Touch

by Rose Wulf

  Arianna laughed. “Oh, you know how she is. Up before the sun and down before breakfast.” She paused, her laughter fading, and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

  Angela sobered, straightened, and replied, “I’m sort of ditching today. I’ve got other things that I really want to take care of.” Her hesitation returned, then, and she glanced past Ari, looking for any signs of her brother. “I don’t suppose Dean’s home?”

  “He’s just upstairs,” Ari assured her. She stepped aside and added, “Did you want to come in?” Her eyes widened as she looked past Angela. “Why’s Christopher waiting in the car?”

  Barely restraining her sigh, Angela said, “I really can’t stay, actually. I sort of enlisted Dad’s help, and I was hoping to borrow Dean, too. Unless you’re busy, of course!” Really, it would almost have been easier on her conscience to bug Logan at work. He does have the truck.

  “Don’t be silly,” Ari teased, smiling again. “Dean’s never too busy for family. I’ll grab him for you.”

  “Can I hold Kira?” Angela asked before she could stop herself, unable to fully resist the urge to play with her niece for at least a few seconds. She might not have been ready to settle down herself, but she absolutely adored the Hawke family’s newest addition.

  “Of course,” Arianna said with a laugh, carefully handing her baby over before turning and adding, “I’ll be right back.”

  Arianna strode back down the short front hall, further into the large three-bedroom house she and Dean had moved into after getting engaged, and Angela turned her attention to Kira with a smile. She offered up a finger for the wide-eyed infant to grab hold of and said, “You just get more beautiful every day, don’t you, sweetie? Your daddy’s going to have a conniption fit when you start dating. But don’t worry, Auntie Angie will be there to give you all the tricks of the trade!” Just as soon as she learns them.

  Kira made a gurgling, giggling sound and squeezed Angela’s finger.

  “Something tells me I shouldn’t agree with whatever you just said,” Dean stated as he and Arianna walked up.

  Angela lifted a laughing gaze to her brother and asked, “What could I possibly have told a baby that you would need to worry about?”

  “God only knows,” Dean replied. He hooked his thumbs in his pockets as Angela obligingly handed Kira back to her mother. “So, what’s up?”

  “Ah,” Angela hedged, “I was hoping to borrow you. And your car.”

  Dean cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “I’m moving out,” she said bluntly. “And by ‘out’,” she quickly added, “I mean back to Darien.” It was a decision she’d come to while she’d been lying awake in Vaughn’s guest room, staring at the ceiling and reflecting on everything. She’d missed home from the first night she’d spent in her and Hilary’s apartment, but they’d made it work and she hadn’t truly regretted moving away. After she’d moved in with Geoff at the start of the year—largely because she hadn’t wanted to live alone—she’d begun to realize it was only a matter of time before she came back home.

  She just hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. Let alone that it would be for this reason.

  Dean’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What happened to Geoff?” He’d gotten much better about speaking her boyfriend’s name without sounding like he wanted to kill someone, which was ironic, since she was about to give him every reason to hate the man.

  If I keep this up, he’s never even going to try to like my boyfriends.

  Sighing, Angela admitted, “I broke up with him last night. There’s no point getting into it right now, but I want to get my things out of the apartment as fast as I can.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, toward their waiting father. “That’s why Dad brought his Navigator.”

  Dean’s stare flicked obediently past her for a second before returning to hers and he said, “I can help with that. But that doesn’t get you out of telling me what’s going on.”

  “I will,” she promised, knowing better than to argue, “I just want to actually move first. If that’s okay?”

  Kira made another gurgled sound, like she was trying to contribute to the conversation.

  At length, Dean sighed. “Yeah, fine. Let me grab my keys.” He turned to his wife, pressed a kiss to her temple, and brushed his thumb along Kira’s cheek as he said, “I’ll be home later. Want me to grab anything while I’m out?”

  “Diapers,” Arianna replied, adjusting her daughter in her arms. “We’re running low again.” She smiled back to Angela and added, “You should come over for dinner tonight. After all that work, you’ll probably be tired.”

  “I’d love to,” Angela assured her honestly. It wasn’t like she had a kitchen of her own to feed herself in at the moment. Dinner with family would be something to look forward to.

  Angela waited patiently by her car for Dean to pull out of his garage. She was sure she wouldn’t get to stall much longer, but she was also fairly confident Geoff wouldn’t be home. So at least she wouldn’t be risking a fight in front of her former neighbors. That was the last thing she wanted to deal with.

  As soon as they were on the road, the potential confrontation looming ahead was the only thing she could focus on. Never mind that she needed to be worrying about where she would be living tomorrow, or what she might be missing in classes, or why she’d woken up that morning with an odd sense of relief in her heart. She wasn’t nearly as upset in the light of day as she’d been the night before. If she were being honest with herself, even at the moment, she hadn’t been all that upset about the actual breakup. The majority of her distress had come from the fact that, once again, she’d been cheated on. Being cheated on twice in a row couldn’t help but make a girl wonder if it wasn’t her fault somehow. Which is stupid. Geoff is obviously a pig, and Eric was never actually interested in me in the first place.

  Eric. Hah, there was a memory she would never fully recover from.

