by Kira Graham
“I’m not doing anything. Tee and I aren’t even friends,” I remind them. “She’s violence, and I’m peace. Those two don’t mix. We only hang out every once in a while so that I can spot the security guys who still have lives.”
Rosetta huffs, and for once, instead of going off on a rant or threatening people, she shakes her head tiredly and cuddles into Z’s side.
“You know what, baby? Let’s just go home. It’s almost knock-off time, my head is killing me, and I’m not up for another round of ‘who’s right and who’s wrong.’”
“Rose—”
“Don’t,” she mutters as Zeus leads her by me, his eyes warning me to keep my mouth shut.
She pauses at the door, turning slightly to give both Adonis and me a hard look.
“Ever since Cleo met Adonis, I’ve had this unrealistic romantic dream that we’d all end up together, as if the cosmos had planned it that way. I wanted to see my sister and cousins married to men that I know are as good as my own, and I was hoping for a family that would make our tale epic. But if the two of you can’t be nice—hell, Ares, if you’re not destined to love Tee, then stop hanging around with her and giving her mixed signals.”
“Me? I’m not. Tee and I each know where we stand,” I say softly, my gut going tight as I say the words. “She told me that we can’t be friends.”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be a dick about it, either. I know that to save her and Sin, you had to do something that you didn’t want to, and for that alone, I love you. But Tee…she’s not like us. She’s the tough one. Nothing gets her down. Or it didn’t used to, until now. You wanna know why she’s being such a coward all of a sudden? It isn’t because she’s finally found Jesus and has this fear of mortality; it’s because the thing that sticks out for Tee about what happened was seeing you so close to danger. She’s trying to be safe to save you, Ares. Think about that the next time you see her,” she says softly, before allowing Zeus to let her out of the apartment.
“Christ,” Adonis mutters, his eyes suddenly clearing when he glances at me. “I guess my new favorite color is purple.”
I snort, watching him grin and then swallow as he slaps me on the shoulder and squeezes, the way he’s always done when he’s trying to comfort one of us. As a big brother, he’s the best, and he proves that right now by meeting my eyes and giving me his patented understanding look.
“One day, you’re going to be old, messed up, and too rickety to get your ass to the bathroom before you piss yourself. It’s a fact of life, man. A smart man nails down his piss partner when the going’s good, and an even smarter man makes sure he nails down a woman who’ll still love him when his dick is too tired to stand up anymore. I’m not saying that that woman is Tee for you—hell, the odds of all the Sweets and Harts finding love with each other are already stretching the bounds of belief, as far as I’m concerned. But she’s a good friend, no matter what bullshit you want to feed us, and a good friend will be there, too. If you let them.”
With that, he leaves—just walks out as sober as a judge, whistling and arguing with Paris about the pink suits, since it seems that Paris has discovered vanity and a dislike of pink. When I turn, it’s only Chilli left staring at me, so I silently gulp and shove my hands into my pants pockets to hide their clenching.
“How are you? I know we talked after the shooting, and you’ve been attempting to act like your usual quiet, easy self for a while now, but how are you after what went down?” he asks, shaking his head when I sigh and open my mouth, only to close it.
I don’t know how I feel, to be honest. I hardly sleep, and when I do, I get a replay of that night. I see that security guy knocked out cold, and I experience the same gut-clenching terror that I did when I realized that someone had hurt, or was hurting, the girls. I hear the voices through the door, I feel the terror that Sin felt as she tried to reason with a man who was obviously not going to be reasoned with, and then I relive the moment when I forced myself to act, just split seconds before he pulled the trigger.
I don’t know what is worse for me lately. Knowing that I, a self-professed pacifist who respects the life of every creature on Earth, took a life, or knowing deep inside myself that I would do it again, and that I feel no guilt about it, either.
