AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re staring into space again,” he murmured, and then turned.
Faint amusement shone like stars in his eyes, and the tight curl of his lips told me he liked the attention. “I forgot what we were doing,” I answered.
He crossed the space toward me.
“Cooking dinner, by the looks of it,” Mom groaned from the doorway, the faintthudof her steps finally registering. “Really, Ryth, you’d forget your head most days if it wasn't attached.”
I flinched at the bite in her tone, watching her come toward us. She looked like hell, barely glancing at Caleb. No, instead, her bleary glare seemed to be fixed on me. “Where have you been?”
“Here,” I answered, my tone cold.
“All day?” She yanked out a seat at the island and slumped down hard.
“All day.” Caleb turned, sliding butter in the bottom of the pan before he grabbed the bowl of cracked eggs. “Ryth has been working hard on her assignment.”
“Working,” mom gave a huff and closed her eyes. “Just like her damn father, no doubt.”
I froze, pain cutting through me at the words. Anger darkened Caleb’s eyes as he turned on her, striding forward to brace his arms on the island in front of her. “You know, if you paid a little more attention, you’d actually see her for who she was, and not just an extension of you or her father.”
She opened her eyes, finding Caleb right there, and gave a ghost of a smile. She seemed to notice him then, noticed his open shirt and the rolled-up sleeves, noticed the way he exuded seductive control. Her breaths deepened and a look of molten desire seemed to melt the ice she had for me. “I didn’t mean...” she started.
“Didn’t mean what?” Tobias growled, striding into the kitchen.
He rounded the corner, peered into the pan on the stove, and headed my way, reaching over my shoulder to snag a piece of cheese and plop it into his mouth, then turned toward her, standing at my back.
“Elle was just saying that Ryth—”
“That Rythwhat?”Nick strode toward us as he, too, entered the kitchen, and headed to the fridge, grabbing out a beer before he cracked it open and took a step closer to me, peering at Mom.
The moves couldn’t have been more deliberate, Caleb on one side, Nick on the other, and Tobias…Tobias standing at my back. She glanced from one to the other, and gave a small smile. “Nothing.” She turned that smile to me. “Nothing, honey. Don’t mind me, I’m just tired.”
“Then maybe you should take your pissy attitude back to bed?” Tobias growled.
Mom flinched, glancing at Caleb. Did she see Creed in him? Did she think he’d turn on his own brother to take her side?
“You look tired, Elle,” Caleb murmured.
“Those sleeping pills are hell,” Nick added.
I glanced away, this was all my fault, if I hadn’t…Tobias reached over me once more, grasping a piece of ham, his arm brushing mine with the movement. His chest was warm pressed against my back.
“I think you’re right,” Mom muttered, sliding from the chair. “I can’t seem to shake this damn throbbing.”
“Night,” Caleb finished as the slow hiss of the butter melting filled the air.
Nick turned toward the stove. “I’m fucking starving, don’t burn it, brother.”
Dismissed, just like that. She never even looked at me before she slowly made her way back to the stairs and climbed. I tried to find a fragment of the mom I'd once known in the curve of her back and the slump of her shoulders.
But the truth was, she was as much a stranger to me now as she'd been then. I never really knew her, had never known her love. It was so hard, trying to find the feeling when it had never really existed at all. Mom gave only what she wanted, like a leaky faucet, and I'd clung to every drop, waiting for it with a ravenous thirst.
Pain coursed through me as her steps faded. Scrape, whisk, mumble, even the low brotherly jabs from Nick didn’t invade the fog of my memories.
“You wait for her, and you’ll be waiting a lifetime,” Tobias said at my back. “Believe me…I should know.”
He was right, I knew that. Still, it didn’t ease the sting, nothing did. But as the scents and the sounds of my brothers closed in, they soothed the wound, pulling me away, until the ache of her was replaced by something else.
Something I’d never had in my entire life…a sense of belonging.