  ****

  Sarah Matthews pulled in a deep breath, eyes closed, and did her best to simply focus on the relaxing feeling of having finally come home. For over two years, in the interest of staying at her husband’s side, she’d been living in Massachusetts alongside her recovering husband and his moody younger brother. But Jacob was as recovered as he was going to get and had decided it was time to come home. Only he’d defined it as “going back,” because really this was her home. This house had been in her family for three generations. She was the one who had inherited it. To him, it was just a convenient place to sleep.

  “Thank God that’s over,” Eric said, exasperation heavy in his voice, as he strode into the building. “You remembered to have the refrigerator stocked, right? I’m starved. Airplane food is disgusting.”

  “Don’t take me for an idiot,” Jacob retorted, following Eric inside. “Of course, I did. But at least have the decency to put your suitcase away first.”

  Sarah sighed, watching her husband’s back disappear around the bend that led to the kitchen. A part of her was grateful for the space. The air was immediately easier to breathe. Maybe I’ll take his advice and put my things away while they’re talking. It wasn’t a terrible idea. She took a step forward, one hand still wrapped around the extendable handle of her suitcase, and came up short when her shoe brushed something solid. Her gaze immediately dropped to the ground, and just as quickly narrowed with agitation at the sight of Jacob’s main suitcase resting beside her. Right where he’d left it when he’d pushed the door open. Snapping a frustrated glare back to the hall he’d disappeared down, Sarah bit back the words she wanted to call out to him. It wouldn’t be worth the argument. Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take your things upstairs for you, since you asked so nicely.

  But she soon discovered it would be rather difficult to haul two rolling suitcases, as well as a large duffel bag, up the nearest staircase by herself. So she rolled his luggage a couple of feet in from the doorway, released it, and continued on her way without a twinge of guilt. She’d done a
hell of a lot for him in the past couple of years, and while most of it she’d done without hesitation or regret, she suspected he’d come to expect that treatment to continue. At some point, he was going to need to learn that she wasn’t his personal maid. Now that he was fully capable of caring for himself again, he was going to have to step up.

  Their time in Massachusetts had been hard, for so many reasons. They’d buried an empty casket where Victor’s body should have been, putting it in the ground beside his late wife and long-deceased brother. The grief of Victor’s loss, on top of the injuries Jacob had sustained from his previous contact with the Hawkes, had changed Jacob inside. He’d withdrawn for several months, forcing Sarah to have most of her human contact with Eric and Jacob’s assistant nurses. Once the nurses were gone, it had become merely the three of them, but most of the time it felt like it was still just her and Eric. Caring for Jacob had mended Sarah and Eric’s relationship to a degree. He no longer looked down his nose at her or spoke to her like he thought she was a waste of space. She almost never fantasized about strangling him.

  Eric himself seemed to have grown up a bit, at least as much as she could expect him to.

  But Jacob was an entirely different story. It had been months since she’d last seen him smile. It had been even longer since they’d shared a bedroom. After so long in a loaned hospital bed, Jacob had claimed he was uncomfortable in their king-sized bed. He tried for barely a week before insisting on taking over one of the guest rooms. Apparently, the queen-sized mattress in that room was far more comfortable than the bed they’d purchased together so many years before.

  Since he’d been satisfied sleeping in a guest room in his own family home, Sarah figured he wouldn’t mind if she took the master for herself now that they were back in hers.

  Walking through the door to what used to be their private space was like walking into a different world.

  When they’d left two years earlier, they’d left in a hurry. Eric had been at the height of his angry phase, distracted with grief and rage, and Sarah had been worried her husband would die if they didn’t get him to a proper doctor in time. They’d packed only the bare essentials and left everything else exactly as it had been. A housekeeper had been coming in twice a month ever since, making sure the house didn’t get lost in a sea of dust or fall apart due to nonuse, but a lack of dust only emphasized how drastically different everything was now. Their bedroom looked like it might have been unoccupied for only a handful of hours. The bed was made with fresh linens, everything was clean, and their photos still decorated the walls and dresser top. The curtains were slightly parted, letting in some natural light, and as Sarah’s gaze swept over the room, she found herself following the sun’s rays to one of those almost-forgotten pictures. She could only barely see the image from her angle, as it was positioned to face the bed, but her heart lurched in her chest all the same.

  William.

  “Sarah!”

  She started, her heart racing in her chest as she jerked herself back to reality, and turned toward the open doorway. Jacob’s voice had been too distant for him to have seen her. There was no need for her to feel guilty. “Yes?” she called back, praying her voice was normal.

  “Is there a reason you left my suitcase down here?”

  Eyes automatically narrowing even though he couldn’t see the gesture, she returned, “I didn’t leave it anywhere, you did. I thought you’d want to pick your own room.” Since mine isn’t good enough for you anymore. But she didn’t want to start an argument, so she released the handle of her suitcase, set the duffel down, and walked back into the hall as she added, “Besides, my hands were full.”

