“I love that you call it a fire room,” I comment as we pass it, feeling my cheeks heat.
“What would you call it?” he questions and I change the subject before I find myself wanting to go inside of it – the wooden bench room – rather than hear him tell me more stories. It’s the intellectual side of him I need to feel safe. Although his touch is just as addictive.
“You said you didn’t used to use this gym,” I comment, nodding my head toward the last door we passed on the left. The equipment looks virtually brand new.
“I didn’t, but lately the other gym has… The women seem to like the main gym.”
“The women?” My eyebrow raises on its own.
“Chloe, Addison, Aria, they live in the estate with us. You’ll meet them soon, I think.”
I don’t anticipate the pressure that overwhelms me at the thought. As we walk down the hall toward the foyer which leads to the door separating this wing from the rest of the estate, I drag my fingertips along the wall. All the while thinking how close he must be to his brothers since they live together. Only a hall away.
“So they… they get how it is?” I ask him, watching my feet and wondering if they feel the same way as I do. “Chloe, Addison and…”
“And Aria. Yes. They grew up in this life. They aren’t like you.” I can’t explain why it hurts so much to hear him say it like that. Not like me.
“They’re your brothers’ girlfriends?” I’m quick to keep up the conversation and not let on how I’m feeling.
“No. Declan is single. He’s happy being on his own.”
“No one’s really happy being on their own.” I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“You were alone for a long time,” he notes.
“I had my work.”
“That’s still alone.”
“I didn’t say I was happy.” My rebuttal is quick and unfortunate. I’d rather talk about his brothers.
“So one of the three women is…”
It only takes two more steps and a side-eye for Jase to tell me that Chloe is Sebastian’s wife and remind me that I met him in the kitchen the other day.
“Right.” I nod and try to picture his face again, but I can’t. It seems like most of Jase’s family has their own little family. I like that. I don’t know why I do, but it makes me feel safer still. “What about Seth?”
“He doesn’t have a girl… that I know of. I think he has other things in mind,” he answers cryptically.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been off.”
With a cocked brow, I motion for him to continue.
“He’s seeing someone, that’s obvious enough. I just don’t know who.”
“You could ask him.”
“That’s not the way I go about things.”
“Aren’t you friends?” Of everyone I’ve met, Seth’s the only person I had mentally filed as a friend of Jase.
“I trust him to the point where it would be hard to think…” He doesn’t finish his thought but before I can pry he speaks again. “I don’t really have friends, but I’m friendly with him.”
“How did you guys meet?”
“Push came to shove a few years back, and he was there, in a spot where he could have done a lot of things. Seth could have ended us – me and my brothers – before we really got started… all because I fucked up.” He scratches the back of his neck and even though he’s speaking so casually, his expression is hard and unforgiving.
“What did you do?”
“It was at The Red Room. We’d just opened and I let someone in who I shouldn’t have. I showed him something that no one’s supposed to see.” An ominous tone tinges his last statement.
I whisper, “Are you going to tell me what?”
“A basement where I bring people to…”
“To kill.” I finish the sentence so he doesn’t have to.
“Yes, let’s go with kill.”
“And what happened?”
“The doors were open, the man saw and took off. None of us were armed as a show of faith, which was fucking stupid. Seth was out there in the parking lot, and he saw us running after him.”
“Seth just happened to be there?” I question, not understanding.
“He’d stopped by The Red Room that night, wanting to work with us. We told him no. He came back at just the right time.”
“Why couldn’t you work with him?”
“He was too… he was too big, too set in his ways. He came from a town where he was the person everyone went to. I don’t need someone looking over my shoulder, someone wanting to take command.”
“Too many chefs, so to speak.”
“Something like that. Anyway, that night he saw, and he could have let the fucker take off. He didn’t.”
I’ve been to The Red Room enough to imagine someone bolting from the doors. The forest is close; the highway is even closer. It wouldn’t take much to get away if only you got past the parking lot.