23. Loren

23

LOREN

At our normal house, we separate work from living. There isn't just a room that's dedicated to work—it's an entire, unconnected building. There isn't even a covered roof connecting the spaces.

It's weird that we aren't leaving the house.

There's a downstairs suite in the daylight basement that we've converted into a suitable space. The large closet now houses lots of computer equipment that needs to stay cool, so it's been outfitted with a specialized venting system. The bathroom we obviously left alone. And the bedroom is now our conference room, complete with a large monitor on the wall. There's also a kitchenette and an apartment sized fridge.

The triplets, Myro, and Dad are already there, sitting around the table. Imry is casually swinging his chair from side to side, though his gaze locks on mine as I walk in. I take the seat closest to the door, dropping into it next to Avory and Ellory.

I can already tell from the way they're grinning at me that coming here was a mistake.

"Gay sex is the best, huh?" Ellory asks.

I raise a brow and then glare at Myro. He shrugs.

"You answered," Myro defends.

"I didn't say ‘enter.' I said ‘yeah?' You chose to interpret that to mean you could walk in."

"He's right," Imry agrees. "I know that we've chosen to stay with Dad, but we are all definitely adults. Probably shouldn't just walk in."

"I knocked," Myro says with a heavy sigh.

"And I answered. I didn't say you should come in. What you saw is all on you. Though you should have kept that to yourself."

He chuckles. "I didn't repeat it. I just said you were occupied right now. They interpreted that on their own, and you just confirmed it." He gestures to Avory and Ellory.

I look at them again. They're still grinning at me as if they expect an answer.

Ellory leans forward. "You can totally admit it's better, bro."

"How do you even know it's better?" Imry asks. "How many girls have you been with?"

"None," Ellory and Avory say together.

I glance at Dad. He's sitting back in his chair, amused. I'm not sure if it's because he has all boys, or if it's because he remembers being a teenager, but he's never tried to curb our conversations. When Mom used to, Dad made sure we understood that home was a safe place, and we were allowed to ask questions and have whatever discussions we wanted.

"Then you can't compare," Imry says.

"But Loren can," Avory teases, and once more they're looking at me expectantly.

"I'm not talking about this. Where's Voss?"

"He's coming. He was making breakfast when I found him earlier," Myro answers.

I sit back in my chair, ignoring Avory and Ellory as best I can. Meeting Dad's eyes, he chuckles. "How is Oakley?" he asks.

"He's fine."

"He's not experiencing any lasting trauma—medically or mentally?"

I consider the last week. He's gotten more talkative than he had been. More confident. The longer we spend together, the more I see who he truly is.

I'm entirely enamored of him.

"He doesn't like the wounds on his neck," I admit. "He's afraid they'll scar."

"They likely won't," Myro says, and I glance in his direction. "The rope burn and bruising will fade easily enough. The gouges may take a little longer, but I think they'll also fade. We have some scar cream if you'd like to give it to him."

I nod. "Yes. He'd like that. Thanks."

Voss walks into the room, shutting the door behind him. He's carrying a large travel mug and has a gourmet meal on his plate when he sits down. He's also got the attention of the full room on him.

He shrugs. "This is a really early meeting."

"It's nine," Dad deadpans.

Voss takes a bite of his eggs Benedict and shrugs, slapping Imry's hand away when he reaches for a piece of bacon.

Myro shakes his head, sighing. His focus turns to me. "When do you think you'll be ready to resume the contract, Loren?"

I shake my head. "I told you—I'm done."

The room is silent as they stare at me. Not that I blame them. Everyone knows I love to kill people. I do so in a controlled environment so I don't get myself in trouble.

"You're done completely," Myro says. It's not a question. "You're retiring from contract exterminations. No more murder."

Well, when he puts it like that…

"I'm not leaving Oakley alone," I insist.

"Where is he now?" Imry asks.

"Next door. He's promised not to leave without me."

"How long do you think you can keep that up?" Myro asks.

"Indefinitely."

"What happens when he graduates and gets a job?" Imry asks.

"Maybe I'll work with him."

