”

I didn’t disagree. “Think about it, we don’t have to decide anything now.” I’d caught the hint of movement outside of the kitchen before I led the way out. If I were to guess, it was Freddie checking on us but leaving us to talk. He wouldn’t have interrupted unless he perceived a problem. Now he’d ghosted out, looking after us in his own way.

Ten minutes later, I was ensconced on the sofa in the living room eating my pizza while Theo and Levi devastated hordes of zombies. It was bloody, vicious, and more than a little graphic.

It was also kind of funny when the guys were shit talking each other. I think I liked that part best.