Vipers and Virtuosos (Monsters & Muses, #2)(91)

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to have someone other than me in the house, acknowledging the holiday so that I don’t have to. For a while, I try to convince myself that it’s enough, but it doesn’t work.

Somehow, this is worse than him disregarding me from across the country. At least then, I could pretend life was keeping him busy, and it wasn’t an active effort on his part to pretend I didn’t exist.

Aiden doesn’t come back over, for obvious reasons, and I start to despise how accustomed I’ve gotten to sleeping with him. How easy it’s been to suppress nightmares with him at my side.

In truth, everything seems easier when I’m around him. Navigating life in general, and while I know it shouldn’t, especially given the way he treated me not long ago, I don’t think I can stop wanting him.

It’s a bone-deep ache. One soul threaded through the other, their fabric becoming so deeply intertwined that no amount of untangling can separate them.

I tiptoe down the stairs, shrug into my coat and boots, and head for the front door, my soul desperate to be near his.

Just as I’m turning the doorknob, the floorboards creak beneath someone’s weight, and I know who it is even before he speaks.

“I don’t remember you being this sneaky when you lived back home.”

Slumping against the door, I turn my head to the side. Boyd stands in the living room, arms crossed tight over his chest. He’s wearing a red plaid pajama set that Fiona bought him for Christmas, and his hair sticks up in odd places, like he’s been yanking at it for days.

“Well, when Mom was alive, I didn’t have to be. She was out of her mind so much that I could come and go as I pleased.”

Not that I did, I almost add, but he doesn’t need to know that my propensity for being a hermit started long before I moved here.

He walks over and slides the lock back in place, leaning against the door. For a long time, he studies me, and out of habit, my tongue darts out to touch the scar at the corner of my mouth.

I’m suddenly hyperaware of the evidence of my trauma, and as Boyd tracks the movement, I can’t help wondering if he is, too.

I covered the scars extensively when I lived with him. Went to extremes to ensure that I’d never be caught off guard by my appearance in a mirror or catch looks of pity from people who otherwise didn’t give a shit about me.

It was a protective mechanism, and since Aiden barreled into my new life and forced my walls down, I’ve thought less and less about them. Right now, they’re all I can think about—all I can feel—and as the memories come flooding back, so does my brother’s anguish in the aftermath.

Reaching up, he scratches at the back of his neck and sighs. “I used to be jealous that you called her that.”

I blink. “Mom?”

“Yeah. It was stupid, but I grew up calling her LeeAnn. She’d even asked me to, at one point. Every time you called her mom, it was like we were referencing two completely different people.”

Pushing off the door, he moves around me and into the kitchen. A light glows above the sink, and I see a tub of strawberry ice cream open on the counter, a spoon sticking out of the top. He grabs it and sits at the island, shoving a spoonful into his mouth.

I glance out the back windows to Aiden’s cabin, noting that the whole house is dark. He’s probably asleep, and while I’m sure I could go over and wake him up, something in my soul is telling me not to.

Not yet, anyway.

Exhaling, I kick off my boots, grab a spoon from a drawer by the fridge, and join Boyd at the island. We eat the ice cream in silence, the darkness settling around us the way it seems to have our whole lives—quickly and fully, enveloping us in its warm embrace.

Leaving just a tiny sliver of light.

“Kind of weird that we’re eating ice cream when there’s snow on the ground,” I comment after a few minutes.

He points his spoon at me. “Neither one of us is exactly normal.”

“Yeah, I guess that ship kind of bypassed our docks, huh?” Pushing my tongue into my cheek, I stab my spoon into the pint and sit back, folding my arms on the counter. “Do you think we ever could be?”

“Normal?” I nod, and he laughs.

Laughs.

My broody, angry-at-the-world, too-serious-for-his-own-good brother laughs.

And I hate how my heart still has the courage to hope.

“I think normal is boring. Abnormalities make life more interesting.”

Groaning, I drop my forehead to my arms, burying my face. “I think I’m dating my brother.”

“Well, I would not suggest telling that to Fiona.”

Snorting, I shove at his bicep, rolling my head to the side. “Not literally, dick. But the tattoos, and the philosophy? You guys would probably get along great. You know, when you’re not pointing a gun at him.”

A small, sad smile tugs at Boyd’s lips, and he pushes the ice cream away, turning his spoon in his hands. “I failed you, a lot, when you were growing up. Let all the resentment and anger I had toward… our mother cloud my judgment. Let it bleed onto you. An innocent bystander just caught in the middle of things.”

My throat tightens, emotion winding around and around my sternum, a boa constrictor prepping its next victim.

“I didn’t think it was hurting you. Or, rather, I didn’t want to see if it was. And every time I came over, you were always so excited to see me, and it felt like the universe was just driving the metaphorical knife deeper into my gut.” He swallows. “Then… you got attacked, and I walked into the trailer to find you…”