"Loren—" Myro starts.

"He somehow managed to attract two crazy fuckers intent on hurting him," I say. "He walked right into the grasp of a damn serial killer! I'm not leaving him alone."

Two days ago, they told me Voss identified the man I killed in the alley that had intended to murder Oakley. He'd been killing for over a decade. There were a whole lot of bodies tied to a single M.O., but no suspects to speak of. Oakley had somehow managed to wander straight into his fucking nest.

"If I'd killed Daniel last summer, Oakley would have been spared his attention. But how was I to know we had a serial killer here? Don't we look that shit up?"

"Easy," Dad says, and I take a breath to regulate my irritation. "If you'd have exterminated Daniel last summer, you'd not have met Oakley."

I'm about to argue when he continues.

"Daniel relocating here is the reason you came to Tucson. Tracking him is the reason you were in the café. Being in the café is how you found Oakley. Some things need to happen in a certain order for other events to take place. If I'd have divorced your mother when I first started seeing the signs of her troublesome opinions, I wouldn't have my youngest four sons. However, sometimes in hindsight, we realize that some situations should have been resolved sooner rather than later. I should have taken you kids out of her presence a lot sooner than I did. Just as you feel you should have gotten rid of Daniel before he truly had a chance to get close to Oakley. But there are times when we have to stand back and recognize that the past is the past and all we can focus on is the future," Dad explains.

"You know we don't blame you for not taking us out sooner, right?" Avory questions.

Dad inclines his head. "I know you don't. But I do. I kept telling myself that after this conversation, she'll get her head out of her ass. I wanted to believe she could be a good mother—the mother you deserved. She wasn't and I should have accepted that far sooner than I did."

Ellory gets up and walks around the table, hugging Dad from behind. "We aren't upset," he reiterates. "We knew you were trying to keep us together so we could have a happy childhood. And we had each other. Myro could have left, but he stayed to protect us, too."

"Probably wise. Mom might have been Loren's first kill," Voss says. His tone is indifferent. I'm not sure there's any love lost for our mother. Which I gather is a little sad for both him and Myro because she'd been very different as a mother before I was born, and it was clear I was different.

Voss isn't wrong. I didn't care about the way she treated me. My brothers and Dad have always made it clear there wasn't anything wrong with me, and I didn't need to change, regardless of what Mom said. That was enough reassurance for me.

But the way she treated Avory and Ellory… that's why Voss is right. There's a very high probability that if Dad hadn't taken us when he did, I would have killed Mom. I'd grown up seeing the way she made them feel, and with each new incident, I grew that much angrier.

Dad patted his arms, resting his head along Ellory's. "I'm relieved you don't resent me. You boys have always been my first priority, the beings I love most in this world. All I wanted was to do right by you."

"You did, Dad," Myro says. "It's Mom who didn't."

Dad closes his eyes for a minute. "Okay, we've gotten off topic. I only brought up Mom to illustrate a point." Ellory kisses the side of his head before taking his seat beside Avory again. They lean into each other, shoulder to shoulder, but their attention is on the discussion at hand. "Some events, though uncomfortable, might have been necessary. You have Oakley now, but you wouldn't have if you'd killed Daniel last summer."

"Fine. I can make peace with that," I say. "But you're not going to be able to write off the second guy as easily. If I'd have been there instead of tailing a target, he'd have not wandered into that man's preying grounds."

"You're right," Dad agrees, causing my brothers to look at him in surprise. "He wouldn't have run into the serial killer."

It's very unusual when I'm agreed with this easily while I'm being somewhat… obstinate. I frown.

"Or you both would have, and he'd have seen you kill someone with your bare hands," Dad says.

There it is… I tense at the thought.

Dad leans forward and grips my wrist. My skin prickles. I've already had a lot of touch lately, and I think I've reached my threshold for today. "Loren, I'm going to allow you all the time you want to work through your fear of Oakley being hurt while you're somewhere else. For your own mental health, it's necessary. But I need you to pay attention to your own signs, son. Recognize when your thirst for violence becomes too strong. Oakley might be able to romanticize you killing his attackers, but if he sees you kill someone or if you hurt someone he cares about, it's going to be a very different situation. You can't just be attending to Oakley's safety and his needs; you need to pay equal attention to your own."

