A Portrait of Pain

by Jane Washington

  They came over, and a strange tension seemed to fill the room, drawing even Adie out of his solitary task. I saw his red head perking up out of the corner of my eye.

  “Noah, Cabe, Seph—you all remember Sam.” Miro was before me now.

  “We were never introduced.” Sam clearly wasn’t talking about the others, because her eyes were as steady on me as mine were on her.

  I wrenched my attention away. “Are we done?” I asked Jack. He considered me for a moment before nodding, and I turned back to Samantha. “I’m sorry, I have to go, but nice to see you again.”

  Behind me, Cabe snorted softly. He knew that I was lying. I ignored him, turning to escape the room, but a hand caught my arm, preventing me from going any further. I looked down, shocked, because the hand was Samantha’s.

  “I’m not buying it,” she was saying to Miro, her expression stubborn. “This is who you’re seeing right now? An ex-student?”

  My breath spluttered out in surprise as my eyes swung toward Miro. Everyone else was turning to stare at him now, too. Samantha was jealous—jealous of her dead sister’s ex-boyfriend. My mind was blown, because it seemed out of character, not that I knew anything about her character.

  “That’s her.” Miro sounded cautious. It was hard to tell what he was feeling with my own emotions jumbled, but I thought that he was on edge.

  Samantha released me, shaking her head. “That’s not you, Miro. You’re making excuses.” She turned her back, seemingly dismissing me, and appealed to him with her voice lowered, even though we were all still standing there, perfectly able to hear her. “Let’s just go outside and talk this over, okay? You can’t avoid me forever.”

  “He probably could, actually,” Cabe spoke up. “He’s really good at avoiding shit.”

  Samantha ignored him, her hand landing on Miro’s forearm. I sucked in a breath and Jack shot me a sympathetic look before walking away. He joined Yas by the window, and the two pretended to ignore us. Miro stepped back from Samantha, his expression guarded. I wondered if the bond was currently hurting him as much as it was hurting me. Somehow, I doubted it, because the pain was sharp and stabbing, trying to convince me to lurch forward and drag Samantha out of the house, even though I would have looked like an insane person doing it. He turned to me and closed the distance between us, his hands shaping to the sides of my face. My senses must have been on overdrive from the bond stirring up my emotions, because I could have sworn that I felt the difference in the texture of his hands compared to my own skin. His hands weren’t exactly rough, but they were experienced: his fingers were more calloused than his palms, from holding pens and paintbrushes; and there was a flex of strength behind his grip, a mastery that only came from the precise arts that he practised.

  There was also an apology in his eyes.

  “Wha—” I started to ask, but he cut me off.

  He kissed me.

  Shock spearheaded through me, followed by a strange wave of heat. I stumbled forward, accidently deepening the kiss, and he pulled back, his eyes cloudy, his brows pulling down. Crap, he had felt it.

  “Believe what you want, Sam,” he murmured, while still staring at me. He pulled away completely, striding to the end of the room. He paused with the door hanging open, glancing over at Jack. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he said. “I need to help these guys fix up the houses.”

  Jack was staring at him, a shell-shocked look on his face. After a moment, he jerked his head in a nod and Miro disappeared. Samantha still had that weirdly suspicious look on her face, but I wasn’t paying attention anymore, because my head was spinning. I wanted to be angry: I didn’t want Miro to turn me into a demonstration, to kiss me just to prove a point to someone … but no, that wasn’t what I was angry about. I was angry that my legs were shaking in a room full of people, and that Noah and Cabe could feel the racing of my heart.

  Samantha stormed out of the room, her shoulders pulled back and her eyes fixed ahead, completely ignoring us, and we all just stood there, avoiding eye contact. Eventually, Noah grabbed my arm and dragged me back out, Cabe following.

  “They didn’t actually think you’d be with all of us,” Cabe muttered as we walked down the hall. “You could see it on their faces just then. They thought Miro would back out.”

  “Miro isn’t in,” I hissed, the heat still climbing up my face.

  Noah released me, letting me walk on my own. I heard his quiet laugh. “Yeah he is, pretty girl. He just hasn’t admitted it yet.”