I’m glad I killed Peter Gernert, and in my weakest moments I regret letting him off with a shot to the chest because, in that moment, with fear and panic driving me, I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. Even now, in this very moment, I relish the thought of Mindy sending another one of her goons after Tee because I’m anticipating violently killing anyone who thinks he can hurt her.
The other women all have men, and while I was telling my brothers the truth, that Tee and I aren’t exactly friends, we aren’t enemies, either. She’s mine to protect, and so what does it say about me that I’m looking forward to doing that no matter what? No matter who I have to hurt?
“I’m doing okay. Just worried about…everything, I guess. Tee’s having her equivalent of a nervous breakdown, the parents are all in some stage of baby fever versus cruise ship holiday getaway, and…I don’t know. I feel as if everything’s in chaos,” I murmur.
As a mama’s boy—and yeah, I admit that without one shred of shame ’cause my ma’s an awesome person—I usually spend as much time at my parents’ house as I do here in my own apartment. In the last few months, though, everything has been turned upside down. Ma’s over at Alex’s and Chilli’s nearly all the time, Honey and the other moms are doing God alone knows what, though whatever it is takes up the other half of Ma’s time, and that has left me…at loose ends, I guess.
Any time I’d normally spend with Ma is now open, as is the time I used to spend with Tee, who has so much male company these days that I’d have to battle my way to her door.
Not that I blame the security guys. They love Tee, and they should. That chick is one awesome, fearsome kind of special, and she knows how to fight like no one’s business, just as Nate found out when he got his ass handed to him, the day Tee proved that, prosthetic or not, she would take him down. Hell, she used his prosthetic as a weakness and ripped the thing off during one of their sparring sessions.
Sessions that she no longer has, because she spends more time hiding away in her apartment than anything else. I don’t even get to see her out at the clubs anymore.
“Things are changing, Ares. That’s all,” Chilli says gently, using a softer voice when speaking to me, as he always has. “Change is good. It means growth, new beginnings, and in this case, love. Everyone’s finally settling down, just like Ma always wanted.”
The problem is, I hate change. Part of the reason that I get to be this zen—or got to be, if we’re splitting hairs—is that I rarely change anything in my life. I like routine. I like knowing the answers and always being prepared. But I wasn’t prepared for any of this. Chilli is married and has two boys, with another baby on the way; Zeus is married, has a kid on the way, and is treating his wife like spun glass; Paris is in the midst of starting a new life with Sin; and Adonis, when the poor bastard finally gets it right, is going to start a family with Cleo. The only person left is me, and that means that people expect Tee and me to…
While I am attracted to her, and yeah, I enjoyed sex with her, I’m not looking to just jump in like everyone else has. Tee isn’t structure and calm; she’s chaos. She storms in, rips things apart and enjoys the aftermath of her destruction. We’re not a good match, but dammit, I guess we are sort of friends. And as her friend, I owe her more than what I gave her today.
“I don’t know that I’m ready for that,” I admit, going over to the windows to stare down at the afternoon traffic.
“Sometimes you don’t get a choice. What’s going on with you and Tee?” he asks, his chuckle sounding forced when I shrug.
“Nothing. We hang out sometimes. Not in a while, though,” I admit.
“She pushing you away? Alex says she’s likely to get emotional with what happened.
It’s supposedly normal.”
“No pushing. As far as I can tell, she’d let me hang out with her and all the security guys running after her, if I wanted.”
“Are you jealous?” he asks, smiling when I scoff.
“Hell, no!” I mutter, only a little miffed that I don’t get to sleep in her bed anymore.
I’d gotten used to being there and waking up in the morning beside her. It’s part of my personality that I don’t deal well with changes, and losing something that I’d come to rely on hasn’t been easy for me. Plus, she doesn’t call me in the middle of the day anymore. Not even to bust my balls about being uptight.
“I dunno, man. You sound upset because your stand-in girlfriend ditched you.”
“Do not.”
