“Wherewereyou?” Patrik continues his tirade at his elder son. “I can’t have you disappearing all the time, boy!”
Boy?He’s, like, thirty-seven! And so much for my assumption that Patrik is not much of a talker. He may be an old guy, but he appears to still be very much the patriarch of his family.
Dad makes a speedy exit into the next room. I linger apprehensively off to the side of the door arch.
“We’re here now, Pa,” Jonas replies, a bite to his tone.
If it’s a warning, Patrik hears it and heeds it because he lays off, stalking past me to grumpily take a seat at the table. Anders comes down the stairs and turns toward the chest of drawers, pushing back his hood and unzipping his wet coat. He throws it toward a hook on the wall, where it catches and hangs.
“Oh,” Jonas says, noticing me. “Hello.” He sounds mildly surprised.
“Hi,” I reply. “I’m Wren.”
“Hello, Wren.”
Anders looks over his shoulder and pins me with a hard stare, and in that moment, I stop breathing. His face has been frustratingly shrouded in darkness since I saw him at the bar, but now I realize that my memory has not served me well. He’s even more heartrendingly gorgeous than I remembered him, tall and broad with dark blond hair shoved haphazardly away from his face. But now his sharp eyebrows are drawn into a dark scowl and his strong jaw is rigid with tension.
I feel as though all the air has been sucked out of the room by the storm as he yanks open a drawer and gets out a towel before turning at the waist and hurling it at his brother. Then he braces himself against the chest of drawers, his shoulders rising and falling with heaving breaths.
This is not the same man I met last night. This man is stone-cold sober and utterly furious.
Jonas, who caught the towel with one hand, seems unaffected by his brother’s mood as he dries off his dark shaggy hair and collapses on the sofa, a cloud of dust flying up around him.
Anders turns and stalks past him to the corner of the room near where I’m standing. He doesn’t acknowledge my presence or give any indication that he’s pleased to see me again; if anything, it’s the opposite. He slides his back down the wall until he’s sitting with his legs drawn up, his wrists resting on his knees. His head falls back against the concrete wall and his eyes stare straight ahead. Even from this angle, I can see the shadowing of his jaw as it clenches and unclenches. And that’s when I realize that I might have got it wrong: I don’t think he’s angry, he’s upset.
Dad and the others at the table begin to talk, quietly and hesitantly at first, then gradually at a more normal volume. Sheryl is studying the board games, reminiscing about some she hasn’t seen since she was a child. She’s opening boxes and pulling out tokens and passing them to Dad. Peggy makes the odd comment and Patrik speaks once or twice, but their voices sound strained.
Jonas, on the sofa, has shifted so his head is leaning against the back cushion. He’s folded his arms over his eyes, an action that has made his biceps bulge and his chest fill out his wet T-shirt. I can see why women would be drawn to him, and plenty are, if what Bailey and Casey said is anything to go by, but I don’t fancy him myself.
I knew that, once I was sober, I’d be able to tell. There’s something a little too raw and masculine about him for my tastes.
It belatedly occurs to me that I’m the only one still standing.
Dad doesn’t ask if I’m okay. If Mum were here, I’m not sure she would either. Scott once speculated that their lack of care—which is what it sometimes feels like—is not actually because theydon’tcare, but because they feel secure in the knowledge that I’m fine. They see me as capable and competent, the sort of person who gets on with things. They don’t feel the need to check on me at every turn.
Dad is different with Bailey. He always has been. But it’s not because she’slesscapable and competent, because she very muchisthose things.
Maybe it’s because she welcomes his help more. She welcomes his care and attention. And maybe this makes her easier to love.
I’m more closed off than Bailey is. I had to be that way in order to protect myself.
I feel a sudden pang of longing for Scott. If he were here, he’d be breaking the ice right now—he’s good at talking to strangers, better than I am, in any case.
I eye the space on the sofa next to Jonas, getting quite keen to sit down. It looks comfortable, if a little dusty, but I’m filthy now anyway. I stick out a leg and turn it this way and that, scrutinizing the mud streaking my skin.
Anders’s head tilts in my direction, or at least, in the direction of my legs. His attention makes me feel edgy. He lets out a quiet sigh and looks away again, rubbing his hand over his jaw. The tension in his shoulders seems to have eased a little when he returns his hand to his knee.
On impulse, I walk past him and take a seat on the storage container closest to him.
I quietly say in a dry voice, “The lengths you will go to, to get me on the back of your motorbike.”
He huffs out a laugh on a breath and slides me a sideways look, his lips tilting up at the corner into a crooked smile. The edginess in my stomach spreads, prickling all over my skin. His eyes are green, I realize: the cool, clear green of a mountain lake. But there’s a hint of something else in there, something alien and out of place. Before I can get a proper look at him, that flash of color has gone.
He’s wearing another checked shirt, which is hanging open over a white T-shirt. It’s similar in style to the one he had on yesterday, with black and charcoal as the dominant colors, but with patches of light gray instead of dark yellow.
“Do I have something on my shirt?” he asks me, lifting his arm and inspecting his elbow.
My blush at being caught staring is instant. “No. I like it.” The heat on my face intensifies at the admission. “I like the detail,” I add stupidly, managing to stop myself from explaining further, but detail is everything in my line of work.
