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“How do you know?”
“Because it’s from me. I ran out earlier while you were getting ready.”
He walks over and nudges the box closer to me with his foot, and when I stare at it in confusion, he rubs the back of his neck and lets out a sigh.
“It’s for you. I… just open it.”
He hefts the box, which looks fairly heavy, setting it down on the bed. Still having no clue what’s going on here, I sit down beside it and pull open the flaps at the top. My eyebrows shoot up as I examine the contents inside.
Books.
Lots of books.
I pick one up and turn it over so I can see the cover, then glance up at Malice. “Romance novels?”
He nods. “Yeah. They’re for you to read, if you want.”
“But… why?”
Now he really does look bashful, and it’s so interesting to see this expression on his usually so harsh and determined face.
“Our mom used to really like them,” he explains, running a hand over his jaw. He shaved for tonight, so his scruff is gone. “And when we asked her why, she said it was because they always had a happy ending. No matter what shit the main characters went through, they always ended up together and happy in the end. So she could read them with no stress, I guess. It helped her because in her job, she saw a lot of death and pain. And our dad was a piece of shit, so maybe she used it as an escape from that too.”
His voice turns a little rough as he talks about his mom, and without even meaning to, I drop my gaze to his arm. The tattoo of her name—Diana—curves over his upper arm, hidden by his shirt at the moment, but I know it’s there.
“Anyway,” he continues, “I thought maybe you’d like them for the same reasons she did. Not to escape us, but as something with a guaranteed happily ever after at the end. After what happened to you, I just wanted you to remember that… good things exist.”
“Oh.” A lump fills my throat as his words wash over me, and that’s all I can get out at first. I turn the book over in my hands, touched more than I know how to say. “Thank you.”
He shrugs again, his dark gray eyes locked on me. “I know you’ve been going through a lot, so I just wanted to help. I’m not as good with the talking about shit.”
“You’re better than you think,” I tell him, remembering our conversation a few days ago after I woke up from that nightmare.
One corner of his mouth twitches upward in a smile, and we gaze at each other in silence for a moment. Then Ransom chuckles, breaking the moment.
“Vic, remember when Mom got that new book, and it went missing before she could finish it?” he asks.
“I remember.”
“We all thought Dad took it just to be an asshole, but now I’m wondering if maybe…” He trails off with a significant look at Malice.
Vic smiles, amusement sparking in his sharp blue eyes. “Anything’s possible, I suppose. And Malice does seem to know an awful lot about the structure of a romance novel.”
Malice’s face shifts from warm and possessive to annoyed in less than a second. “Because I asked Mom,” he grunts. “Fuck off.”
“We’re just saying,” Ransom comments, decidedly not fucking off. “There’s no shame in it if you wanted to read a good story back then. If you wanted to dream about being some dashing hero.”
“It’s really very sweet,” Vic agrees. There was a time when he might not have joined in the teasing, but now he banters right along with Ransom, arching a brow at his twin. “You could go for the high drama of one of the old school books. Shirt ripped open, hair blowing in the wind.”
“I hate both of you. I hope you know that.”
Malice flips them off, but there’s not much heat in his voice. I’ve seen the three of them give each other more shit than this, but there’s always an underlying layer of love to it. They poke at each other, but it’s only because they’re so familiar with each other, and it always makes me smile.
Ransom slaps a hand to his chest as if he’s been mortally wounded. “Ouch. Hating your own brothers isn’t very romance novel hero of you, Mal. I guess you only show your soft side for Willow, is that it? Everyone else gets ‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ but Willow gets ‘I got you these books about loooove’.”
He stretches that last word out and makes a starry-eyed face, batting his eyelashes like mad.
Vic chuckles, and Malice snatches up a pillow from the bed and whacks it into Ransom’s face, making him grunt.
