Trouble (Orsen Brothers #1)

by Aubrey Watts

  “He’s fine,” Liam answered without missing a beat. “Just a little banged up. Nothin’ a few days rest won’t fix. They’ve got him pretty looped up on pain killers right now but he should but up soon…”

  I hesitated in the doorway and eyed the sleeping man, remembering the haunted way he looked at me after I gave him mouth-to-mouth. His bloodshot eyes, two pools of icy blue, gave way to his confusion. And her name. He wouldn’t stop saying her name. Not even when the paramedics arrived and took him away.

  “Come on,” Liam urged, extending his hand to me. “Stay awhile. I’m sure he’d like to meet you, all things considered.”

  “I don’t know…” I started, but before I could finish speaking, a deep groan left Anders throat and his eyes fluttered open.

  He looked back and fourth between me and his brother and I averted my gaze to the floor, feeling suddenly on-guard. I hadn’t even thought out what I wanted to say to him.

  Liam approached the edge of his bed and ruffled his brother’s hair. “Perfect timing man,” he said, meeting eyes with me. “There’s someone here to see you. I’ll leave you two alone for a few minutes…”

  I started to open my mouth to protest but he was out the door before I could. I folded my arms over my chest and bit down on my bottom lip, feeling Ander’s icy gaze against my face.

  “So,” he spoke up, finding his voice, “what are you doing here?”

  I frowned and shook my head. There was something condescending about his tone. Something I didn’t like. “I don’t know,” I answered with a shrug, “I just wanted to see if you were alright.”

  He laughed and furrowed his brows, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “Well?” I questioned a little louder, “are you?”

  “You bet,” he replied sardonically, clenching his jaw. The fall did a number on him. His face was a mirage of purple and red—one giant bruise—and a bandage was wrapped around his forehead that he lifted his arms to adjust. “As good as ever.”

  But it was the scars that took me off guard—vertical and brutal looking along the insides of his forearms. He caught me staring and adjusted, rolling his eyes with me. “Like what you see?”

  “Sorry,” I managed, shaking my head, “I was just…”

  Without thinking, I reached out to touch his hand but he pulled back and frowned at me. His eyes were cold and laced with resentment. “Spare me the pity, princess.”

  “Excuse me?” Now I was really done. “What, are you brain damaged too?” It came out harsher than I intended but it wasn’t like he didn’t have it coming. My bottom lip trembled the way it only ever did when I was pissed or upset and I tore my gaze from his.

  “I didn’t need your salvation,” he said firmly, “If you expect me to be eternally grateful to you, you’re in a rude awakening. What you did was stupid. Plain and simple. I’m not—”

  Unbelievable.

  “You’re right,” I interrupted, pacing for the door. I couldn’t stand to be near him for a second longer. In fact, if I never saw him again it would be too soon. I just wanted to go home and forget this ever happened. “I made a mistake.”

  “You know that’s one hell of a moral compass you have!” he called after me. “You could have killed yourself.”

  I paused in the doorway with my hand on the frame. I was practically shaking. “First of all—don’t call me princess,” I said through clenched teeth, “second of all—I was just trying to do the right thing. I didn’t realize what a miserable asshole you were.”

  He chuckled. “That’s the spirit!”

  “Fuck off.”

  I had to get out of here.

  I made my way down the hall—past Liam—who was bent over the nurse’s station flirting with a young blonde intern. Past a paramedic wheeling someone on a stretcher inside an empty room. And past the woman sitting behind the glass partition.

  Anders husky voice rung in my ears. “You don’t know anything about me!” he yelled after me. The machines he was connected to began to beep chaotically as he got louder. “Not one fucking thing, sweetheart!”

  Chapter 12

  —

  I woke up the following morning bleary eyed with a pounding headache. A groan escaped my mouth as I sat up and stretched, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror across from my bed. My hair was a wild mess, my make-up was running down my face in streaks, and my dress was stiff against my body.

