AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Cooper had lost everything, too. As much as they had. But he had this place, these people. If he felt the pain of his losses, he hadn’t shown it yet. His entire focus had been on her and Geneva.
They had him, and he had them. The most important thing.
Because Siena and Geneva had Cooper, they also had this place, these people. A small army had mobilized at once, to lift them up, to answer their need. Because of the Bulls, because of Lyra specifically, Cooper had known to come home right away, Geneva had had someone to sit with her at the hospital, and they’d had a safe place to come to after Siena had been discharged. Because of the Bulls, and Lyra specifically, they had clothes on their backs, and beds to rest in. Food in their bellies. Steady ground from which to rise back onto their feet.
Because of Cooper, Siena and Geneva had a family again.
If these people were typical outlaws, she’d had an extremely inaccurate idea of what an outlaw was. What she saw was a family. A particularly shaggy family, but a family as tight as they came.
A couple of days ago, while she’d sat at breakfast with Cooper and Geneva in a house that no longer existed, she’d wondered if the happy turn in their lives would last. Now she had the answer to her question: no, it had not lasted.
But also yes, it had.
She supposed she could say that Cooper was the reason she’d lost everything—he’d said exactly that. But she believed what she’d told him. It wasn’t being in his life that had burned hers down. That would have happened whether they’d had a relationship or not.
Because they had Cooper, though, Siena and Geneva had had a soft place to land.
She felt safe enough to believe that the rest of it would come. She would figure out how to replace the meager trappings of her very basic life, and in the meantime, there were people around her who would help. There was a man who’d declared that he would stand between them and any risk, and there were the people who made up his family.
Their family.
That was the happy turn their lives had taken: love and support and companionship. They’d lost none of it.
Now, though, she was worried almost to the breaking point about Cooper, who’d gone off with his brothers to do violence—and who might therefore have violence done to him. Siena needed to keep herself busy or that worry would wear her already exhausted heart to a nub.
She wanted to talk to Geneva, but her little sister had been difficult to pin down all day.
Geneva had totally surprised her by being very calm about everything. She was sad about Gimli, but in a wise, philosophical way. An occasional sigh, but not much more. The rest of it, the loss of all her things, all her treasures? Maybe it was shock and the losses hadn’t really sunk in yet, but Geneva seemed okay. Lyra had said she’d been distressed at the hospital, but since Siena had been discharged, Geneva was just rolling with everything.
Even more surprising: her little sister, who despised change and fuss and uncertainty, who had recently been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, was readily making friends with the Bulls family. Right now, she and a young woman named Michelle—who Siena thought might be especially close with Lyra—were teaching two other young women, Belle and Luisa, how to play Magic: The Gathering. And the women didn’t seem off-put by Geneva’s sometimes odd, often too-direct way of conversing. They took her as she came, without judgment.
Maybe that was something that came with being around outlaws: an intrinsic acceptance of people who didn’t fit inside the lines.
At any rate, right now, unless Siena wanted to play M:TG—and she’d done her time pretending to be interested in that dumb thing—Geneva was not a direction she could turn to find a distraction. So she went to the kitchen, where Lyra was banging around alone.
They’d had a big supper before the Bulls had left. Everyone had shooed Siena from helping, insisting she should rest, but she’d managed to help clean up after, and the kitchen had been gleaming by the time they were finished. What Lyra was doing in the kitchen now, Siena couldn’t imagine—until she arrived at the doorway and saw.
Lyra was on a stepstool, wiping out a cupboard shelf. The canned goods that had been on that shelf were arrayed on the counter.
“Can I help?” Siena asked, becausewhat the hell are you doing?seemed impolite.
Lyra turned and smiled sheepishly. “No, it’s okay. I clean when I’m nervous. I need something productive to do, and organizing is soothing.”
“I get that. When my life is a mess, having my house tidy makes me feel like maybe I can work out the big stuff, too. Right now, I’m wandering around looking for a distraction from my nerves, too. So ... can I help?” Just then, of course, a little coughing fit happened. No big deal, except everyone around her was waiting for her to spontaneously combust or something.
And Lyra frowned like a schoolmarm. “You feeling okay? You really should be resting. It hasn’t even been a full day since—”
“I know, but I slept for like eleven hours, and now Cooper’s off doing god knows what, and Geneva’s got her nerd on, and I don’t know what to do. TV right now will just make me more restless, I’m not into video games, and there’s not a lot of books around.”
Lyra laughed and climbed down from the stepstool. “A couple of the guys are readers, including Zach, but this is not a place you’ll find a library, it’s true. Yeah, sure, if you want to scrub totally clean cupboard shelves with me, I’ll get you a sponge and some gloves.”
“Please.”
Lyra set her up with supplies. Since there was only one stool, Siena sat on the floor and started on the bottom cupboards—which were already perfectly organized and clean. But she undid one anyway and made it cleaner.
“You really are organized,” she observed as she removed a tidy stack of baking sheets.
“Yeah. I think I’m getting a reputation with the girls for having a stick up my ass. I don’t really. I don’t expect other people to be as anal about all this as me, I just don’t like people to get in my way, either.”