"Dad—always teaching us lessons," Voss mutters as he sits back in his chair.

The thing is, I know he's right. But the thought of leaving Oakley again and something happening to him when I should have been there makes me irrationally pissed. I thought I'd reached a new level of enjoying watching someone die with Daniel. But that man had barely laid a hand on Oakley.

The serial killer, though. He was unrecognizable when I was finished. It took Voss days to identify him. For Voss, that's a very long time. He ended up having to use dental records and DNA. He didn't have any fingerprints left. There was no way to reconstruct his face. I annihilated him.

"You know, if you need to attend to a contract, we can make sure Oakley's safe," Avory promises. "We give you a hard time, but that's because you're our brother and it's our job. But we'd never let anything happen to someone you care about."

I know that. The problem is, I thought Oakley was safe. There's no reason he shouldn't have been safe that day. How did he make it through more than twenty years without someone watching over him? He's here for less than a handful of months and he attracts two crazy fuckers.

Three, if I'm included in that.

"Yeah," I agree. "Okay."

"You should look for signs that he needs to speak to someone professionally about what happened to him," Myro says.

I sigh, giving him a wry look. "You're going to have to spell that out, Myro."

He chuckles. "I'll send you a couple links. I've only seen him in passing since you practically sneak him in and out, so I haven't been able to get a good read on whether he's dealing with some lasting mental trauma."

"I think Loren's distracting him well," Avory teases, winking at me.

I roll my eyes.

"You don't need to keep him hidden, baby brother," Imry says, kicking me under the table. "I'm a little offended that the people who aren't related to us that you care about, you keep hidden. As if we'll steal them."

"Who have I kept hidden?"

"Your hockey buddy, for one," Imry says. "And you're trying to keep Oakley hidden too."

I frown. "I'm not hiding either of them. Noah lives in L.A. He travels for like eight months a year. I barely see him."

"He has summers off," Voss points out.

Rolling my eyes, I shrug. "I'll see if he wants to come over. Is a sleepover okay, Dad?" I deadpan.

He chuckles. "No girls."

That garners far more laughter than I think it earns. "You know he's gay, right?"

More laughter.

"Yes," Dad says.

"Ah. I see. Funny."

And still more laughter. I'm beginning not to like my brothers.

"Okay, Noah's taken care of. Now back to Oakley. When will you stop hiding him?" Avory asks.

"Aren't you already involved?" I huff. "Leave Oakley alone."

"We are," Avory and Ellory say together.

"But we want to know the person you're so obsessed with. We love you and we want to support you in your relationship," Myro says.

"We'd like to spend time with you and Oakley, preferably not when you're in bed," Imry says, shrugging.

"I didn't invite him in!"

"Take a breath, Loren," Dad soothes, chuckling. "What your brothers are trying to say is that if he's important to you, he's important to us. When you're ready , we'd love to have a chance to welcome him into the family. Dinner. Games. Once the pool is rebuilt, we can hang out in the backyard. Okay?"

It's not unreasonable. It's not like they haven't already spent time with Oakley. But before, the rest of Oakley's household was here too. This is different. What they're asking for is different.

I'm not sure I want to share Oakley's attention.

But I'm really… relieved?... that I have their support. Besides, I want them to like Oakley. It would be awful if they didn't.

"Dinner," I suggest. That seems like a relatively short event. Then I can take him away and have him to myself. "Okay, yes. We can have dinner."

"Sounds good," Dad says. "You choose the night and let us know."

I nod.

As the youngest, I'm not great at sharing. I've always had my own things. Sharing Oakley's attention is probably really going to suck.

But my family is important to me too. Besides, I don't particularly want to live somewhere without my family. That means Oakley will have to live here with them.

Not that I think he's ready for that conversation yet. I'm not even ready for him to spend time with my family without me.

Little baby steps.