Esme loves Bhodi.
Tam loves Bhodi.
Fuck it,Ilove Bhodi, and he’s harder to refuse than my grouchy big brother.
“Go home,” he tells me gently. “Hit the gym, or go chat up that girl from the bakery you like. Or even just crash and sleep all night long. Have a night off, yeah? Esme’s safe with us.”
I know that. Even without Tam being the most protective human on earth, Bhodi’s a nurse who can spot a cold coming on before Esme’s so much as sneezed. He knows how to bathe her, feed her. Save her life if she chokes on a biscuit.
And Tam…
That growly shithead is already sloping off to get the books he built from painted wood and his own calligraphy when she was born, and fuck if I don’t love him for that so much it hurts.
A good ache this time, though. One that drowns out the yearning in my heart for something else. The loneliness that eats at my soul every moment I’m not busy at work or caring for Esme. I’m lucky to have what I have, and if there’s nothing else out there for me?
I’ll live, though I might not survive another deep and meaningful with my brother tonight as he follows me out to the van. “Goaway. Tu me fais chier.”
You’re pissing me off.
“Fun, isn’t it?” Tam props a shoulder on the icy driver door, taking me hostage while I scrape frost from the windows. “What are you really going to do tonight?”
“Call the police and tell them you’ve kidnapped my daughter.”
“Hilarious. Try again.”
I flick ice at Tam. He lets it happen, and it lands in his dark beard like festive glitter.
Cute.
But it’s not nearly enough to soften his dark stare, and impatience rips through me. “Fous-moi la paix. What? You think I’m going to rock out of here and cop a bag?”
Tam glares, fearsome as fuck to anyone who doesn’t know him. “No, why would I think that?”
“Why else would you be chasing me around out here when you have Bhodi and my babyin there?” I jerk my head at his house, a white-bricked detached beauty on Stardust Lane that’s almost as pretty as Bhodi. “What do you want from me?”
I’m probably the only person on earth who can speak to Tam like this and live to see the next morning. But that’s not always a good thing.
I need a slap upside my head.
Some sense knocking into me.
What I get is empathy for a habit I kickedyearsago. Concern and kindness I don’t deserve from a man who’s survived ten times the hurt I have.
Tam straightens and snags the scraper from my hand. He clears the driver-side window of ice, then comes to where I loiter in the shadow of the Crafter that’s seen better days. A plain man-van I can’t afford to get wrapped yet. “What’s really going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ne fais pas genre, mon cher frère.”Don’t bullshit me. “We used to have Esme every Friday. Now you’re clinging to her like you’ll die without her and you’ve gone from being the chatterbox from Hell to barely speaking. What’s that all about, eh? I didn’t have relapse on my mind, but if you’re feeling like snow we can talk about it.”
Snow. The shit kind. Not the sparkly powder the radio’s been warning me about all day, and honestly, I’d rather die than talk to Tam about cocaine cravings. We’re close and I love him. But I’m not over the shame of what I did to myself all those years ago, and I can’t see that ever changing.
Then tell him you’ve been having dreams about getting fucked by a six-foot hunk of?—
“You can stay over too.”
I refocus on Tam. He’s still staring at me as if I need an intervention, and despite the coke-fuelled deceptions we’ve lived through, these days I really can’t lie to him. “I don’t want to stay over. Watching you and Bhodi be so perfect together makes me feel like the last turkey in the shop.”
“Turkey?” Tam’s dark brows cinch together.
