AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Let’s just see how things go for a while. If Kyle keeps blowing up like that though, I think it might be better for us to go elsewhere.” It hurt to say it. That house had always been my home and I had always felt safe and settled there. Now I just felt like I didn’t belong anymore, and it was just another part of my previous life that had been ripped from me.
“Hey. I just saw Harris. He’s fine. Kyle backed off, but the boss wants us to have a back up plan, just in case we need to leave here,” Kailan explained as he walked in and threw himself to the bed beside Nick and me.
“We were talking about that too. Maybe we could call Asher and see if he can help,” Nick suggested.
“That’s what the boss is doing right now,” Kailan confirmed.
“I miss your house,” I sighed. “I know I wasn’t there long, but it just…I felt comfortable there. It felt like home.”
“It is your home, Evie, if you want it to be. Wherever you want to live when this is over, just know that we’ll be with you. You’re stuck with us. We go where you go,” Nick told me, and it helped. Maybe this house wasn’t my home anymore, but I did have a home with the guys.
“I don’t know what I’ll do after this is over, but I do know I want to be with all of you and Zack,” I told them. It was good to know that for sure. It was about all I knew for sure at that time, but it was enough. Everything was so uncertain and scary, but whatever happened, whatever shape my future took, I knew my four guys and Zack would be a part of it. It was something solid that I could cling to in the chaos. It was a peace of calm in the middle of the storm I was being swept up in.
CHAPTER 17
EVIE
I gave up on sleep around two A.M. that night. I had barely slept a wink without nightmares haunting me one after the other and I refused to close my eyes anymore. I’d rather be exhausted than have to relive the hell that had been pulling me down every time I closed my damned eyes.
Aleks was laid with me, spooning me as we slept, his body curled tightly around mine and his arm under my head. Harris was on the camp bed in my room too, but Kailan and Nick had taken a couple of the spare rooms, since it was too much of a squeeze with us all together.
I slipped silently from the bed and grabbed Harris’s hooded sweatshirt as I slipped from the room. I had a robe, but that wouldn’t smell as comforting as Harris’s sweater. I pulled it on, the house feeling cold as I made my way down the stairs and into the kitchen.
The house was so silent as I set to work making a cup of chamomile tea to try and calm my anxiety down. It was so unusual in that place to have silence. Growing up the place had always been chaotic, at first with foster kids, as well as all of us when I was younger, then just with us when mom and dad decided to stop fostering. We were a noisy bunch, but it never bothered me. It was just home, and that had always been a place filled with safety and happiness for me. Until now, when it wasn’t anymore.
I made the tea and sat at the counter to drink it. The kitchen was dimly lit by the under cabinet lights and the shadows around me were creeping me out in a way they never had before. I knew it was because Soloman had been on Livy and the guys property. What if he got onto mom and dad’s? I couldn’t shake the fear that he was stood out there in the yard right now, just watching me and waiting for his opportunity.
“Evie? You okay?” I looked up and found Nick stalking towards me. He was dressed in checked lounge pants only. No shirt. His body was magnificent, a work of art, covered with tight, sculpted muscle and golden skin. His scars, which were mainly down his right side and consisted of burns and gnarly lines where I assumed he had taken shrapnel, didn’t detract from how perfect he looked in that light. “Evie?” he tried again as I just sat drooling over him. I pulled myself together and gave my head a small shake to try and clear it, then I returned my eyes to his.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine. I just couldn’t sleep,” I explained, feeling hot and flustered all of a sudden. “You?”
“Same. I don’t sleep well in unfamiliar places. Thought I’d grab some water.”
“Is Zack okay?” I asked.
“Out cold,” Nick laughed as he held up his cell phone and showed me the image from the camera the guys had set up beside Zack’s travel cot. “I think your mom and dad wore him out.”
“They love kids. They’ve fostered a ton of them over the years.” Mom and dad had been playing with Zack non stop after dinner that night, running around with him and getting out very old toy they could find in the garage. Zack had a ball with all of the attention.
Thankfully Kyle hadn’t been at dinner. Livy told us he had gone into the office, after she apologized profusely for his earlier behavior, but it wasn’t up to her to apologize. Kade, Matt, and Cole had all been on their best behavior with my guys, but I sensed the drama with Kyle was far from over.
I still hadn’t see Xander yet. He’d had to work late the night we’d arrived and he’d been working another shift that day too. I hoped to see him at dinner tomorrow, because I missed him and his level head. He was the one brother I knew wouldn’t push me and fight with my guys just for the sake of it. He was a little more mellow than the others and I needed that.
“You want some more tea?” Nick offered as he walked into the kitchen.
“Please,” I nodded. “I’m not eager to go back to bed.”
“Nightmares?”
“Yeah, every damned time I close my eyes,” I admitted.
“You’re dealing with a lot of stress right now. It can make things like nightmares worse,” he reasoned and I just groaned.
“Great. So that’s me not sleeping for weeks to come.”
“You just need to try and relax more. There’s no use in stressing. There’s nothing we can even do right now except let Aleks work his computer magic and hope for the best.”
“Did he find anything today? I didn’t get chance to ask him.”
