by Lane Hart
“Guess there’s that,” I reply with a smile.
“Come on, we’ll go in the back way. Mrs. Engle usually has cookies ready for us when we get home before we head to the gym,” Knox tells me over his shoulder as he leads the way to the back door. I can smell the sugar cookies as soon as he opens it.
“Fuck yes,” Knox says, seeing the tray piled high with cookies on the dining table.
Cain comes into the kitchen before I can grab one. “What the fuck happened to her?” he shouts.
“Some guys were fighting and bumped into me,” I tell him as he comes closer to look at my head. “It’s no biggie.”
“Did you kick their asses?” Cain asks, turning to Knox and Ivan, who are unable to answer because their mouths are both full of cookies.
Knox shakes his head until he swallows, then he shrugs. “Don’t know who it was.”
“Then you find the fuck out!” Cain yells at him before he storms over and bursts out the back door.
“Fuck,” Ivan mutters around his cookie.
“We better go with him,” Knox says, grabbing two more cookies. “Stay here. We’ll be back soon,” he tells me before he and Ivan jog out the back door.
Chapter Five
Cain
“Dude, I don’t know why you’re a hermit, but I doubt kicking someone’s ass in the middle of the afternoon will help your situation,” Knox rambles as I storm toward the school.
“Won’t take long, and you can do the talking to figure out who it was,” I tell him, pulling my hoodie up to cover some of my face.
“And then you’re gonna kick their ass?” he asks.
“Fuck yes.”
“It was an accident,” Knox says.
“Yeah, because the assholes didn’t take that shit outside,” I tell him, fuming because of that fucking huge red welt on Gabrielle’s gorgeous face. She was perfect and innocent, and they hurt her.
It takes a few minutes for Knox to find an eyewitness, but he finally gets the names of the two brawlers, along with their home addresses.
The three of us decide it’s probably best to wait until dark before we show up at their houses and give them a beat down.
“I can’t believe you let someone touch her on the first day!” I tell them as we sit on the rail of the bridge near fuck face number one’s house.
“Look, bro, we had classes and shit of our own. We can’t follow her around like a shadow every second of the day,” Knox replies. “And now my and Ivan’s asses are sitting here instead of working out, so Vaughan’s gonna chew us out tomorrow.”
“Well, these fuckers need to know they better stay the hell away from Gabrielle,” I say as I eye the apartment building off in the distance.
“Damn, you really wanna hit that, don’t you?” Knox asks.
“Shut the fuck up,” I snap through gritted teeth before I shove his shoulder so hard he has to jump down onto the road.
“Hey, I don’t blame you,” he says, looking up at me with palms out in surrender. “I wouldn’t turn down a chance to sleep with her either.”
“I didn’t –” I start to say but Ivan interrupts from beside me.
“Yes, you did,” he says with a chuckle. “Saw you leaving her room this morning.”
“Better go by planned parenthood and stock up on condoms before we head back tonight,” Knox suggests.
“I’m not gonna fuck her,” I tell him.
“Yeah, you are,” both dickheads say simultaneously.
“You’re tracking down two dudes to whoop their asses for giving the girl you just met yesterday a bruise on accident. And she wanted you to sleep in her bed last night,” Knox responds. “That’s got one-way ticket to Bone Town written all over it.”
“Whatever,” I grumble. “You two just need to worry about making sure no one touches her at school or I’ll kick your asses.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Knox replies, straightening and giving me a military salute that makes me roll my eyes.
The guys are wrong, because no matter how much I want Gabrielle, that’s a line I refuse to cross. Yeah, I may want to fuck her, and I bet it would be fucking amazing, but I could still get picked up by the police any day now and then everything would go to hell.
I can’t take the risk of starting something with her and then getting locked up, but I don’t think I’ll ever be strong enough to refuse to sleep in her bed with her.
A few minutes later, the three of us go up and knock on an apartment door. When the dickhead answers, I knock his lights out before he knows what hit him. At the second house, the bastard tries to run, so I tackle him on his living room floor.
“What’s your problem?” the fucker asks. “I ain’t got any money or dope.”
“You got into a fight at school today,” I tell him as I dig my knee into his back and squeeze his neck. “And because you were both being dumbasses, you hurt an innocent girl. This is your punishment.”
Turning the asshole over, I pummel him with both fists, fucking up his face like he marked Gabrielle’s pretty one. Not that it made her less beautiful, I just can’t stand to see anyone so gentle and sweet get hurt.
“That’s enough, man,” Knox says as he pulls on my shoulder to make me stop hitting the guy sprawled and bloody on the floor.
He’s right. I’ve made the fucker pay, so hopefully he’ll think twice before swinging punches with women around. I wish someone would have taught my mom’s boyfriend that lesson in life…
“Come on, let’s go,” Knox says when I get to my feet again.
On the short walk home, I flex both of my hands and wince at the sting from my bleeding, busted knuckles. Tomorrow, they’ll probably be so swollen I won’t be able to hold a pencil to draw, but it’s worth it to teach the assholes a lesson tonight.
The guys and I are a block away from the house when, from the corner of my eye, I spot a patch of something else crimson, rare and beautiful this time of year, standing out underneath the street lights.
