With a wiggle of her body that indicated that she wanted to be let free to roam, I popped her booty on the ground and got myself a cup of coffee from the machine while I watched her. She seemed small for age, but then from the two Crew females that I’d met, height wasn’t really something that they had, so maybe it was normal. Elodie shared the same hair color as her aunt, but instead of the thick, straight sheets that Katy had, Elodie had what looked like hundreds of tiny curls on hers. She also had dark brown eyes, unlike her aunt’s blue ones.
What stood out was that the girl was smart. She went straight to a box that had toys in it, picked out a shape sorting one and was finished in about thirty seconds. Then she picked out one that had a maze of wires on it with beads and had them around the maze faster than I could do it. After that, she picked up a book and sat with it like she was actually reading it.
Moving closer to her, I sat on the couch and put my cup on the coffee table. “Hey, Elodie girl, are you a genius?”
Swear to god that little baby looked at me, grinned, shrugged in a ‘what can I say’ way, and then went back to it.Three days later…
I was the definition of confused with how things were between me and Katy. Ever since she’d gotten Elodie, she’d been aloof and distant. I’d wondered initially if she was adjusting or doing it for her niece’s sake, but when she’d acted like normal with everyone aside from me and even my brothers, I’d realized it was more than that. She wasn’t rude or anything, just reserved and quiet with us all, and even they were confused by it.
Sighing as I pulled my truck into my drive, I was relieved that today was over. The author of the book I was working on had asked for it to be completed sooner, so I’d been working on it until the middle of the night for the last three nights. I was drained.
Looking over at Katy’s house, I saw four vehicles that I didn’t recognize, and one that I did – Canon’s. My brothers weren’t quitters, and the more Katy withdrew, the more they’d push for her to give in, which was what they were doing now. Hopefully, if they figured it out, they could help me fix whatever the problem was between us.
Climbing out, I thought about going over, but I was too tired. All I wanted to do was drag my ass to my couch, lie out on it, put something on television that didn’t require any brain function and pass out.
Katy“So, what did he do?” Bond asked, scooping some salsa up with a chip. “Was it bad? Do you want us to hurt him, ‘cos we’ll do it for you, Katy. You just say the word.”
I’d come home to find my brothers, my sister, my parents and the Kline brothers at my house with dinner ready and waiting, instead of the peace I was looking for. I hadn’t slept properly for the last three nights, listening to Jarrod with his woman or even women for all I knew.
Seeing how tired I was, Mom had taken Elodie for her bath while Dad and Aura cleaned up the kitchen and my brothers did ‘man shit’ in the backyard, leaving me with Things One to Three.
“Who are we talking about?” I asked, curling up in a little ball in the best part of my sectional – the middle bit where it curved round.
Sitting down heavily beside me, Canon threw his arm around my shoulders. “Our brother. It’s obvious he’s done something, so tell us, we’ll hurt him and make him cry, and then it’ll all be good again.”
My ability to find comfort was now gone, so I twisted until I was sitting normally on the cushions. “He didn’t do anything.”
“Sure he did,” Reid argued, sitting on the coffee table in front of me and stretching his long legs out either side of mine. “Did he forget your birthday?”
“No, asshole, because if he did that then we forgot her birthday, and we wouldn’t do that,” Canon snapped, and then turned around to look at me in a panic. “Shit, we didn’t forget your birthday, did we?”
Chuckling at how smoothly they interacted with each other, I shook my head. “No, it’s on May fourth.”
There was a moment's silence while they mulled that over, but it was Bond who figured it out. “That’s freaking awesome,” he chuckled, double dipping his chip in the salsa. Ew! “May the fourth be with you.”
There was always one. In fact, there was normally more than one.
Once they’d laughed it out, Canon gave me a quick squeeze and then positioned himself so he was now facing me head on. “Tell us what he did.”