Defiance (The Protectors, Book 9)

by Sloane Kennedy

  “Why are you telling me this?” I interjected.

  “In case I’m not around to get you out,” he said simply. “If the house is breached, your only goal is to get to this door or the one upstairs, do you understand me?”

  There was barely enough light to see the firm set of his jaw. “What about you?” I asked, as even the thought of leaving him behind had my mind crying foul.

  Vincent maneuvered me backwards until my back hit the wall. His hand came up to clasp the back of my neck. “This is not Q&A time, Nate. This is shut up and listen time.”

  “So what, I’m just supposed to leave you behind?” I asked.

  “God, you’re so…” He dropped his head briefly as if trying to control himself. When he lifted his head again, I expected him to continue, but he didn’t. I didn’t need to see him to know he was looking at my mouth. And I knew why.

  I couldn’t let him, though.

  I just couldn’t. It was a line I wouldn’t…couldn’t cross.

  But I didn’t move. I didn’t ask him to release me. I didn’t do anything except wish for the impossible.

  He let out something that sounded like a mix between a curse and growl, and then he was dragging me back through the panel after waving his arm in front of it. By the time I stepped through the closet, the metal covers over the windows and doors had started to recede and I finally noticed how the house had been cleverly designed to hide their presence.

  So this wasn’t just some safe house or something. It was really where he lived. Why the hell would someone have to live like this? I remembered how he’d crawled on the ground to check beneath his car for a bomb at the motel. And I started to wonder if I was really any safer with him.

  Vincent didn’t speak as he led me to a set of stairs that led to the second floor. Both cats had joined us, though the boy, Mickey, was walking in front of Vincent while Minnie was trailing behind me. Brody and I hadn’t been allowed to have pets as children and I hadn’t had the time in recent years to get one, but I’d grown stupidly fond of the stray cat that had shown up night after night at my patio door looking for food. Just the thought of the poor creature’s fate had my throat swelling with sadness.

  “Your room,” Vincent motioned to an open doorway. Mickey was already sitting on the middle of the bed when I walked into the bedroom. Like the living room downstairs, it had a stunning view of the backyard, which had a little bit of a nicely landscaped yard before opening up into a clearing surrounded by dense forest. I saw a small pond on the far side of the clearing. In the distance, I could see the double line of fencing and I could only assume that meant it stretched around the entire property.

  I turned to ask Vincent if that were the case, but he was gone. I went to the hallway and peered down it, but all I saw was an open doorway at the end. I wasn’t ballsy enough to enter his private domain, so I returned to my room and looked around. It wasn’t overly extravagant, but it was definitely set up for comfort. Generous bedding in neutral tones, a huge bathroom with a whirlpool tub and separate shower, and a small sitting area by the floor-to-ceiling window. I put my hand against the glass to see if I could tell it was bulletproof, but it felt no different than regular glass, at least not to my inexperienced hand.

  I took a few minutes to unpack my bag. I’d brought the picture taken of me and Brody at our grandfather’s cabin when we’d been kids, but somehow seeing it was a reminder of things I wasn’t ready to deal with. My conversation with Vincent in the car had brought back some ugly memories that I’d worked very hard to bury. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten them, I was just really good at compartmentalizing them so that I only had to deal with them when I was ready to. And I most certainly couldn’t handle them around Vincent. I was already feeling too vulnerable around him as it was.

  My thoughts drifted to earlier that morning. I hadn’t missed the fact that I’d woken up on his side of the bed. I could only hope he hadn’t been in it when I’d migrated in that direction. I’d slept surprisingly well considering everything that had happened, but I was still wiped out. I waited a few minutes for Vincent to come and collect me so he could explain what was going to happen next, but when he didn’t show I decided to take a quick shower since I hadn’t had the chance to do it the night before. I closed the bedroom door and then went into the bathroom. As inviting as the tub looked, I didn’t have the time to make use of it, so I stripped off my clothes and got the shower going. My side was bruised, but it wasn’t hurting as bad as the night before. Since I didn’t have anything to cover the bandage on my hand with, I removed it, but left the small Band-Aids Vincent had used to cover the puncture wounds on my fingers. My palm felt like it was on fire, but I ignored the pain and climbed into the shower, closing the glass door behind me. The hot water felt amazing, and I found myself standing underneath the spray for a good ten minutes before I even started the process of washing myself.

  Everything took a lot longer since I was pretty much one-handed, but now that I was benefitting from the relaxing spray of the shower, I took my time. I let my thoughts drift and tried not to stress about everything I should have been doing today. Even though I’d planned to take it easy today and just focus on administrative tasks like following up on emails and phone calls with constituents and party leaders, it still felt like I was slacking off.

  And I never slacked off.

