“He doesn’t do it on purpose, Mama.” I hide my grin.
My mother blows past that, offering us some of her chicken and potatoes. Remembering Rory hasn’t seen the houseyet, Mama tells us to go check out the progress while she plates some up.
The house is two stories. The spare bedrooms, kitchen and living room are on the ground while our bedrooms are on the second level.
Rory slowly walks up the hardwood stairs, looking at some of the group photos Mama must have framed and hung.
There’s one of the six of us guys on Christmas at Helen and Devon’s last year. Then another of us at the lake a few months ago. We’d gone bush while we sorted out hiding Luc after the whole Hades thing happened.
Rory smiles softly at the photos before continuing up the stairs.
I’ll have to ask Alec to print some with Rory in them.
“Wow,” Rory murmurs when we go into the first room.
The room’s are a decent size with three rooms and a bathroom on one side of the hall and four rooms on the other.
The week at the hospital gave the contractors enough time to finish up the upstairs rooms.
Before Rory, her room was a second bathroom. It didn’t take long for us to change the plans.
Our rooms are white, per Alec’s instruction, because the rest of us are hopeless with this shit.
Rory glances around one of the twins' rooms. Mama’s been shopping apparently because the bed’s made with grey sheets and a dark grey doona.
The rooms have built-in closets and huge diamond windows with thin shades.
We peek our heads into the other rooms, similar to the first.
“That’s Luc’s room.” I point out the room opposite to the door I’m opening. “And this is yours.”
Rory gasps, freezing in the doorway. I nudge her in with a hand on her back.
Her walls are a light grey with pastel pink trim—the only room Alec couldn’t convince us to leave plain. The poster bed’s fucking massive, with enough room for the seven of us. The wooden frame was my design so it’s sturdy and won’t break from certain activities.
“That’s a huge bed,” Rory says lightly, trying to hide the emotion in her voice.
“If there’s anything you don’t like, we can change it,” Alec tells her.
She shakes her head. “It’s perfect,” she whispers.
As Rory walks around, her fingers brushing over everything she lays eyes on.
She opens the door to the ensuite bathroom and sighs when she sees the claw foot bathtub. We pulled that straight from the Pinterest board.
I lead her over to the massive walk-in wardrobe.
“Your closet and Luc’s double as panic rooms,” I tell her, watching her reaction. “Ideally, we’d have all our bedrooms like that but there isn’t enough space.” I explain to her how to use it and Alec reminds us of the combination to unlock it.
“When the panic room is activated and when it unlocks, it will send an alert to all our phones,” Alec informs Rory.
“Mk.” Rory walks over the big ass diamond shaped window overlooking the yard. Her fingers rub across the white, wooden window frame as she peers down.
Luc and I lock gazes and I tilt my head towards Rory. He nods. Out of all of us, Luc’s been in the closest thing to Rory’s situation.
Luc slowly walks over and entwines their fingers.
“Hey, Butterfly,” Luc says softly.
