“Then one of us will stay there with you,” Hayden supplies with an absolutely fake grin.
“No… No.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Parker says as he straightens up. “We’ll stay here tonight, then tomorrow move back into his house. I’m comfortable with my alarm system still on the house. I reinforced it after last time.”
Wait.
“I already have an alarm system,” I say in confusion.
Parker snorts in obvious disbelief. “Sure. You purchased that out of the box from the security company, right? It’s half-assed, just feels nice because it’s all on your phone. Mine’s better.”
I blink slowly at him. “Okay.”
Reid makes an aggrieved, frightened sort of sound behind me. “Why is it always something? Why can’t we ever have a normal week? Just one normal week.”
“Baby,” Dante pleads.
Reid shoots him a glare. “No! Now we have to deal with this too. We all need a fucking vacation.”
“This is a good enough time to tell everyone we’re going to Arizona for spring break to visit my parents.” Dante glares at Hayden when the other man tries to interrupt him. “No, we won’t be working. Also, we won’t have our phones with us.”
Then Dante grabs Reid’s arm and bodily drags him up the stairs without another word. A second later, a bedroom door slams and quiet once again envelops the kitchen. I want to say something to diffuse the tension, but I’ve never really been good at that. I’m more of a wallflower, althoughwallflower alludes to the object being pretty, something desirable, and I’m definitely not that. So maybe I’m more of a wall… wallsocketwrench.
“I’m tired, and if I don’t get at least six hours of sleep, I will fail my exam tomorrow,” Hayden complains, nose wrinkled, hard gaze aimed at Jacob. “I’m going to bed. Y’all can figure out the sleeping arrangements.”
Hayden flees the kitchen and stomps up the stairs, Jacob’s gaze fixed firmly on his back. The tension in the room disappears, but Jacob’s shoulders are still up to his ears, his strong jaw hard and tense.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Jacob says as he aims a steely look my way, but the words were clearly meant for his brother.
“Nothing to talk about.” Parker bumps his fist against Jacob’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Jake.”
Jacob grunts in disagreement, then quietly heads up the stairs like everyone else. Parker looks back at me with a sigh and nods toward my tea. “Finish your tea, then I’ll show you up to my room.”
“No way,” I argue. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Parker rolls his eyes. “Do as I say.”
His order rankles me a little, but I don’t fight him. Instead, I finish my tea, finally pushing away from the island as a clear indicator that I’m ready for him to show me to bed. Parker takes a moment to clean our mugs before guiding me up the stairs. All the rooms are dark, no light filtering through the spaces at the bottom, even Reid’s room.
When our parents had just died, I’d slept outside Reid’s bedroom on the floor just in case he’d ever needed me. Of course, he hadn’t, because Reid is made of steel and stardust, but maybe I’d needed it more. The proximity to Reid had eased a lot of the initial ache inside me after our parents’deaths. I’ll never know if it did anything for him, or if he even knew I did it.
Parker pushes through the final door. “This is my room.”
It’s very utilitarian. Gray walls, a black metal king-size bed, and a matching dresser. Not many personal items except for a fancy-looking computer setup in the corner. There’s a picture on the desk of Parker as a young boy beside Jacob. Back then they almost looked identical, much more so than they do now. But that’s it. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the room was in a hotel.
Parker heads toward the bed and starts to strip it as I stand frozen.
“What are you?—”
“I’m putting clean sheets on the bed for you.”
I flush at the thought of him being so considerate. I stand there like the awkward idiot I am, shifting from foot to foot as he quickly remakes the bed with clean sheets and a clean comforter that he grabbed from the walk-in closet on the other side of the room. Once he’s finished, he steps away with his hands planted on his hips and tosses me an unsure smile.
“Good?”
“Yeah. Yeah, Parker. Thank you.”
“I have an extra toothbrush?—”
