Alex takes a swing. Kaleb moves back and responds with a mean left hook. He catches Alex in the jaw, and I’m pretty sure Alex let him. His reflexes are much sharper than that. My brother isn’t half the fighter that Alex is.
“That was your only freebie,” he tells Kaleb.
“Screw you!” Kaleb shouts and storms out of the Cinnamon Playroom.
The silence he leaves behind weighs heavily on my shoulders. It almost crushes my bones as I shudder and sit on the edge of the bed, my heart broken and my eyes filled with tears.
Vincent and Max sit beside me, flanking me with their bodies and giving me the illusion of comfort. But the truth is, none of us feels right about any of this anymore.
“He doesn’t understand yet,” Alex says. “I should go after him.”
He’s about to leave when Max stops him. “Don’t; he needs time to process.”
“What’s there to understand, really?” I exhale sharply. “What we have… He’ll never get it. Kaleb has a traditional mindset, and I worked hard most of my life to fit into that pattern, to give him a sense of safety in our little family unit, even when we were struggling through the foster system. My so-called goodness was all he had.”
“So-called?” Max scoffs. “Raina, you’re the kindest woman I’ve ever met. There’s nothing so-called about your goodness. It’s all there, and it has nothing to do with what your body and your heart desire where the three of us areconcerned. Kaleb needs to grow the fuck up and accept that.”
“He will, eventually,” Vincent adds.
“That’s little to no comfort to me right now,” I say, tears rolling down my cheeks. “He hates me. He’s ashamed of me. I can’t exactly blame him either.”
Alex curses under his breath. “Someone gave him the address and a prompt to come here,” he says. “How much do you want to bet it was Jeremy?”
“What?” My stomach drops.
Everything happened so fast, I didn’t even have a moment to wonder until now. Alex is right.
“Kaleb said he got an email, saying I was here and that I was in trouble,” I say, remembering my brother’s rushed words shortly after he walked in on us. “Alex, do you really think Jeremy would do something like this?”
“Don’t you?”
I nod slowly. It pains me deeply to admit it. “Yes.”
“He did it on purpose, that fucking weasel,” Vincent growls. “He’s a spiteful, spineless, blackmailing little weasel.”
“Blackmailing?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex cuts in and shakes his head at Vincent and Max. “We’ll handle this.”
“How?”
Max wraps me in his arms and holds me tight. I try to soften in his embrace, but there’s just too much tension. My cheeks are still burning with shame. Nevertheless, I let him hold me,and I hide my face against his warm chest, taking deep breaths to recover a semblance of self-control.
“Kaleb needs time to blow off steam,” Max says. “He’ll drive back to Portland, he’ll get drunk, he’ll smash a bottle on somebody’s head, worst-case scenario. Tomorrow, he’ll either wake up with a hangover in a jail cell or back at his place. He’ll feel terrible, but he’ll keep sulking. Alex will give him a couple more days before he reaches out.”
“And then we’ll sit him down and talk to him, man to man,” Alex adds.
“Raina, we’ve got this,” Vincent tells me.
I wholeheartedly wish that were true. I want to believe them. But a part of me is tangled with doubt. Anger courses through me as I think of Jeremy’s role in all of this. He won’t stop until he destroys me, for God only knows what reason, even though he’s the one who broke up with me. I have never met a soul as toxic as his or a heart so evil and spiteful.
He flipped out to the point where he had to drag my brother into it.
And I can’t lose Kaleb.
25
VINCENT
