AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We didn’t get a break until the early afternoon, and I watched my brother frost the Danishes, his movements slow and deliberate.
“You’re good at that!” I cried without thinking, and he stilled, his eyes glued up to mine.
Oh yes, I remembered this too.
My brother was coldly indifferent to any praise. Except from me.
“You are good at that,” I said into the silence.
Torin’s eyes were unfathomable depths, endless dark depths of obsession driving him.
He didn’t say anything, but then, he never had been able to respond when I complimented him. He only looked at me, and I felt the familiar sensation of the little hairs on the back of my neck rising, fear and arousal of the prey looking at her predator.
“Keep going,” I said, and his lips twisted up.
“I can help you when you bake at the cabin,” he said. “Anything you want, Lele.”
There was something about how he said my name that wasn’t fair. It pulled at me, ripping out any morals or decorum or propriety, and left nothing but a beating, pounding heart.
Chapter Twelve
“Laoise, we need to talk about your boundaries,” Drew said later that night when Torin had gone back to the halfway house. “And how your brother is taking up all your emotional labor and distracting you from your life goals.”
“What life goals?” I asked abruptly.
“The bakery,” Drew said patiently.
I felt a sudden surge of anger, and put my coffee cup down abruptly.
“What exactly do you mean by that?” I asked, my voice sounding high and strange to me.
“You have been shutting down the bakery early,” he said, looking at me mildly. “Do you need some self-care days, Laoise?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I think we need to talk about cutting off contact with your brother,” Drew continued, his voice arrogant and self-assured.
“What?” I croaked, staring at him in astonishment. “I’m not doing that.”
“Laoise, we haven’t had one single day when he hasn’t come over to see you.”
“So?” I said defensively. “He’s my brother.”
“Laoise, you’re too close to the situation,” Drew said, suddenly breaking his eye contact and looking down. He flicked his mild green eyes up at me again. “There’s something wrong with how Torin looks at you.”
He held my eyes then, and I stared across the table at my fiancé, the man who had loved me quietly and kindly for five years, and I burned with anger that he would dare think about telling me to cut off contact with my brother.
It was strange.
I had always been afraid of break-ups, of finding the right words, not hurting anyone’s feelings, smoothing over any awkwardness or unpleasantness the best I could.
Drew had always accused me of being passive-aggressive. Of not using “I” language. Of not using direct language.
But this time it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how I said it. The day after tomorrow, my brother would be taking me to my hometown no matter what Drew had to say about it.
“I think we need to break up,” I said.
Chapter Thirteen