  Even as a kid, it had been hard for me to get into the rhythm of summer vacations at my grandfather’s cabin. Brody hadn’t had that problem. Nor had he minded missing church every Sunday, or lying to our parents about not attending or not doing our nightly bible study. My mother’s father hadn’t been big on church, so he’d never enforced my parent’s rules about attending Sunday services or reading our bible every night before bed instead of watching television. I’d done both anyway because doing any different had felt wrong. But there’d been many times I’d wanted to break the rules like my brother. I just hadn’t been wired that way.

  I wanted to believe that was why I’d turned on Brody after I’d discovered him in tears the night of our prom and he’d admitted he’d had sex with his girlfriend and had hated it. I myself hadn’t ever had sex at that point, so I’d been certain that it was just the newness of it all, but then Brody had uttered those few words that had changed our lives forever.

  I think I’m gay, Nathan.

  “Fuck,” I muttered to myself as I felt the tears sting my eyes. I hadn’t meant to let my mind go back to that night. But now that I was there, my subconscious refused to let me walk away from it.

  “No, you’re not, Brody,” I said as the reality of his words crashed over me.

  Tears continued to slip from his eyes. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I’ve…I’ve tried to be normal…”

  “You can’t!” I shouted. “You can’t be a…a fag,” I said, completely horrified as I realized I couldn’t protect Brody from something like that. “You’ll go to hell,” I whispered as even the thought of my brother burning in eternal damnation threatened to send me to my knees.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated as he wrapped his arms around his waist. I’d gotten home from the prom hours earlier after saying goodnight to my own date with a simple kiss on the cheek right outside her front door. I’d been studying my bible when I’d heard Brody enter his room, which was right next to mine. I’d gone in to see how things had gone and had found him curled up on his bed, still in his tux, and sobbing uncontrollably.

  “It’s a mistake,” I said as I shook my head.

  “It’s not!” Brody cried as he settled his eyes on me. “I’m gay, Nathan.”

  The certainty in his voice was my undoing, and I jumped off the bed. In that moment, he wasn’t my brother. He was all the things my father had said.

  An abomination.

  The devil.

  I nodded my head. Yes, it was the devil talking through him. That had to be it. “You’re a sick pervert,” I snarled at him, and then I did the only thing I could think of to save my brother from the evi
lness that had taken him over. I went to find my father.

  It wasn’t until my body began to feel cold all over that I came out of my daze and remembered where I was. I’d somehow ended up sitting on the shower floor, my arms around my raised knees and my head resting on them as tears streaked down my cheeks. The water was quickly turning cooler and I managed to reach up and turn it off before it became ice-cold. I carefully climbed to my feet and got out of the shower. I hadn’t thought to find a towel before getting in, but luckily there was a stack of clean towels on the edge of the vanity and I quickly grabbed one and began drying off. I avoided the mirror because I didn’t want to see the proof of what had just happened.

  It wasn’t often that I lost time like that, but when I did, it usually had to do with the memories of that night, the weeks that had followed, or the night three years earlier when I’d cast Brody out of my life for good.

  Since I’d worn the same clothes this morning that I’d been wearing the night before, I decided to put on the jeans I’d packed at the last minute the night before when Vincent had given me ninety seconds to figure out what to bring with me. But when I reached the bedroom to get them from my bag, I stilled at the sight of something sitting on the foot of the bed.

  I realized what it was as soon as I picked it up.

  A digital tape player. I glanced up and saw the bedroom door was still closed, but the player’s presence was an obvious sign that Vincent had come into the room at some point. And since I hadn’t thought to close the bathroom door while I’d showered, it was very possible he’d seen…or heard me.

  I let out a harsh laugh as I sat down on the bed. The man was just destined to see me at my worst. I hit the button on the player.

  Hey, it’s me.

  I immediately turned the player back off, because I was just too raw to listen to Brody’s voice at the moment. I knew I should get dressed and go talk to Vincent about whatever the plan was, because I couldn’t not know what was going on. But I didn’t have the energy to do anything more than lay down on the bed and pull the coverlet over me, not caring about the damp towel wrapped around my hips. I clutched the tape player against my chest as more tears threatened to fall. But luckily, exhaustion beat the tears and darkness stole me away before I had to relive the nightmare all over again.

  Chapter 8

  Vincent

  “Yeah, might not hurt, Ronan,” I said as I felt my watch vibrating. I glanced at it and saw the location pop up. Nathan was up and leaving his room. “Keep me posted,” I said as I glanced at the monitor that would show Nathan. I hung up the phone and watched him head towards my bedroom. He knocked and waited a few seconds, but I was glad when he didn’t just walk into the room. I didn’t have anything to hide, but I was already struggling to deal with having him in my house. Knowing he’d been in my bedroom would have felt like my last sanctuary had been breached.