  “So,” Cabe slung his arm over my shoulder, dipping his head down to speak in a half-whisper, “we really are at the grabbing and kissing stage, then?”

  The unwilling laugh spluttered out of me before I could stop it, and I shook my head at him. Cabe always knew what to say to make me feel better. Sometimes I forgot to just be alive, and to grab moments for all that they were worth. It was easy to forget, with Danny still out there. Cabe always reminded me.

  I shrugged out from under his arm, skipping ahead a few steps and turning to walk backward. “Only if you can catch me,” I taunted, seeing the disbelief falling over both of them.

  Their shock stopped their forward progress. I spun on my heel and dashed down the corridor.

  “Seraph!” The shout was part disbelief, part amusement, but I couldn’t tell who it had come from.

  I sprinted into the carpark and ducked through the open front window of Noah’s Lincoln, pulling the keys out of his dash and stuffing them into my pocket. They always left their keys in their cars up there, since no outsider could ever get into Le Chateau. I could hear their heavy footfalls close behind now, but I ignored them, running over to Cabe’s car and diving in behind the wheel. They reached the parking gallery as I was driving out, and I caught sight of Cabe doubled over laughing as Noah’s mouth dropped open. He was definitely the one who had shouted after me. I could tell that he was seconds away from shouting again, and that his reaction was making Cabe laugh even harder. I pressed on the gas, slowing down when I came to the short stretch of houses that we had chosen. I parked behind Miro’s car and dashed into the middle cottage—the one that would be mine.

  Miro was standing just inside the doorway, facing Silas, who had a tool belt strung around his hips and a sledgehammer in his hands. They moved barely enough to let me through the doorway, which meant that I almost stepped into a section of the flooring that Silas had been tearing up. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me up at the last second, his eyes on Miro’s head over my shoulder.

  “What’s going on?”

  He seemed to be asking his twin, but I wiggled, indicating that he could let me down. “Nothing. I need to hide.”

  “Why?” they both asked, with varying degrees of caution.

  “Shh.” I put my finger to my lips, and managed to manoeuvre myself out of Silas’s arms before navigating my way across the floor and down the steps to the middle level.

  There was a door leading to the wardrobe at the back wall of the bedroom, but I couldn’t hide inside a wardrobe. Wardrobes, cupboards and closets seemed to bring out the worst in me. Instead, I descended to the bottom level and slid myself into the empty marble spa, crouching into a ball in the corner.

  “What the hell?” Silas muttered from somewhere above, his voice carrying down the stairs.

  One of them started walking across the top floor toward the stairs—but they paused at the top of the staircase. I found out why when Silas made an amused, scoffing sound, only a second later.

  “Noah and Cabe are running down the hill,” he said.

  Miro—who must have been the one at the top of the stairs, walked back to the front door, and then I could hear the others.

  “Where is she?” Noah was asking, his voice muffled. He was still outside.

  “Who?” Silas was playing dumb.

  “Seph. Who else?”

  “How would I know? She’s supposed to be with you. Did you lose her?” The grating quality of Silas’s fake anger made him so
und louder, and a shiver travelled up my spine.

  “She’s near here.” I thought it was Cabe speaking this time. “I can feel her.”

  “How could you lose her?” Miro sounded as pissed off as Silas, and I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to hold in my laughter.

  It had been too long since my ribs hurt from laughing. I supposed they were only hurting now from how badly I was trying not to laugh, but the ache was still familiar. I didn’t hear the reply, if any was given, and I was standing up from the bath when Miro started descending the stairs again. I knew it was him this time, because Silas had resumed ripping up the floorboards as though nothing at all had transpired. I walked to the stairs, meeting Miro there. He paused, a few steps from the bottom, his stance guarded.

  “You’re going to be in trouble when they find you,” he advised, a smile hovering around his mouth for a moment, before it melted completely away.