  I rubbed my bloodshot eyes and padded into the kitchen, reaching for a bottle of painkillers and popping one in my mouth. My stomach was in knots, every one of my limbs ached, and I couldn’t get the ungrateful bastards face out of my head.

  With a deep sigh, I stripped off my clothing and stepped into the shower, turning the water on and letting it blast until it was scalding. I liked my showers this way—with a bite to them. Stephen always joked that I was a bit of a masochist. I pressed my forehead against the wall as the water raked its way down my battered body and before I knew what was happening, I was balled up on the floor sobbing.

  It wasn’t any one thing. It was everything.

  After a few moments I began to calm down and regain my composure. It was true what they said about a good cry. There was something healing about it. I inhaled a deep breath and turned off the shower, reaching for a towel and wrapping it around myself.

  My mind wandered.

  I wondered what Stephen was doing. I could envision him sitting behind his heavy oak desk with his glasses on, drawing up the divorce papers with his lawyer on the phone.

  After changing into more comfortable clothes, I made a pot of tea and gathered up the heap of fabric on my bedroom floor, stuffing it in the washer along with my dress from the previous night.

  A picture of Stephen and I on our wedding day caught my attention. It was sitting sideways in an unpacked box of clutter beside the dryer. I picked it up and wiped a layer of dust off of the frame as I studied our smiling faces. He made me laugh at something and Luna—having just discovered her love of photography—snapped a shot of us at just the right moment.

  We looked so genuinely happy together that it was almost unsettling; how we could go from that to whatever we were now in the course of a few short years. A bitter feeling settled over me and I set the picture back down in the box. I didn’t know those people.

  I grabbed my tea and sat down on the couch, propping my feet up on the coffee table. My phone buzzed incessantly in my clutch but I ignored it.

  I wasn’t in the mood to talk. Not to Luna, not to Stephen, and definitely not to my mother. In fact, there was only one thing I was in the mood for, and my exhaustion wasn’t going to keep me from getting it. I grabbed my car keys and my purse and made a beeline for the door.

  It wasn’t hard to get a fix when your drug of choice was sold in every supermarket. I grabbed two bottles of Pavlov off the shelf and made my way to the self-check out aisle to scan them. A cashier approached me and asked to check my ID.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s store policy.”

  I nodded and fished the piece of plastic from my wallet, handing it over to her. She looked down at it and frowned, comparing the bright young woman I was at twenty-one to the person I was now before handing it back to me and walking off.

  I stuffed the bottles in a plastic bag and slid my credit card through the machine. As soon as I was safely in my car, I twisted the cap off of one of them and took a long drink, exhaling a deep breath and clenching my jaw at the burn.

  My mothers voice found a home inside my head every time I drank, drowning me in reprimands. But a knock on my window jolted me away from her. I lifted my head from off my steering wheel and squinted out the window at the familiar man standing before me.

  He frowned and craned his head to look at me. “Venus like the planet?” he questioned, pointing to himself, “It’s Liam Orsen. From the hospital. Anders brother.”

  Shit…

  More proof that Poulsbo was just too damn small of a town. You couldn’t go ten feet without
running into someone you didn’t want to see.

  “Oh,” I said, clearing my throat and sitting up straighter. I glanced at myself in my rearview mirror and ran a hand through my hair, pushing the half-empty bottle of Pavlov out of sight. “Right...”

  “So,” he laughed, raising an eyebrow at me. “Do you usually fall asleep in your car?”

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” I retorted, “I was just resting my eyes for a second.”

  But he glazed right over my response. “Do you want to get some breakfast with me?” he interrupted, leaning against my window.

  “Sorry?”

  “Breakfast,” he said, waving his hand at me, “my treat.”

  I stared up at him in confusion. What was his angle here? I was sure that after the incident at the hospital, he certainly didn’t want to be friends. But instead of doing what I always did, which was assume until my brain spiraled into itself, I decided to ask him. “Why?”

