Sometimes.
When I wasn’t tormenting him.
Though that was fun.
But tonight, there was something different about him. While I usually didn’t mind the one-sided conversations between the two of us—since I was more than capable of talking enough for the both of us—I saw him staring at my brother. I saw him watching that woman. I saw something flit behind his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. Brutus was easy to read, and I wondered if that’s why he kept to the darkness. Sure, his face didn’t move much, but his eyes told everything. I could read him like a book when I could get him to look at me.
Like right now.
He was hurt.
I leaned against the doorframe of his room. “You good?”
He grunted and nodded before he eased himself into the bed. The frame creaked and he groaned like an old man, like the creak was his fucking back or something.
Then I heard something pop.
My eyebrows rose. “Don’t tell me that was your knee, old man.”
He shot me a look before he reached for his bowl.
I grinned as I pushed off the doorframe and walked over to the foot of the bed that certainly wasn’t big enough to hold him.
“That was your knee, wasn’t it?” I asked.
He clicked his tongue and let out a soft grunt as he plopped the pathetically small bowl in his lap.
I crooked my eyebrow. “That looks like one whole bite of food for you.”
“I get it, I’m big,” he snapped.
Snapped.
At me.
My eyebrows slowly rose, and my head cocked to the side. “Okay, so I’ll ask again. You good?”
He sighed heavily and scrubbed his hand down his face. “Sorry.”
Now Iknewsomething was wrong. “Did you just apologize?”
“Anna, I’m sorry, but what is the magic combination of words to get you to go away right now? I can’t have a conversation right now.”
I stood there for a moment and watched him take his first bite of food. “I’m worried about you.”
He paused his fork halfway to his mouth before his gaze slowly slid to mine. “What?”
I sighed as I stood there at the foot of his bed. “I saw the way you looked at my brother. I saw the way that woman kept reacting to your presence. It’s bothering you, isn’t it?”
He just shrugged and took a swig of his drink, his hand dwarfing the glass and making it look like some sort of child-sized Capri-Sun bullshit.
“She’s fine,” is all he said.
“Bullshit,” I said as I walked over and perched on the edge of the bed. “It bothers you, and you know it.”
“Anna,” he warned.
“Don’t ‘Anna’ me,” I said as I wrinkled my nose. “I’ll fucking put pickle juice in your coffee in the fucking morning.Talkto me, Bee. Tell me what’s running through your mind.”