  He was thinking about what had happened back up at the main house. I could see the flicker of heat that passed over his face before he managed to shield himself.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked. I couldn’t ask why he had kissed me, because Silas would hear, and I didn’t want to chance his reaction; he probably thought his ‘easy’ act was fooling me, but I could feel the violence of everything that he was keeping locked up inside himself. It was only a matter of time before he exploded again. I wanted to put it off for as long as I could.

  “Because she wouldn’t believe me,” Miro answered quietly, stepping down. “Because I don’t have the time to tiptoe around her, or the luxury of keeping her feelings intact. Because I’m sick of everyone staring at us, wondering. Because I …” he trailed off, sucking in a breath.

  He stepped down further, putting us both on even ground, though he still towered over me. To make up for it, I reclaimed the steps that he had given up, putting us on eye-level. He shook his head at me, but there was a spark of amusement there, deep down.

  “Is that all?” I found myself asking.

  His eyes flicked over my face, and I felt the irregular thud of his heart.

  “Seraph!” Silas called from above, his tone a little too sharp to be casual.

  I froze, unsure what to do. I felt like I had been caught doing something wrong, but Miro only moved past me, encouraging me to follow him up the stairs. Silas motioned to me when I entered the torn-up living room again, and I picked my way over to him, peering out of the front door, where he had indicated. I recognised Poison’s car parked behind Cabe’s along the side of the road, and a moment later she appeared, Clarin and Tariq in tow. I grinned, more than a little relieved. The tension was getting a little too thick when I was alone with the guys.

  “Have no fear,” Poison quipped, catching the expression on my face. “The back-up harem is here. Plus your fake brother, but he’s just tagging along.”

  Somewhere behind me, Silas groaned.

  I knew where she was, but I pretended that I didn’t. I figured that if I was going to have to compete with my three brothers for her attention, I needed to learn to hand her the small victories. After the week was up, we would all be returning to college, and things would be different. Whatever small peace we had managed to find at Le Chateau would be shattered, and war would be declared.

  We all knew it. We could all feel it in the air.

  Danny was gearing up, gaining strength, collecting his pawns and hoarding his pieces. Seraph was just trying to forget … so the rest of us needed to think about the things that she wasn’t. Like the video. Miro and Silas had seen it, Cabe had been in it, but I didn’t want anything to do with it. Not out of spite, or jealousy, or because I wanted her for myself—but because it didn’t matter. Maybe I did want her for myself, in a way, but I had always known that I would share, and Cabe was closer to me than the others. I couldn’t begrudge him his moment. He was more than my brother—he was the second half to my whole, and as a whole, we matched Seraph perfectly. It hurt a little to see her with the other two, but at least they weren’t a foreign, unfamiliar pair. The hurt was dulled by the fact that I wanted them to be happy. They were my family, and I loved them. I would never deny them their Atmá.

  So I would allow them their feelings, and I would allow Seraph her small victories … because it all mattered to her. It all meant something. Without the bond, we were all so much less. With the bond, Miro wasn’t a detached, apathetic asshole with a superiority complex; Silas was at least pretending not to be a sociopath; Cabe wasn’t opening his bedroom to every second chick, only to kick them back out onto their ass an hour later; and I was finding myself more engaged in the world around me. I’d also started using my words more. Mostly.

  Seraph was locking up the cottage, even though nobody was going to break into it, and I watched as she seemed to realise the same thing. She unlocked the door, and then paused again, before relocking it. I shook my head as she hid the key beneath the mat that someone must have bought that day.

  That’s obviously the first place they’ll look, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t speak, because I needed the element of surprise.

  Small victories for her meant bigger victories for me.

  I rose from behind Cabe’s car as she reached for the driver’s door, my hands slapping against the window, my arms caging her in.

  “I caught you,” I muttered against the back of her head, feeling her stiffen.

  Maybe I was an asshole for scaring her, but I liked when she was thrown off. She was always more genuine, then. Less guarded. The stiffness in her body melted at the sound of my voice, but only a little bit. There was still tension in her spine; I could feel it against my chest. I pressed closer, nudging her into the car. I heard her breathing speed up, and I paused, trying not to react. I hadn’t been focussed on the point of catching her, until now. I wasn’t doing it for a kiss. That felt a little bit like forcing her into something, and I had promised her that I would never hurt her again.