  He frowned and shook his head, not following.

  “Why do you want to get breakfast with me?” I clarified. “We don’t know each other.”

  “Oh come on,” he urged, his full lips curling upwards. “I owe you one for what you did for Anders. Besides, haven’t you ever heard the saying, ‘strangers are just friends you haven’t made yet?’”

  I had, of course. I just wasn’t sure that it applied here.

  I took in his appearance. He was dressed nicely, a pair of slacks and a weathered leather jacket acting as the focal pieces of his outfit, and his pick-up truck was a newer model with all the dings and whistles.

  “Well?”

  I licked my lips in an attempt to combat the dryness in my mouth. “Alright,” I relented groggily, feeling suddenly light-headed. “Breakfast would be nice I guess…”

  “You guess?” He laughed and stepped back, pressing a button on his keychain. His truck unlocked beside him and he climbed in, flashing me a smile that made my blood pressure spike. “Come on then. I’m driving.”

  The place was called Sparrows. It was a small diner in the center of town where homebrewed coffee flowed like water and people from every walk of life gathered for friendly conversation over heaping plates of breakfast.

  I had been coming here since I was a kid.

  It was the kind of place where the lines of rich and poor blended together and people dropped their pride and preconceptions at the door in exchange for a sense of camaraderie.

  At Sparrows everyone belonged, even the slightly rugged man sitting in the booth across from me. A man with hair the color of coffee beans and piercing blue eyes that slowly chipped away at my resolves.

  I could tell he had been though more than most. It wasn’t in any one thing he said, but more so in the stuff he didn’t say. He was a cynic dressed up like an optimist’s clothing. But he told me he found solace here, in the all American décor, off white walls, peeling leather booths, and checkered floors.

  And while I understood that sentiment, that still didn’t change the fact that he was a stranger. I eyed the door with the creeping reminder that I could easily escape and walk back to my car if things got weird.

  The restaurant buzzed around us, the muted voices of other patrons and clinking silverware filling in the gaps of quiet between us where actual conversation should have been. A waitress approached us and we ordered two house brewed coffees and breakfast specials—which consisted of eggs, toast, and bacon.

  He opened his mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it. He was a secret personified and I found myself—against my better judgment—wanting to know more about him.

  “What?” I questioned, studying him over the edge of my steaming mug. “You were going to say something weren’t you?”

  He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “Nothing,” he said, stirring a packet of sugar into his coffee “I was just going to thank you is all.”

  “Thank me?” I took a bite of my toast and shook my head, raising an eyebrow. “Breakfast is on you.”

  He laughed and surveyed the food spread out between us. “I know,” he said with a nod, “but you didn’t have to come.”

  “Right well.” I shrugged and took a bite of my eggs. They were cooked perfectly. Nice and dry, just the way I liked them. “Sustenance.”

  “So,” he spoke up, changing the subject. “How long have you been married?”

  I sat up straighter and rubbed the faded band of flesh on my ring finger. “Five years,” I answered automatically, “but I’m not anymore. I mean…I won’t be soon.”

  “No?” he questioned, stretching his muscular arms over his head, “why’s that?”

  I frowned at him. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

  He chuckled and held up his hands. “Hey, I’m just makin’ friendly conversation, that’s all.”

  “Well asking someone you just met about the intricacies of her marriage is kind of crass don’t you think?”

  “Crass?” He exhaled profoundly and flicked his eyes up at the ceiling, an elongated sigh leaving his lips. “Venus, has anyone ever told you that you’re a little…”

  I rolled my eyes and waved my hand in the air, urging him to continue as I swallowed the food in my mouth.

  “Tight around the gills,” he finished, taking another sip of his coffee and nodding. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “No.” I laughed. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard that one before.”

  Liam opened his mouth to say something else but a well-endowed waitress in a low cut top approached our table and interrupted him. “We’re fine,” he told her with an easy smile, slipping a five-dollar bill in the band of her apron, his eyes never leaving mine. “Just some more coffee.”