“You guys go on, I’ll be right there,” I tell Ivan and Knox because I don’t need any more of their ribbing for shit tonight.
“Hurry up,” Knox mutters before they go on ahead of me and I pull out my pocket knife.
…
Gabby
After icing my swollen noggin for a while, it seems to have stopped growing. In the upstairs bathroom, I turn my head to the side to examine it in the mirror and realize it’s now turning shades of blue, which is even more hideous. Oh well, at least it’ll be gone in a few days.
I decide to go ahead and change into my pajamas since it’s getting late. The guys still aren’t back yet after Cain stormed out earlier, which sucks because it meant I was alone in the house with a sleeping Mrs. Engle all afternoon. She must have sensed that the guys were gonna be out for a while, because she didn’t bother making dinner and just gave me a few twenties and told me to call in a pizza. I ordered several, figuring the guys would be hungry whenever they got home.
Back in the bedroom, I tidy up my dirty clothes, dumping them into the hamper Mrs. Engle put in the closet for me, then I turn off the light and pull back the covers to climb in bed. My head hits the pillow before I smell it — flowers.
“What the –” Bolting up from the mattress, I sit up and feel around the pillowcase. Finally, my fingertips come across the long, smooth stem and I lift the flower up to my nose to inhale a deep breath of the fresh scent. An enormous smile stretches across my face at the sweet gesture.
I hear Cain clear his throat before he speaks, nothing more than a dark shadow in the doorway, but I’m certain it’s him. “Are you okay? I mean, I didn’t know if…”
“Come in. I could use some company,” I tell him without hesitation. “The house has been lonely tonight.”
“Yeah, sorry,” he says as his voice gets closer.
“Where did you go?” I ask, but he stays silent, refusing to answer. “Thank you for the flower. A rose, right?” I ask since it’s too dark in my room to see it.
“Yeah,” he replies. “I cut off all the thorns.”
“I love flowers,” I tell him, taking another whiff of the bloom. “And roses are my favorite.”
“My mom liked flowers too, especially red roses,” Cain says, but he doesn’t add anything more or climb into bed.
I keep talking just to keep him from leaving because I’m too embarrassed to just ask him to sleep with me again tonight. “You know, I totally get why people take flowers to the hospital when a friend is sick, or to a funeral when a family member dies. That’s why I want to work in a flower shop, making beautiful arrangements and delivering them to see the smiles they put on people’s faces,” I admit to him, twirling the rose around in my fingers. “It’s not like flowers have magical healing abilities or anything, but they do help. No matter how bad things are, you can always look at the bright, colorful flowers you received from someone and know for certain that you have at least one person out there thinking about you.”
“Yeah, guess so,” Cain mumbles. “But flowers didn’t help my mom when she was in the hospital. She got sick, and then she, um, she died.”
“She did?” I ask, my heart breaking in half for him. “Is that how you ended up here?”
“I ran away,” he responds.
“Oh. I’m so sorry, Cain.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he mutters. “Well, goodnight, Gabrielle…”
“You can just call me Gabby,” I say. Before he can leave, I reach out blindly with my free hand to find his and stop him. He hisses at the contact.
“Sorry,” I tell him, realizing I must have hurt him.
When I start to pull away, though, he grabs my hand and squeezes it before he finally lets go and says, “Move over.”
Grinning even though he can’t see it, I scoot backward toward the wall to make room for him. Once he’s settled in on the pillow just inches away, I ask, “What happened to your hand?”
“I hit the guys who hurt you.”
“You did?” I say in surprise, not just because he hit them for me but because I don’t even know who they were.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “They deserved it.”
I could make the argument that they didn’t, that it was an accident, but I think it’s…sweet of him to stand up for me.
“I hate that you hurt yourself for me,” I tell him. Reaching for his hand that’s next to his face, I gently lift it and bring it to my lips to kiss it.
“It’ll heal,” he says like it’s no big deal.
“Thank you, Cain,” I say, before I release his hand and tuck mine underneath my cheek. “So, is that why you can’t go to school? Because you got into a fight with someone else who deserved it?” I guess, remembering the conversation with Knox and Ivan this morning.
“No.”
I wait for an explanation, but it never comes.
“You’re not gonna tell me what you did to get kicked out of school?”
“No,” he answers. “I’ve already told you more than I’ve ever told anyone.”
That makes me happy, even if he won’t answer more of my questions.
Certain from his tone that he won’t tell me any more, I say, “So, I guess we should get some sleep.”
“Yeah, we should. Good night, Gabby,” Cain replies.
“Night,” I say, and then I roll over so that my back is to his front, the rose still in my hand so that I can smell it all night.
Just as I had hoped, Cain moves closer until he’s pressed against my backside with an arm thrown around my waist. It doesn’t take long before I feel him get hard against my bottom. So I guess that means he must like the way my body feels. I try to get up the nerve to move his hand underneath my pajama top, but then he apologizes.
“Sorry,” he grumbles. “Just ignore that. It happens to every guy at night and in the mornings.”
“Oh,” I mutter in disappointment.