  “Seph—” I started.

  She turned her head, her eyes catching mine, and my words died. I never had any words around her. I was lying before—I actually spoke less when I was around her. I flicked my attention from one of her eyes to the other, feeling the two opposing colours wrap around me. Some people thought her eyes were frightening—I could tell by the way they reacted to her. I just thought that her eyes were incredible. Dangerous, maybe. But in a good way.

  “Tell me something,” she whispered, watching me.

  It was rare for us to be alone like this, and for a second, all I could think about was who might interrupt it. Would someone call her? Jack? Jayden? Tariq? Maybe Poison or Clarin? Maybe Cabe would come looking for his revenge the same way I had. Or maybe Silas was already watching us from behind one of the houses. I was on guard duty for the night, so I wouldn’t put it past him to check up on me.

  “I’m glad you stole us,” I found myself admitting. She stiffened further at my admission, but I continued, needing to tell her everything, needing to get it off my chest for good, because I knew that it was plaguing her; we all did. “I’m glad because … I might have met you and you wouldn’t have been mine, and I know that it would have ended me. It wasn’t the bond that drew me at first; it was the way you looked at me, like you wanted me to disappear but you couldn’t look away at the same time. And then … of course … you ran the hell away from me. That look has been haunting me since you jumped in front of my car.” I paused, taking a deep breath, feeling her face inch closer. Her breath fanned against my lips and I held back a groan, forcing my mouth to keep talking, even though my tone had deepened a little.

  “Do you understand?” I asked. “I’m happy that you stole us.”

  She smiled, hesitantly at first, but then her teeth flashed and her gorgeous eyes crinkled. That smile tipped me over the edge and I decided then and there that I was done talking. I slipped my hands from the car and grabbed her hips, surprising the smile right off her face before I kissed her. She made a sound of shock, but I swallowed i
t, deepening the kiss without any warning. She was in an uncomfortable position, still facing the car, her head turned back to me, and I knew that I should have been gentle with her, or eased her into it in some way, but it wasn’t possible. There was some niggling part of my mind that whispered to me in the dark, telling me that she could shut off the romantic aspect of our relationship at any moment. It was the same part of me that reared its ugly head every time she disappeared on us to undertake one of her stupid suicide missions. It took over whenever I wanted to be gentle with her and told me not to chance it. Eerily, it still felt as though every kiss could be our last.

  She started to respond, her shock melting away, and I tried to ignore the way her back arched, her ass pressing against something it definitely shouldn’t have been pressing against if she didn’t want to have sex on a car in the middle of a deserted street.

  Shit, now the idea was in my head.

  I was seconds away from pulling back when her teeth scraped against my lip, and then I lost myself again. I pressed my tongue into her mouth, needing more, and my hands slipped from her hips to her stomach, pulling her solidly back into me. She made a gasping sound, and I swallowed it just like the previous one, my whole body heating up until sweat actually started to break out across the back of my neck. She was pushing back against me, her hands planted against the car window. Maybe she was trying to get closer to my mouth, or maybe she knew that it would drive me crazy. I couldn’t predict her anymore. I stumbled forward, catching her hips against the cool metal of the car, my grip shifting to cradle her ribcage. I could feel the swell of her breasts settling above my hands and I knew I had to stop.

  “Drive,” I groaned, breaking away. “Go. Now. Drive.”

  She didn’t question me, and I could tell that she was shaken. Maybe as shaken as I was. She wrenched open the car door and slid in, speeding up the hill and leaving the wind to cool my perspiration. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t push her too far on my way back up to the house, but there wasn’t much use. My phone vibrated and I pulled it out, checking the screen. Amber had sent me another message. I considered deleting it without reading it, but Miro had briefed me after finding out that Amber was with Danny. She hadn’t stopped messaging me since I had regained my memories. The others didn’t know about it, but they didn’t need to. It would only piss the guys off, because it would hurt Seraph, and there was nothing to gain by hurting her with the information.