I’m already feeling my cheeks burning behind his hands. Not to mention the multitude of butterflies inside of me and the abundant wetness from down there.
“Good, then it is settled that after we’re done with this mystery, we’re gonna go on crazy dates and I’ll make you go skydiving with me,” he winks.
“You’re crazy if you think I’m gonna do something like that,” I laugh.
“Crazy for you, yes, you guessed it. Let’s cook something until I eat you whole,” Lucas says, kissing me gently on my lips.
He lifts me up and brings me in front of the ingredients, almost putting me alongside them. He stops just before doing that, knowing the others are in the room next to us.
He takes the cucumber from the island behind me, bringing it subtly near my belly, making us both laugh.
?
“I still can’t believe that you are a cook almost as good as me,” Blake says while he’s washing the dishes.
“Almost? I think I beat you long ago, brother,” Lucas says, putting another dirty plate in front of him, getting a frown out of Blake, and making me smile. “You even licked your plate in the end.”
A moment of relaxation to regain our strength, perfect for the battle that’s coming, all among the most beautiful people.They help me recharge my batteries only through the energy they are emanating in the room.
“Hey, I knew that you would put me to do all the work, so I thought about making it easier.”
“Is it always like that in your family?” Clara asks with a small smile on her face, standing on the couch between Paul and me.
There comes a moment of silence, leaving a trace of sadness behind. The nostalgia of our childhood and the good times want to capture my mind and make me forget about the losses from our past, to stop my hot tears from falling down my cheeks.
“The three of us haven’t really spent time together since… your funeral,” Paul says, his voice getting lost on the past part. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Clara, but I still can’t believe how much you've grown up and how mature you’ve become.”
I can see some tears forming in his eyes, but he looks away and wipes them before they can fall.
As it seems, Paul is the most emotional of us, even worse than me. He is the creative brother who puts all of his emotion into absolutely everything. The family’s painter.
At least they still have a family.
I look at Lucas, and my gaze falls on his sad eyes, which lighten when he sees me looking at him. But the bitterness gets hold of me, and I’m feeling like I need a moment alone to gather my thoughts and not burst into tears in front of them.
“I’ll be right back,” I say and get up from the sofa.
My steps take me to the other room. I can feel Lucas coming behind me, so I let the door open. He closes it once he’s in the room with me.
“You know that you’re a part of our family, don’t you?” Lucas asks me.
A wide smile spreads across my face, along with the tears in my eyes, making me too fucking emotional. I don’t know what tosay, even though I feel so good with all these people around me. Like a real family.
Family…
In my head, there are already a lot of hypotheses for all kinds of things. I want to laugh at how fucked-up they are and how unfair the universe is to me.
I even do that, earning a confused and curious glance from Lucas.
“So I got away from the devil, and I reached the family of Satan. My fate is sealed.”
“Don’t say that! You can’t know for sure what’s gonna happen,” Lucas says, trying to be positive, but I have too many connections in my head to even be able to agree with him.
“Lucas, what if these people have been planning the revenge on both of us for 15 years? Do you have any idea how many aspects of our lives could’ve been modified? Maybe they even caused your parents’ accident,” I say, and he agrees with me, so he already thought about that. “Also, they could’ve even planted Cathal where it was needed.”
This makes him open and close his mouth a couple of times. It seems this aspect didn’t cross his mind.
“Moreover, Bianca appeared in my life in that… fragile period, around when I started going to the gym. If I process it all better, I even met her there,” I laugh.
