I was a tangled,twisted knot of anxiety as I pulled my truck up to my big sister’s house and killed the engine. Not because I was concerned about why Gypsy had called this spur of the moment family meeting, but because I hadn’t seen Lennix all damn day, and the itch beneath my skin had only gotten worse as the hours passed.
This was the first time I’d been away from her so long since the night she called after finding that note on her vandalized car. I knew her parents and Zach would risk life and limb before they let anything happen to her, and Rhodes’s guy from Alpha Omega was no slouch himself, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to take a full breath until I saw her, safe and happy, myself. Until I had her in my arms.
As much as I trusted all of them to take care of her, I didn’t trust anyone more than myself.
I twisted the knob and stepped into the warm, familiar house that had been home to me for so many years. Knocking wasn’t necessary. Each of us siblings had keys of our own, but my sister and Marco always left the door open.
“Hey, it’s me,” I called out, in such a hurry to get this so-called meeting over with that I didn’t notice how quiet the house was. Quiet was something that hadn’t existed in my sister’s home as far back as I could recall. “Not sure what the big deal is, but I don’t have a lot of time,” I continued to call out as I moved through the house toward the kitchen at the back. The heart of Gypsy’s home. “I have to get back to—” I pulled to an abrupt stop at the sight of my brothers and sisters gathered around the massive dining table that Marco had built special for Gypsy. The table was so huge it separated the large, open space between the kitchen and living room.
He’d worked hard on the custom piece of furniture for his wife so she could have all of us together, including my siblings’ expanding families. Holly sat on the stool closest to the end,giving me a smile as I entered the room. My youngest brother Lee’s girlfriend was sitting on the stool right in front of him, his arms wrapped around her shoulders so he could hold her against him. Holly sat to their left. On her other side was my middle sister, Sunny, with her husband, Aaron. Rhodes stood a little off to the side with his fiancée, Blythe. But it was Gypsy who snagged my attention and wouldn’t let go. Her face was... stricken. She looked like she’d been crying, and was clinging to Marco like a lifeline.
I looked around the rest of the space before asking, “Where are the kids?”
“Brynne and Avett are keeping an eye on the little ones in the movie room,” Rhodes answered, speaking about his soon-to-be stepchildren and Sunny’s kids.
“Okay,” I dragged out, more confused than before. My stomach dropped to the floor, my mind instantly jumping right to every worst-case scenario that existed as I moved deeper into the room. “What’s going on?” My eyes pinned my oldest sister to the spot. The woman who’d been more of a mother to me than the waste of space that birthed us. Panic gripped my heart and squeezed so tightly it was almost impossible to breathe. “Are you sick?”
Christ, I didn’t know what I’d do if she was sick. I couldn’t imagine not having her around. I didn’t want to.
My sister let her husband go and came around the island to me, wrapping me in her arms. “No, honey. No, It’s... it’s nothing like that.”
I deflated, my shoulders sagging with grateful relief as I squeezed her back. “Fuckin’ hell,” I gushed out. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.” I bent my neck to press a kiss to my sister’s temple. “Just took about ten years off my life.” She pulled away and moved back to Marco’s side.
“Same here,” Rhodes spoke, his arm wrapped around Blythe’s shoulders.
Lee nodded in agreement. “Been wrackin’ my brain, trying to figure out what’s goin’ on.”
She sniffled. Whatever she had to tell us had upset her, but if it wasn’t about her or any of us, I didn’t have the first clue what could be bothering her so much. The last time I’d seen her like this, she’d broken the news to us that Odette had passed away. Odette had lived in the same trailer park as us when I was little, and helped Gypsy take care of us. She’d been like a mom to Gypsy and the closest thing the rest of us had ever had to a grandmother. We loved her as if she’d been our blood, and when Marco bought this house for us, he’d picked it specifically for the small carriage house at the back of the property for Detty. That had been a dark, sad day for our family.
I had a moment of worry that someone else had died, but everyone we loved was in the room with us. So that couldn’t be it.
Gypsy blew out a breath as Marco rubbed her shoulder in solidarity. “Might as well just rip the Band-Aid off. I got a call earlier this morning. Danny’s dead.”
Silence encompassed the room as everything inside me froze. My lungs deflated like a balloon that had been jabbed with a stick, and my heart seized up in my chest. My insides clenched, my stomach twisting up in a way that made me think I was going to be sick.
Around me, everyone was talking, but I could barely hear them over the blood rushing through my ears.
“What happened?” Rhodes asked. His features had turned to stone. He and Sunny had been teenagers when Danny and Peggy bailed on their kids, leaving Gypsy, as the oldest, to raise us. Though, to be fair, she’d done the lion’s share of the work her entire life before they’d fucked off on us. So my oldest three siblings had spent the most time with them, knew them betterthan the rest of us, and had the most memories. But from the look on my brother’s face just then, it wasn’t sadness coursing through him.
Sunny’s eyes were rimmed with red, though her face was scrunched up as she fought to keep her tears from falling. Aaron was watching her closely to make sure he was there to catch her if she fell apart.
Gypsy cleared her throat, something a lot like pity twisting up her expression. “He was found in some dive motel where he’d been crashing just outside Reno. Apparently it was a heart attack, but it took a while before his body was found.” She swallowed thickly. “The manager let himself in when Danny hadn’t come by to pay for the room; he’d been gone at least two days by then.”
“Peggy wasn’t with him?” Sunny asked. We’d all started referring to them by their first names shortly after Marco came into the picture. Far as we were concerned they weren’t our parents, so they didn’t deserve those monikers.
Gypsy shook her head. “I guess they divorced some years back,” she said on a shrug. “I have no idea where she is or if she even knows. I guess Danny put me down as an emergency contact after that, even though I haven’t talked to or seen him in nearly thirty years.”
Holly sniffled, and Lee’s girlfriend reached over to take her hand. “He was all alone,” she said softly. That’s... that’s so sad.” She didn’t say it in a way that sounded like she was sad for him, only the situation in general.
A low rumble came from Rhodes’s throat. “He died how he deserved, alone and with no one to care.”
I nodded, feeling exactly the same. But along with that pure hatred I felt for the bastard, there was something else brewing underneath I couldn’t identify. I felt... numb, and chilled to the bone. Empty.
The walls felt like they were closing in on me all of a sudden. The air was thick and heavy. “Is that it?” I pushed out, my voice sounding as hollow as I felt.
Gypsy turned to me, worry shining in her dark blue eyes. “Ray, are you all right?”
My shoulder came up in an indolent shrug. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied. The last thing I felt in that moment wasfine. I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. I hated the man. I never wanted to see him again. I kept telling myself I didn’t give a shit that he was dead, but I was struggling to believe it. I didn’t know why the fuck I was upset. All I knew was it wasn’t because he was gone. I truly believed, to my core, the world was a better place without Danny Bradbury. But that place inside me that was tied to him, that dark place that told me I had more of him in me than I wanted to admit, couldn’t help but wonder if I was destined for the same fate. “Why wouldn’t I be? The guy was a piece of shit, and I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it.”