“You know what’s doubly pathetic about that, asshole? She didn’t ditch you for another guy; you ditched her because of another woman,” he laughs, his natural mocking tone returning now that he’s not trying to suck out my soul.
“There’s no other woman! Tee wasn’t a woman, either. I mean—”
“Mindy! You ditched her for Mindy,” Chilli says softly, his knowing smile grating on my nerves.
Fuck.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not interested in Mindy,” I sneer, my lip curling with violent anger before I can stop myself.
“Not as a woman, but as a target…” Chilli drawls, his arch smile matching the one I feel sweeping across my own face. “I’m guessing that you’re hoping that Mindy will lose it and come after you for killing her brother. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I can’t. So I shake my head and say nothing, and tell myself that he’s wrong. This isn’t me. I don’t plan ways to hurt others, and I definitely don’t plan how I’ll kill a female, for God’s sake. Surely this rage and festering anger will go away soon.
At least, I hope so, because if not, if I still feel this way and Mindy comes at me, I don’t want to think about what’ll be left of her or her flunkies.
“I’m not into violence, Achilles. You know that. If I run across her or anyone she’s using to do her dirty work, I’ll call the cops.” To identify the body.
Chilli laughs, a full-bellied, nerve-jangling bark of amusement that makes me flinch. His eyes sparkle, but they also hold a knowing look that makes me want to hide away so that I can collect myself.
“Don’t give me that pacifist mumbo jumbo bullshit that you’ve been spouting since you were a kid.”
“It’s not mumbo jumbo,” I mutter, scowling when he tilts his head to consider me more closely.
“No, not for you. You always were kind and forgiving and all that good shit that the rest of us seemed to miss out on, and this may surprise you, brother, but I respect that about you. You’re steadfast. You don’t shrink from ridicule when you choose peace over conflict, and you keep your head held high even when other men call you a pussy,” he drawls, that old mocking gleam sparkling in his eye.
“Your point?” I ask softly, my eyes unfocused as I gaze back out the window.
“There’s more to you than that, and we all know it. You’re a mediator at heart, and you love the challenge of resolving problems. Ma used to call you Shooter, remember?” he laughs, making me snort and roll my eyes.
I had the nickname Shooter for years, until some meathead jock asked me if it was my porn name, and I insisted that my family stop using it. It was short for Troubleshooter, something that I have always taken pride in being.
“Ma almost got Darren Nolan killed when Adonis heard him making fun of me about it.”
“Until you stepped in and cooled our hothead of a brother down.”
“Chilli, as much as I enjoy just shooting the shit with you, what are you trying to get at here? I’m tired, I’m irritable, and I’d prefer to be alone and not have anyone around to see my bad mood.”
“My point is, you’re not perfect—no one is. What happened with Peter Gernert wasn’t and isn’t your fault. You did what you had to do to save our girls, and if you regret that—”
“I don’t,” I cut in, my jaw grinding on the last word. “He was going to shoot Tee and Sin, and from what Sin was shouting at his dead corpse while kicking him repeatedly, it sounds like he was going to go after Cleo, Rosetta, and Alex next. I don’t regret stopping that,” I assure him, meeting his eyes head-on so that he can see just how much I mean that.
“Then whatever this anger is that you’re carrying around, let it go. Tee and Sin are fine.”
“Tee isn’t fine, though, is she? I’ve heard the stories, man. The Sweets may laugh their asses off and think it’s funny that Tee is practically living with her security team, but I don’t. I also don’t find it amusing when the whole family is having lunch, and she dives under the table when Jack pops open a bottle of champagne,” I grumble, swiping a hand through my hair as tension fills me. “She’s not…this person.”
And I don’t like that. Which is strange, really, because we’ve had our fair share of arguments about what kind of person Nefertiti is. She’s got a quick temper and a diabolical reaction time, and she doesn’t hesitate to attack if she’s riled up. At least, she didn’t. Nowadays, if you say boo too loudly, she bolts.