So, I guess I was wrong. He doesn’t want me that way. And now I really feel like an idiot for thinking he might.
…
Cain
The next few days Gabby begins to settle in like the rest of us. For the following nights, I don’t even try to sleep in my own bed. After I experienced it, the thought of not being next to Gabby’s warmth is unimaginable. And I really like being needed by someone for the very first time. Having that purpose fills me with something I’ve been missing my whole life.
By the end of her first week at the house, she has me trained like a puppy; and I wouldn’t have it any other way. She may have been sad because she missed her brother and she refused to give up on the idea of him coming to get her, but I prayed each night for the opposite. I wanted to keep her beside me for as long as I possibly could.
Even in twenty or thirty years from now, I’ll never forget the day Gabby walked through the front door of our home for orphans and misfits, and into my life. Her long, golden hair shined like a beacon, and then her blue eyes hit me with the force of a tidal wave. From that second I knew I would do anything for her.
Gabby was both my ray of sunshine in a bleak existence and my rainbow painted across the sky after a dark and cruel storm. Her warmth, beauty, and innocence even at fourteen called to me to protect her from the reality of our harsh world. She had no idea about the life she had just walked into.
Within days, Gabby even had Knox and Ivan wrapped around her little finger. The three of us would become the brothers she needed thanks to the piece of shit biological brother she had. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for her, but she was mine. I was the one who got to hold her each and every night.
There was nowhere else I would rather be for the next three years, until my eighteenth birthday when I’ll have to leave her.
And while I may ache to be more than her friend or her protector, deep down I know that Gabby deserves so much better than a murderer like me.
That’s why I’ll always keep my hands off of her even if it’s the worst torture imaginable, and do whatever it takes to keep Gabby safe, especially from the truth.
Chapter Six
Gabby
Three years later…
“Take me with you!” I beg Cain in the darkness, clutching the front of his soft cotton t-shirt in both of my fists as we lie facing each other, just like every night since my first one here. But tomorrow he turns eighteen and the mafia goons will come for him, the same as they did with Knox and then Ivan on their birthdays.
“You know I would if I could, angel,” Cain whispers, keeping his voice low since there are two younger girls sleeping in my room now, unlike when I first got here three years ago.
His refusal reminds me of the same words Robbie told me when he dropped me off at the front door. That I couldn’t stay with him while he was training to fight. That no girls are allowed there, but he would save up his money and come back for me when he could afford his own place.
That obviously never happened.
Three years later and Robbie’s still fighting for Mario Guerra who took over after Vito Scarfone went to prison. I get to see my brother whenever I want, but he’s always at the gym training and still lives in the men-only dorms.
“If you leave me here like my brother did, I’ll never forgive you,” I tell Cain, tears threatening to overflow from my eyes.
“I have to go, and you have to stay. That’s how it has to be, Gabby!” he replies. “If I take you with me or if you run away, they will find you, and then you’ll wish you were dead.”
“We leave here all the time and nothing happens,” I point out.
“Because that’s temporary. We always come back every night by curfew.”
“I can’t stay here without you,” I tell him.
“You don’t have a choice. And I’ll come back to visit,” he says.
“Will you sneak in at night?” I ask, unable to imagine not having him here to hold me. Cain is my comfort, my guardian, and I love him. Not just in the brotherly way he thinks or in the way he reciprocates.
Yet.
&nb
sp; For years now I’ve been too scared to say anything or make a move for fear of his rejection. I can’t lose him, even if it’s killing me not to tell him how I feel. While neither of us has mentioned his body’s response to being pressed against me since that second night, I want him to tell me that it’s me he wants and that it’s not just biology.
“I’ll try to sneak in,” he agrees on a sigh. “But I can’t make any promises. Now I need to go and talk to Domino if this plan of mine is gonna work,” he says. “When they come for me tomorrow, tell them where to find me.”
“Do you really think Domino will take you on?” I ask.
“Yeah, I do,” Cain answers, his smile glowing in the darkness. “And if I can convince Mario that I’ll make a decent living, hopefully he’ll let me stay at the shop.”
Ever since the first day we met, Cain has been drawing. It’s his passion and he’s amazing at it, getting better all the time. Instead of fighting like my brother, Ivan and Knox, Cain wants to become a tattoo artist. For the past few years, he’s been apprenticing with Domino at his tattoo shop whenever he’s had the time, drawing for him and training so that he could get a job actually wielding the needle one of these days.
“Then I can come live with you in nine months when I turn eighteen?” I ask.
“That’s the plan,” Cain says tersely on a sigh, and my heart breaks knowing he doesn’t really want me to tag along.
“If not, I can just go work at the club –” I start, but he slaps his palm over my mouth hard enough to put me on my back.
“You’re not working there!” he snaps from above me before remembering to keep his voice down. “I’ll die before I let you dance naked in that fucking place. You should be surrounded by flowers and shit, not all the smoke and booze in the club, taking your clothes off.”
And there he goes again with the big brother protector spiel because all he’s ever seen me as is the kid sister that needs taken care of. I do want Cain to take care of me but in a slightly different and less familial way. That’s why lately, I never miss an opportunity to remind him that I’m not a little girl anymore.
