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“What a crock of crap, Jonno. Why do you think we had all the bedrooms soundproofed? I got sick of hearing all your partners screaming.”
“Screaming in pleasure,” he retorts.
“Errr, god, pack it in, you’re making me feel sick.” I smile at him. “Thanks, baby bro.”
“In age only. You staying in here?” he asks. When I nod, he adds, “Well don’t hog the quilt,” as he rolls over and pulls it all with him.
I snuggle down, poke him with my foot, and steal some back. I don’t think I’ll sleep a wink until I know they’re all back.
I wake to an empty bed, no Jonno in sight and the grey morning light streaming through the blinds.
I get out of bed, with a bit of a headache and very puffy eyes, and head downstairs towards the kitchen, deciding tea is my only focus. I hear voices as I draw near and check the big clock in the corner to find it’s just after 9 a.m.
“You look like shit,” Jackson says to me as I saunter in and sit on a stool at the kitchen island.
“Thanks, way to motivate me.” I give him a dirty look and ask in a hopeful voice, “Any tea, Brown?” I know he normally makes a pot for me.
“Sure.” Jude gets me a mug and, as he puts it onto the worktop, asks, “You okay?”
“Yeah, all good,” I start to lie.
“She slept with me last night,” Jonno rats me out. The brothers all look at each other with very worried expressions.
“So, not okay then,” Jackson states.
They know from long experience that, as a child, teen, twentysomething, thirty-other-thing, if I was off kilter or worried, I didn’t like to sleep on my own. I would invariably, out of habit, get into bed with any one of them. Some adults might think it weird, but it just was what it was.
Nowadays it’s generally only if things are really bad. Jonno was my favoured bed partner, even as a child. I spent many a night at Greystone Farm with Jonno, until he ratted me out to Marshall.
More than just another neighbour who worked with the Greystones, Marshall had been my guardian angel since the age of three. A super close friend of my mother’s who looked after me, loved me. He had loved my mother, he was family. So when I was more or less abandoned by my father after my mother’s death, Marshall took my mother’s written last wishes to heart. And instead of uprooting me from the only home I’d ever known to move me to his home in our village in Yorkshire, he moved out of his own home into mine, making sure I was safe, cared for and loved.
I don’t want them to panic so I say, “I was uneasy because they hadn’t come home yet. But Jonno knew where they were, so that was all good. I suppose, even though we talked last night, I’m anxious about what will happen in the future.” I pause, trying to gather my scattered mind. Worry clouding my thinking. “I just couldn’t sleep. Sorry to worry you all, but that’s why I was in Jonno’s bed all night. He is, after all, my favourite. And the comfiest.”
“You don’t have to worry, Mum.” James’s voice comes from the other side of the kitchen and he walks into full view. “It’s not that bad that you had to sleep with Jonno. I was safe,” he states, distressed, looking around at his uncles.
“I pulled the short straw as always. The cool, calm, oh, and favourite of course,” Jonno says, laughing and getting up to hug James.
Just as I notice that James is not alone.
Chapter
Eight
Kellen
Unfucking believable! She’s sleeping with Jonno.
James called them his uncles. Said Evie saw them as nothing more than her brothers. Clearly total bullshit. Well fuck them, fuck her, fucking freaks.
I look around at the ‘brothers’—two of whom are shirtless and could easily model for underwear companies, their ripped torsos on show—and I go from rational to insane in seconds.
“Get passed around, do you?” I bite out at Evie, shifting my eyes from them to her. I don’t even know why I say it. I have no claim on her. But I want one. And it stings that someone else might.
Her mouth pops open and the next thing I know I’m flat on my back with blood running out of my mouth. Jude, again. “What’s up?” I snarl up at him. “Pissed off it wasn't your turn?”
Next thing I know, Jonno kicks me and lands a punch in my guts. “You jealous fucking cunt,” he shouts and comes in for another swing. James grabs hold of his arm and hangs on to it, shouting at him to stop.
Not to be left out, Jackson drags me up by my hair, so I’m face to face with James.