Her family may find it funny, but I don’t. What I see now is a woman so afraid of her own shadow that she’d hide from it if she could.
“How would you know, Ares? You don’t really spend all that much time with Tee.”
I snort and give him a pointed look, because we all know that that’s not true. I got my ass stuck with Nefertiti when my brothers all decided to fall in love with the other Sweet women, and so we’ve spent plenty of time together. We even slept together, I think, my groin tightening before I can squash the feeling.
“We’ve spent a lot of time together.”
“With you in the corner, watching silently and judging her. That’s not getting to know someone; that’s you making judgments before you know everything you need to. Look, I’m not a romantic like Rosetta, and I’m not like the rest of the family, who think it’s cute that we all ended up together. I don’t see you and Tee going there. Unless you pull your head out of your ass and get to know her for who she really is. This may surprise you, but you and Tee aren’t actually all that different. She’s the fixer in her clan, too,” he says softly, his face going hard when I snort with a disbelieving grunt.
“Yeah, right,” I mutter, sighing while Chilli purses his lips and huffs, his eyes stormy with disgust.
“Fine. You don’t want to talk? I’m out. Just do me a favor, bro. Stop looking for things to fix all the time and actually get to know Tee. You’d be surprised what you find. Alex once told me that if she ever needed anything, Tee would be her first call, and I’ve seen that same reaction with every other Sweet as well. She’s reliable, steadfast, and more stable than you seem to give her credit for. I mean, at the moment…not so much. But can you blame her? She almost saw her best friend get shot,” he says softly, pausing at the open door when I reply.
“She loves Sin—”
“Christ, you’re an idiot,” he mutters, walking out before I can say another word.
I shrug uncomfortably as the door closes and turn back to the window, trying to breathe deeply and settle my mind. I should probably meditate, and I find myself sitting in my workout room doing just that minutes later.
The problem is, all I can think about as I close my eyes is Tee.
Chapter Five
Tee
“Get outta my dreams! Get into my caaaar!” I sing off-key, busting a gut when Sin snorts and falls off her end of the couch, laughing so hard that she whines and clutches at her stomach.
We’re playing a game that I’ve named Best Unknown Serial Killer Songs, and so far I’m winning, because my love of music trivia and old eighties pop and rock is legendary. I kicked it off with the all-important and very easy “Every Breath You Take” by The Police, followed that up with Céline Dion’s “I Drove All Night,” and now I’m three for three while S
in chortles and tries to think, racking her brain for songs that fit the category.
“This isn’t fair! I don’t crouch in a corner at night, skulking and tapping my fingers together with glee while thinking of songs that could be the soundtrack to a murder spree,” she protests, her smile growing when I waggle my eyebrows and shrug.
“I don’t skulk in corners, and it’s not my fault that I’m cool enough to think about these things. Honestly, what the heck do you think the Bundys of this world would have listened to if they’d had our kick-ass music options back then? To be fair to those sickos, I think they became serial killers because they had to listen to the likes of ABBA in order to get their groove on.”
“Hey! I love ABBA! They rock,” Sin grouches, kicking me from her end of the couch, where she seems to have taken up residence ever since she and Paris hooked up, and she decided that her lifelong dream didn’t matter anymore.
I give her another two months of this layabout attitude before she snaps and storms back into Helos, the restaurant Paris bought for her months ago. Hell, I sure hope so, because Sin can’t have kids, and being a housewife with no kids to look after is just pathetic.
“Me, too. I used to have a crazy crush on the blonde bombshell before she cut her hair,” I say seriously, chuckling when Sin snorts and rolls her eyes.
“What about…dammit, this is hard. Does it have to be eighties or after?” she whines, her brow scrunched up.
“Yes. The rules are simple. Eighties and after, or you have to find a reference from The Sound of Music to fit in with the serial killer theme.”
“That’s bullshit! That’s like saying that I have to find a SpongeBob scene—”