Sin City Baby

“So, he still wants to marry you,” Chance said.

“Yeah.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

I knew my voice sounded like gravel. All I could see was red. I wished to heaven’s fuck Chance wouldn’t have stopped me from going into town to kick that idiot’s ass. Any man willing to let her go for the holidays or not fucking come home with her at all was an asshole that didn’t deserve her, no matter whose fault it was. If it was her fault, he needed to fucking man up with a pair of balls and come to her home anyway. If it was his fault, she had no fucking business going back to him.

None whatsoever.

“I told him I didn’t know,” she said.

“Are you considering it?” Rowan asked.

He shot me a look that told me to shut my face before I got myself into any more hot water, which was probably for the best. If I got any angrier with the situation, one of our walls was gonna end up with a hole in it.

And I didn’t want Kyra seeing that side of me.

But the only answer Rowan got to his question was a shrug. After coming home, embracing us in her arms, having the time of her life at a party, being safe with all of us, then practically begging us to all take her right then and there, all she could muster was a fucking shrug.

“The fuck does that mean?” I asked.

“Look,” she said as she stepped away from Harper. “We’ve got our issues, okay? But… what the hell do you guys expect from me?”

The question caught me off guard and I could tell by the stunned expressions that it did everyone else.

“What do we expect from you?” Harper asked breathlessly.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, to be with all six of you and pretend like it’ll all be okay? Some… some happily ever after scenario or something?”

My eyes narrowed at her and she backed away from my gaze. I didn’t like that response. Not one bit. Especially since she was the one that asked us. We were the ones trying to get her to single out who she wanted to be with so at least one of us could be happy. She was the one that asked for all of us. And now the burden of figuring out what the fuck had happened landed on our shoulders?

Hell fucking no.

I reached forward and grabbed her arm, dragging her into the kitchen. She tugged at me, but she didn’t relent and followed me at a quick pace. The brothers knew better than to follow us as I pushed through into the kitchen. Then I dropped her arm and whipped around to look her in her eyes.

“What do you want from me?” she asked breathlessly.

“To be happy, Kyra. To be strong. To be the woman we all know you to be. This guy’s an asshole and I don’t even fucking know what happened between you two.”

She was looking up at me with her big dark eyes and I felt my heart being squeezed in a vice. I could see the confusion flowing behind her eyes. I could see her mind traveling a thousand miles a second. I could tell she’d backed herself into a corner she didn’t know how to get out of and all I wanted to do was help her. Help her sort through what the hell was going on in that head of hers.

But she had to talk to me.

She had to talk to us.

“I… can’t believe what I did that night,” she said, whispering.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Kyra, what we need is for you to talk to us. Talk to me, at least.”

I put my arms on her shoulders and forced her to look me in the eye. I had never before in our lives seen Kyra this lost before. Not since her mom died. It killed a part of me inside that I couldn’t just reach in and put all her troubles on my shoulders.

“I was so out of control,” she said. “And I’m so ashamed. I mean… all of you? At once? Just… without cleaning up or anything? I… I’m a whore. That makes me a whore, doesn’t it?”

And there it was. The reason she took the date with her asshole ex. The reason why she was avoiding us that morning. The reason why she pulled away from all of us and left before we even got up.

She was just as shocked as we were, except she didn’t have five other siblings to bounce it all off of.

“Ethan, if I married Landon, I wouldn’t have to worry about that. Making a mistake like that again. Being so out of control the way I was. If I married him, all of that would just go away, right?”