Ifrozeinmybrother’skitchen, arms loaded with shopping bags. The scent filling the open space was unmistakable.
Thankfully, Cady was asleep on the couch beside him and they were both clothed.
“Seriously?” I dropped my bags onto the countertop. “You’ve got a bullet wound and you still can’t keep it in your pants?”
“Couldn’t help it. We bonded.”
The way he smiled—I’d never seen it before.
I turned my back on him, shoving a pizza into the freezer too hard.
“What’s it like to be bonded?” I shouldn’t ask, but I had to know. I could be wrong about Tara—about what I felt.
“Well, at first I thought I was going mad and the beast wanted to kill her.” Eli ran his hand over Cady’s hair in a gentlecaress. “Feels like coming home. Like waking up to hot coffee and breakfast on a Sunday morning and the whole world is just right.”
I resisted the urge to scratch at my skin. “That’s corny as shit.” I scoffed.
I know exactly what he means.
“By the way, what did Jacques mean about you taking his mate?”
I froze, the rest of his words lost to the buzzing in my ears.
“She wasn’t his mate,” I snarled, turning around to glare at him. “She was just some—"
My throat closed, the words catching.
“Where have you been all month? You know we were worried about you.”
I took a breath, sliding my hands in my pockets and forcing myself to relax as I muttered, “Getting my dick wet.”
“You know, it was secrets that got us into this mess.”
“Her name is Tara,” I sighed. “What are the chances, Eli? For both of us—it wasn’t supposed to be possible.”
Eli reminded me about Saul’s lies. What they earned us. That was all it took for me to spill everything—my compulsion to come back to her, the complication with Jacques. How I blocked off my rental last night with a plan to ask her to stay.
Before I realized what asking her to stay would mean.
“She’s going to get killed,” Eli told me plainly.
“Don’t say shit like that.” I fought back a snarl.
“It’s the truth. You saw what Jacques did to Cady. You gotta find this girl and be honest.”
I shook my head. “Bad idea.”
She would be better off without me. The best thing I could do for her was let her leave this town.
“It’s your only option.”
“I’m not like you, Eli! I haven’t been some heroic gentleman this whole time. I’m a piece of shit and she knows it.”
“Who’s a piece of shit?” Cady was awake. She barely spared me a glance, too fixated on Eli to hear what I was saying.
It was clear in the way she looked at my brother that she loved him.
Of course, she did.