I’d kill for her, I’m fully aware of that.
I’d murder any being that tries to touch her or causes harm to come to her. I’d do anything she asked me to do, and that concerns my brothers immensely.
Yet, she’s not Vivian, and I’ve known that from the first moment I saw her. And there have been times when I thought she’d try to turn me against my brothers, but she has yet to do so. She won’t let me shoot that little beanpole Travis Muncy, and I honestly don’t expect her to.
Not when touching her hand brings me a mixture of chaos and tranquility. It’s thrilling and frightening all in one go, but I’d rather be near her than in the shadows like before. In her sight, where she can see and speak to me. When I’m on the other side of those blue eyes.
And now that she’s sad, it makes me unbearably anxious.
I haven’t been able to stop clenching my fists behind my back to give myself something to do. And I don’t know what else I can do when it comes to making her feel better. The right words won’t form, and I don’t know how to show empathy.
Hugs are just…agitating and since Vivian, I don’t feel comfortable with someone wrapping themselves around me.
Though, with Bay, one day, I want to try.
I want what she has with my brothers, but different. I wish for her alone, where I can hold her hand without holding my breath.
I want to feel her body under my fingertips and see how my body naturally reacts. My cock responds to her, but I’d never touch it to the thought of her skin on my body because it doesn’t seem to hold the equivalent to what it could be with her.
And I want to save that for the moment she might touch me intimately.
Cairo shifts at Bay’s other side, stoic as ever in the deathly quiet commentary, minus the chirping birds and the slight breeze shuffling the trees. The preacher keeps talking, but I don’t hear a word he says. His words are void to me as I stare at the back of Bay’s head, waiting for her to make any move.
Levi is in a closed casket, and she makes no qualms about seeing him before they bury him in the ground. It makes me apprehensive of later when she might change her mind, and it’ll be too late.
Then she shifts back when the man in the black attire and white collar stops speaking and pivots—right for me.
Her blue eyes slam into mine, and I instantly stop breathing.
She holds power over me and doesn’t even try.
The way she notices me first over everyone else is what does it for me. I don’t dare assume she thinks of me outside of my brothers. It’s too taxing to fathom she considers me as much as I do her.
I’m afraid of the false hope of it all.
I’m uneasy that it’ll all be just like before.
Just like Vivian.
When Bay slowly ambles toward me, it’s not hard to keep her fully in my sights. I’d never want to look anywhere else. She holds me in her grasp and it’s just enough to keep me grounded here, where she can see me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks me, causing my eyebrows to knit a bit. I don’t understand why she’d ask me that question.
Why would there be something wrong with me, someone who isn’t suffering from a loss like she is?
Wallace is my cousin, yes, and he’s family. Although I respect him, I haven’t connected to him like she did. I’m not going to cry over his death, though.
Instead of answering her, I raise my palm, coaxing the familiar way we communicate when all else fails me.
I don’t know what to say or how to offer her any other comfort than this, and she doesn’t seem to mind it.
Bay mocks my actions, her warm palm lightly pressing into mine as she stops within a foot of my body. I can feel her from there. I can smell the faint scent of something fruity mixed with something male.
My eyes flick over her head to look at Cairo, who’s already looking over at me, giving me a curt nod, before he returns his attention to Hod Rod and Juice.
“I want to go home.”
Five words and they make me instantly relieved she’d want to go there over above all else. A safe haven where it’s just us and nothing from the outside world.