  When he turned around and began walking down the hallway towards the stairs, I got up and left the office. I still had no clue what to say to him. I shouldn’t have left the damn digital player on the bed. But I’d been so lost in the sounds of his sobs and the sight of him sitting broken in that shower stall, that I hadn’t given much thought to how he might feel knowing I’d heard him. Hell, I didn’t even know how I felt. What I did know was that it had taken everything in me not to walk into that shower and pull him up off the floor, his nakedness be damned, and demand he tell me what was wrong. I supposed it could have been the lingering shock from the attack, but I doubted it. I suspected the issue was much closer to home, and it was the very reason I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d told Ronan he might want to put some guys on Brody and his men. Ronan had agreed, but his guys would be shadowing the men so they wouldn’t know they were being watched. Anything else would just cause them to worry about each other and Nathan. And if Nathan knew the failed attack could potentially be putting his brother at greater risk, he’d never be able to relax and help me figure out who was behind all of this.

  And I really needed to figure it out, because I wanted him out of my house and out of my life. I’d been in his physical presence for less than twenty-four hours and it was already becoming a serious distraction. The way he’d stood up to me after I’d told him his only job was to get himself out of the house if we came under attack had been too much. I’d been pissed, yes, but I’d been a lot more than that.

  I met him at the bottom of the stairs. My perpetual shadow, Mickey, sat down next to me and I saw Nathan smile when his eyes fell on the cat. It wasn’t the carefree, natural smile I really wanted to see someday, but it still had my insides dancing. When his gaze returned to me, he shuttered whatever emotion he’d been feeling and I saw his cheeks color.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to sleep so late,” he murmured.

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  He stopped a few steps above me and shook his head. “Fuck,” he whispered.

  “What?” I asked.

  He shook his head and pushed past me. “What?” I asked, grabbing his arm.

  “You heard me, didn’t you?” he asked.

  When I didn’t answer quickly enough, he pulled free of my hold and headed towards the kitchen. I followed him and watched him go to the fridge. Before he opened it, he looked at me and I nodded. He yanked it open and scanned the contents.

  “Hard shit’s in there,” I said as I motioned to the lower cabinet next to the fridge.

  He closed the refrigerator and began rifling through the cabinet until he found what he wanted.

  Whiskey.

  A man after my own heart.

  He plunked the bottle down on the island between us. “Up there,” I said when he looked at me questioningly. He followed my gaze to the upper cabinet right behind him. He pulled out two glasses and splashed a generous amount of the alcohol into each one before reaching for one and downing a healthy swallow.

  “Don’t fucking feel sorry for me,” he snapped, and then he pushed the second glass towards me. “Go back to being a dick.”

  I chuckled and said, “You got it…you drunken asshole.”

  A smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. “Prick,” he muttered and then he took another drink.

  “Food’s in the microwave,” I said.

  “Not hungry.”

  “It wasn’t an offer,” I responded. Nathan’s eyes went dark. God, he’d be such a hot piece of ass in bed. I just knew he’d give as good as he got. The image of fighting him for control in my huge bed had me growing hard just like that, and I went to sit down at the kitchen table so I could hide my predicament.

  Nathan went to examine the contents of the plate I’d prepared for him and then began the process of heating it up. He didn’t ask where the silverware was and instead, began searching through my drawers. I supposed it was his way of rebelling, so I held my tongue and focused on him. He still looked tired, but he was moving easily. He’d unwrapped his hand and he was definitely favoring it, but I didn’t see any signs of fresh blood. I should have berated him for getting the stitches wet, but I held my tongue. I’d save the comment for when he needed a reason to get pissed at me.

  My eyes fell to his ass when I realized what it was about him that looked so different. He was wearing jeans. Not particularly loose ones, either. The man looked damn good in dress pants, but the casual look was working for him too. His hair looked deliciously rumpled and the gray T-shirt he was wearing stretched tight across his chest.

  I took another swig of my drink as I watched Nathan grab the plate from the microwave and carry it, the silverware, and his drink over to the table to sit across from me. When I’d built the house, I knew I’d have no need for a big dining area, so the table only seated four people and I’d removed two of the chairs altogether and slid the table up against the window. On the occasions that Everett would join me for dinner, we often ate in the living room in front of the TV. I hadn’t given much thought about how close I’d be to Nathan at the table. As it was, if I moved my foot just a little,
I’d be able to reach his beneath the table. I was surprised our knees weren’t knocking, considering we were both so tall.

  I watched him pick at the food at first, and then slowly start to dig into it with a little more gusto. I generally ate pretty light fare, but I’d purposely made something a little higher in the fat department since Nathan looked like he could use all the calories he could get.

  “It’s good,” he murmured between bites. “Thank you.”

  I didn’t comment. His eyes lifted to mine and I saw a little bit of pesto sauce on his lower lip. I was half-tempted to reach out and wipe it away, but his own tongue beat me to it and I felt my dick tighten even more in my pants. Thank God I’d had the foresight to wear jeans after I’d finished my workout this afternoon and showered while Nathan had been sleeping.

  As the silence grew between us, Nathan seemed to get more and more tense. His eyes kept shifting to mine, and finally he put his fork down and sat back. “Can you just tell me something embarrassing so I can pretend we’re on even ground again?” he asked. “Even though I know we never really will be.”