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“Somewhere in the neighborhood of one in the morning.”
“Oh, I see. I…I do see. Hmm, yes, I suppose that’s a good time to be asleep.”
“It is when you have to get up at four in the morning to do dock hand work.” That’s said without a grumble, and Alden puts on the kettle without a grumble too. Granny taught us well. Conversations of any kind are best had over tea or, barring that, coffee.
Once we both have steaming mugs of chamomile tea—that’s right, real men drink chamomile—Alden looks at me thoughtfully. “So? I’d ask if everything is okay with everyone, but I know it is, or I’d have gotten a call from Granny before now.”
“Everything’s fine. They’re just about back in Switzerland by now.”
Alden does blink at that, even though he covers his surprise well through years of training. I also have the same poker face training he does. We all received the same training: weapons, self-defense, tech…Granny taught us all well. Of course, we have our own quirks and specialties, but she made sure we all had the basics down before we moved on from that.
“So you’re done. You’ve accomplished what you wanted to do? I’m surprised I didn’t read about a big biker gang being taken down in San Diego.”
“You didn’t read about it because it didn’t happen.”
Alden’s hand jerks fractionally, giving him away before he sets his mug down. “I’m sorry, what?”
So…Granny doesn’t normally fail at missions. We don’t normally fail. What we set out to accomplish, we accomplish. End. Of. Story.
“It wasn’t so much a fail as it was a win.” The tea is still too hot to sip on, so I tuck my hands between my thighs, my fingers brushing at the worn denim. “We actually…no, I actually…It’s complicated.”
Alden studies me for a long while, his dark-as-coal eyes never leaving my face. Then, as if by magic, I can see the light going on in those black depths, and his face changes. It gets about as warm as Alden’s face ever gets—my brother is known for being very reserved, at least before he met Azalea.
“Oh, I see. I do see…uh, yes, I certainly see now.”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” he echoes.
“Uh-huh,” I mutter.
“You’ve fallen in love?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I blurt, the word taking me by surprise. I love my brothers, I love Granny, and I can say the word. I’m not broken in that department because of how I was raised, but I’m not willing to go that far and use the big L on someone I basically just met. “I mean, I care. I’m just at the beginning….”
“Ah, yes. Beginnings. Beginnings are kind of wonderful, aren’t they? Wholly terrifying, utterly bewildering, enchanting, exhilarating…should I go on?”
“What the hell? You’re a year younger than me. When did you get so wise?”
Alden sips at his tea, as sage as any wizened wizard in his old T-shirt and sweats with his mussed-up hair while living in a woodsy cottage. “I guess it happened somewhere between kidnapping Azalea, realizing she was my soulmate, and cleaning about a hundred odd fish for guests yesterday.”
“Ugh. Fish.”
“It’s not so bad. They’re quite tasty. We bought a small boat, and we sometimes take it out fishing, just Azalea and me. The whole—cleaning fish endlessly and docking and gassing the boats—thing hasn’t wrecked me on wanting to do more fishing of my own.”
My brother. Alden. This is the guy who grew up in the city. He was the son of a big drug lord who was murdered because he was…well, a drug lord, and that’s what often happens to drug lords. Alden escaped by jumping out of the upper window of their house. He broke bones in that fall, lived on the streets that way, and ate garbage to survive. Then Granny found him, and same as she found me, she adopted him and turned his life around, and he became the first real brother I ever had. Maybe that’s why I’m here tonight. Perhaps it’s more than just Alden’s experience of leaving the group. Kind of. His heart hasn’t left, but his life is separate now. Or maybe it’s our bond as brothers that started before anyone else joined our household.
“But tell me,” Alden says softly, his voice heavy with compassion. “Tell me about her. About what happened.”
“Uh, well, it’s a bit of a mess, actually.”
Alden chuckles. “When are matters of the heart not a little messy?”
There’s that word again. Heart. I squirm in my chair a little bit, and in front of me, my cup of tea steams pleasantly up at my face, the scent of flowers tickling my nose. “Um, okay, long story short, she’s the daughter of the president of the club we wanted to take down. We got involved. Um, in the bedroom. It was crazy for me to do that, and I wasn’t trying to use her. There was just something about her, and I…I thought no one would find out. It was a moment of weakness.”
