“I still need to see for myself.”
“You didn’t come home when it was Lachlan.”
“Because we’re in the public eye, we deal with obsessed fans and threats regularly, and it never occurred to me that the threats I’d received were connected to his. I never expected it to turn out the way it did. I’m not that naive anymore, and I’m going to be there when my family needs me.”
I could hear the guilt in his voice. The truth was, Brodan should have come home, and he didn’t, and even when he did eventually show up, he wasn’t himself. He still wasn’t himself. Something was going on with him, and no matter how many times I asked about it, he shrugged me off. That hurt. Not just because he didn’t feel he could confide in me, but because I hated the idea that one of my siblings was dealing with something difficult on their own.
“Are you okay?” I asked for the millionth time in as many months.
“I’m fine, sweetheart. But they’re shouting for me to get back, so I’ll check in later. Stay safe.”
“You too. I lo—” The line went dead before I could finish the sentiment.
Silence filled the car until Ada asked, “Are you all right?”
I sighed, leaning my head back against the headrest. “When we were younger and Dad was always hiding in his office, we were left to ramble around that drafty old castle. I was so close to my brothers then. Lachlan and Thane were different—Lachlan always was more like my dad, and Thane, my protective big brother.
“But Brodan and Arran were only a few years older, so they were my pals, my buddies. They told me everything, even things I didn’t want to know, about the girls they got off with in random and often not very private places. Even when they went to uni, now and then I’d go stay with one of them at the weekend. They’d call me every week to tell me about their school or girl problems.” Emotion brightened my eyes. “I don’t know when that changed. I don’t know when I lost them.”
Ada was quiet a moment and then said, “You haven’t lost them, Arrochar. Brodan wouldn’t be calling you in the middle of filming a multimillion-pound movie if you’d lost him. If you’d lost him, Arran wouldn’t have stayed while this threat looms over his sister.”
While I knew that was true to an extent, I also knew that something had changed. “It’s … it’s deeper than that. Something changed in them both … they have secrets. Remember last year when Brodan was in bar fights that were splashed across the media? His crazy behavior stopped, but he never really explained why it happened in the first place. It was so unlike him. We never used to have secrets from each other.”
“I’m sure that goes both ways. Aren’t there things about you they don’t know?”
Mac.
I watched the world pass by as I realized Ada was right.
Maybe the distance between Brodan, Arran, and me wasn’t just coming from them. Maybe, without being cognizant of it, I’d put distance between us, too, to protect my secret feelings for Mac. And maybe, now that Mac had put everything out in the open with Lachlan, that would filter down to Brodan and Arran … and maybe my freedom to be honest with them would signal to my brothers that they could tell me anything in return.
I hoped so.
The room Mac taught the class in was too big. It wasn’t even a room; it was a basketball court, by the looks of things. His class didn’t even take up half of the space.
Mac greeted me as soon as I walked in, and I tried not to seem as nervous as I was when I returned his welcome.
“Are you okay?” He squeezed my biceps, and I nodded.
He gave me a reassuring smile. “Why don’t you take off your shoes and go stand with the others?”
I nodded and watched as he walked away to his place at the front of the class.
He wore a T-shirt so tight, the broad muscles in his back shifted as he strode across the room. While the navy trousers of the gi hung loosely on many a man’s arse, Mac’s clung to his rounded, muscular cheeks. He picked up the jacket of his gi and secured it with his black belt. Mac seemed to feel my gaze and stared back at me. Powerful, beautiful … repentant.
I flushed, looking away. The man is unfairly attractive, I grumbled inwardly as I kicked off my trainers and walked across the cold court floor to join the back row. Most of the students, except for two others, were in traditional white gis with white belts. I wore sports leggings and a sports tank.
A few students were limbering up, doing stretches I remembered from PE class back in the day. Just the thought of high school PE made me want to grab my shit and get the hell out of there. The only thing keeping me from bolting was that I truly had intended to join Robyn’s training sessions with Eredine and Regan, but had never gotten around to it. Now that this was my only option, I was determined to learn as much as I could, even if having Mac as my teacher was a bit like tempting fate.
But being close to him here wouldn’t change my mind. I wasn’t ready to let Mac back into my heart after one conversation. No matter how profound the conversation had been.
As I bent my knee, pulling my foot to my arse and trying not to wobble on one leg, my resolve wavered as I watched a woman, perhaps my age or a little younger, approach Mac to ask him something.
He bent his head to hear her, and she leaned closer. Her body language and the way she smiled flirtatiously up at him screamed, “I’m ready and available!”
Remembering the brunette at the beginning of last year, a fiery flush of jealous possessiveness scored through me. If the brunette was anything to go by, Mac made a habit of sleeping with his young, attractive students.
Really, what the hell did that actually say about him?