  She smiled and sauntered off, but not before looking back at him to swoon. I watched it all unfold and rolled my eyes. “You’re quite the ladies man aren’t you?” I spoke up when she was out of earshot.

  He shrugged and smiled at me, rolling the sleeves of his flannel up his arms. I swallowed hard. Something about a guy’s exposed forearms always made me flustered. “That jealousy I’m detecting in your tone?” he joked, raising his eyebrows at me.

  I balked and rolled my eyes. I was beginning to realize that Flirtation wasn’t like riding a bike. If you went long enough without doing it, it was very possible to forget how. “As if…” I muttered into my palm, feeling my cheeks flush of color as I looked out the window.

  It was raining out.

  Big surprise there…

  “Oh come on,” Liam said in a childish tone, “I’m just having some fun with you, thas’all. You familiar with the concept?”

  I clenched my jaw. The huskiness in his voice made my heart flutter involuntarily. “I know how to have fun, thank you very much.”

  “Could have fooled me…”

  “Jesus.” I shook my head. “Are all the men in your family like this?”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘like this.’”

  I waved a hand at him. “I mean, do any of you actually think before you say or do anything?”

  I must have struck a nerve because his smile quickly dissolved. He frowned and looked out at the rain, picking at an edge of the peeling tabletop.

  “Sorry,” I spoke up after a few minutes in a softened tone. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No,” he interrupted, meeting eyes with me, “never apologize for saying what you mean. Besides, it’s all right. I actually wanted to apologize to you about that.”

  “About what?”

  “About my brother,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry he wasn’t more gracious to you. Anders, he’s just—”

  He fell quiet and scrunched his brows, scratching his stubble-covered jaw as he searched for the words. “He hasn’t been right the past few years,” he continued, “not since his wife died.”

  A lump surfaced in my throat. “That’s…”

  “Yeah.” Liam nodded. “She meant a lot to both of us but it really hit him hard.”

  “What was her nam
e?”

  “Nina.”

  That was it…

  That was the name he kept saying.

  “Worst part was,” Liam continued, focusing on his coffee. His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “She was three months pregnant when she was killed. Course we didn’t find that out until after.”

  My stomach tightened and the fluorescent lights above made me feel dizzy. I furrowed my brows and shook my head.

  “What happened to her?” I questioned before I could stop myself. “I’m sorry. I mean…if you don’t mind me asking…”

  Liam nodded and was quiet for a few moments. “Nah, that’s alright,” he breathed, cracking his knuckles. He kept his gaze focused on the window. “She worked here. There was this guy who came in all the time, well two of them I guess, regulars. Anyway, one night they got it into their heads to wait outside for her until her shift ended. Just wanted to ‘have a little fun with her’ I guess. But she fought back when those bastards made the moves on her. Ended up falling and hitting her head on a concrete divide. The impact killed her.”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Anders killed one of them,” he added quietly, “beat the other up pretty bad. Turned himself into the cops after.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath and studied my hands. Suddenly my own run in with death seemed to pale in comparison.

  Chapter 13

  —

  T H E N

  “You don’t value your life.”

  Those five words, some of my mother’s favorite, vibrated in the back of my head as a team of paramedics worked on my unresponsive body—red lights illuminating their washed out faces. “Get an IV going!” one yelled to the other, shoving me into the back of the waiting ambulance.

  I felt something prick me in the arm. I tried to speak but my tongue felt dry and weighted down in my mouth. The last thing I remembered before it all went dark was the sound of sirens and Luna’s worried face as the doors slammed shut on her.

  When I awoke, I found myself alone in a dimly lit hospital room, attached to multiple beeping machines through a mirage of wires and tubes. I felt like some kind of science experiment. I tried to focus my eyes on something, anything, but the strain associated in doing so was too uncomfortable to bear.