  He was frowning up at her from the bottom of the staircase when she reached the landing, but she’d been expecting as much, so she kept her expression carefully neutral. Silence held between them for several prolonged seconds before he finally turned away, striding back toward the dining area. “We’re making sandwiches if you’re hungry.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” she replied, pretending not to notice the detached tone of his voice. With every day that passed, it was becoming harder to remember the man he’d been before he’d burned. He was turning rapidly into his father.

  ****

  “Thanks so much for helping today, Dad,” Angela said with a smile as she followed her father into her family home later that afternoon. It had been a long, but thankfully uneventful, day. Fortunately, Geoff apparently hadn’t seen fit to shirk his other responsibilities and so all her worrying about Dean’s temper had been largely for nothing. He’d still been furious, of course, and for a moment she’d been concerned Geoff might come home to find his apartment burned to the ground, but that had been the worst of it. For now, the vast majority of her things were taking up residence in a local storage unit, and though she was planning to have dinner with Dean and Ari, she knew she’d be living with her parents again until she found a new place. It was all she could do.

  “For the last time,” Christopher replied, turning a teasing smile back to her, “you’re welcome, sweetheart.”

  They stepped into the large living room a heartbeat later and their attentions were simultaneously drawn to Angela’s mother, Lillian, as her voice drifted over to them.

  Lillian was seated in her favorite chair, leaning off to the side, phone to her ear and head tilted back. It was obvious she hadn’t registered their arrival yet. “Yes, it’s fascinating, but it would really be simpler for me to follow you if you would email it to me. This is a lot of information to process and retain at once, Daniel.”

  Angela’s partial smile faded and she looked up at her father, whispering, “Mom’s talking to Daniel again?”

  Daniel Page was her maternal uncle—one of the two still living—and for years, he’d been nothing but a bittersweet memory. He’d disappeared from her and her family’s lives when she’d been young, sending cards for specific occasions with decreasing regularity until he couldn’t even be bothered with those. Then, a little over two years earlier, Arianna had run into him in Italy. Something about the incident had sparked some kind of guilt in him because shortly after, he’d reached out to his sister with an awkward apology. No one had quite known how to handle it, but for Lillian’s sake, they’d encouraged the contact, and now he was trying to make amends by throwing himself into their family’s long-standing war.

  He’d finally acknowledged the circumstances that proved there were other elementals and seemingly devoted himself to helping Nicholas—his remaining brother—uncover their long-lost family history. But Angela wasn’t sure the effort was even worth it anymore, and she hadn’t fully forgiven Daniel for the years he’d abandoned them.

  Christopher inclined his head, put a hand on her shoulder, and quietly guided her out of the room. Once they had stepped into the kitchen, he replied, “It would seem that way. Did we tell you Nicholas thinks he’s discovered the source of this feud?”

  Angela started and turned widened eyes up at her father. “Seriously? No, I had no idea.” She hesitated, then, because she was torn with the rest of her response. Of course, she wanted to know how the feud had started, but part of her wasn’t sure it was worth worrying about now. It had been two and a half years—roughly—since they’d last been attacked, after all. Then again, there were at least a couple of decades between the attacks on Mom’s brothers and the start of all our drama. So maybe it couldn’t hurt. “What’d he find?”

  Shrugging faintly, Christopher started making a pot of coffee. “He didn’t say much when we talked to him the other day,” he admitted. “He was still translating most of it, but he was sure it was connected. Said he’d found something about how one of our ancestors had been murdered by a weather-elemental, though he hadn’t figured out why, specifically. Apparently, it seemed they all lived in close proximity to each other at one point. At least, those two families did.”

  They lived close together? Why in the world would they have done that? Didn’t the earlier elemental
s realize how dangerous the weather-elementals could be? What her father was telling her only made her more curious, but it didn’t feel like she’d gained any answers. It certainly didn’t seem noteworthy that a weather-controller had killed someone, let alone another elemental. “And he didn’t say anything else?”

  “Not at the time,” Christopher said. He pushed the button on the coffee maker and turned back around to face her. “I’d assume they’ve found something else if Daniel’s called again.”

  Angela pursed her lips and leaned against the nearest counter. A long second ticked by before she carefully asked, “And how’s Mom … you know, dealing with Daniel?”

  Christopher frowned and looked past her, his gaze cast toward the living room they couldn’t quite see. “They’re improving.” No one could deny that the reconnection had been rocky in the beginning. Angela suspected, if anything, it had been—and still might be—worse for her mother than any of the rest of them.

  Sighing, Angela braced her palms behind her and said, “My brothers better not ever try that with me. I’ll hunt them down and beat them if they do.”

  Her father turned dramatically arched brows over to her, lips strained like he was trying not to laugh, and asked, “Oh, really? I’d better warn them, then. We wouldn’t want that.”

  She laughed shortly, grinned, and shook her head. “No, no, we wouldn’t.”

  Instead of commenting, Christopher pulled in a breath and moved toward the fridge. “Are you hungry? It’s been a long day.”

  Angela’s stomach rumbled on cue and she lifted her phone from a pocket, checking the time. It was nearly four already. “It has,” she acknowledged as she returned the phone to her pocket, “but I’m supposed to be at Dean’s soon. I’ll wait until then. Unless you’ve got an apple or something. That probably wouldn’t hurt my appetite.”