Mia
Dante laid on the floor of the living room, staring up at the ceiling. The fire roared beside him in the grate and his chest rose and fell so steadily that I thought he might be asleep until he heaved a sigh. The spark he usually possessed had dimmed dramatically and it made me worry. My brother was the life and soul of the party. Always a little louder, a little more dramatic, a little happier than everyone else in the room.
I jumped as, from behind me, Luc’s arms came around my waist. “Father Duffy has the twenty-seventh free,” he said in my ear.
Turning my head, Luc kissed me before I could respond. “That’s little under two weeks away and it’s your birthday,” I said as we came apart.
“We’ll make it a double celebration.” He shrugged, overlooking the fact that the last-minute planning would be left to me. He looked past me to his brother, lying on the floor. Luc’s voice broke the peaceful scene. “What’s wrong with you?”
Dante lifted his head from the floor, chin to chest, and looked at us both in the doorway. “Nothing,” he replied flatly, before dropping his head back down with a thud.
Luc’s hold around my waist tightened and he walked us into the room properly, putting an end to my silent stalking. Every grip was a little tighter since the incident and I didn’t complain. Luc’s arms were where I felt safest. He dropped down onto the sofa, pulling me onto his lap as he went. I pressed a quick kiss to his lips and swatted him as he tried to turn it into something more. Simple gestures were never enough for him. Luc was all or nothing in every aspect of his life.
“D,” I said, turning my head away from Luc. It didn’t deter him, instead, he moved the kisses along my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay? You didn’t eat much.” In the entire time I had known Dante, his appetite was always ravenous. Nothing went to waste as long as he was around but tonight, at the table, D had picked at his food and left half of it on the plate. I hoped he wasn’t sick.
“Just not hungry,” he said, head rolling to the side so he could look at me.
Even Luc tensed at that answer. “What’s happened?” This time, the question was not teasing. This time, Luc was asking his brother what had affected his usual routine.
There would never be a moment in this lifetime that I wasn’t fascinated by their friendship, the bond that they shared. I’d read somewhere once about platonic soulmates and this pair could have easily been the definition. Even when it seemed like they were falling apart, their deep love and respect for each other remained. They knew what the other was thinking, what the other would do in any given situation. I felt honoured to have been allowed to become a part of it.
“Tori came around to hand me my ass on a plate over you taking your anger out on Gabe,” Dante said, blowing out a puff of air.
“Tell her if she has an issue with me, she can come and talk to me instead of getting you involved,” Luc spat. He never took kindly to Dante being in the firing line for his actions.
“I did.” He sighed resignedly. “We had a whole fucking argument, and broke up.”
The guilt sucker-punched me, stealing the air from my lungs. There had always been the potential for them to break up, but I’d kept a small glimmer of hope. Dante’s happiness amplified whenever he was around Vittoria and it’d fallen apart, thanks to us. “I’m so sorry—" But I didn’t get a chance to finish.
“Don’t worry about it, Mia,” Dante said, lifting a hand to stop me. “It’s for the best. Not like there’s any trust there anyway.”
“Because of us. Me,” I said to him. I felt like all I ever did was apologise for the mess I left in my wake. Each move left a disastrous amount of collateral damage and it was starting to affect the people I loved.
Dante pushed himself up off the floor so that he was sitting upright, palms flat on the ground. I saw his eyes flick behind me to Luc and then back to my face again. “Here I was thinking we got rid of that conscience of yours.”
Luc huffed behind me. “Fat chance.”
He knew how guilt still rested heavily on my shoulders, grinding me into the ground. Luc pulled me out of the hole whenever I sank in too deep. I was learning to justify every one of my moves to make them more palatable, but the state of Dante’s relationship had always left me feeling blue. No amount of well-crafted excuses made it easier to swallow.
“You and Luc didn’t force me to do anything that I didn’t want to do,” Dante told me steadily.
“It’s a big sacrifice,” I responded. “Luc...” The rest of the sentence died in my throat, not wanting to make the matter worse.
“You can say it, Mia,” Luc said, his voice at my ear. His breath was warm and caused goosebumps to pimple along my skin. A sheet of paper would have found it difficult to slip between us. “You can say it because it’s true. I wouldn’t do the same for him. I wouldn’t give you up.”
My cheeks heated at the admission. It was one thing for me to think it but another for Luc to voice it so openly without hesitation or guilt. Luc’s loyalties were drawn clear for everyone to see. Lincoln and I would want for nothing as long as he breathed. Nothing came before his family and I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of that, which he cared for us.
“Different priorities.” Dante shrugged. The comment didn’t seem to bother him the way I thought it might. Dante had skin as thick as a hippo and it was a good thing with how much abuse Luc casually threw at him. “Luc puts you before everything. I put my family before all else.”
For months it had gotten under my skin. I knew how I felt with Luc. I knew how broken I was being apart from him and I didn’t want anyone to go through that. Especially not the man I had taken as my brother.
“Put it this way, you found something you were missing with Luc, and so did I,” he further explained.
I raised an eyebrow and asked, “You want to marry him and have kids with him?”
“He couldn’t handle me, and he knows it,” Dante joked, the smile tugging at his lips. “You can keep him.”
Luc kissed the back of my neck where my tattoo sat. “Can’t get rid of me that easily.” I slapped the side of his leg, wanting some space so we didn’t add salt to Dante’s wound, but Luc responded by licking at my skin, which made me clench my thighs.
