Psychopath.
They had to have been talking about me.
"Tell me what?" I asked, moving into the doorway, finding the three of them—Fallon, Finn, and Seth—standing around while Malcolm, our current Road Captain's only son, sat at the table nursing a cup of coffee in his giant hands.
Descended from tall, strong men, they were all tall and fit themselves. But no one was quite as big as Malc, who was a brick wall of a guy with a beard, and a calm, quiet demeanor. His father rarely spoke in full sentences, and while his mother was a chatterbox, he'd taken to silence more, only speaking up when he felt he needed to.
"Shit," Finn hissed, immediately looking at his naked wrist. "Look at the time. I have to go... be anywhere but here," he said, rushing past me, gaze averted so I couldn't even see what kind of news he might not want to share with me on his face.
"Pussy," Fallon called to his younger brother, smirking. That smirk was a trademark of his. With a bright future ahead of him, good looks that included black hair and green eyes and that bad guy biker look with his leather cut and an abundance of ink, he was almost always a little cocky. Maybe if I hadn't grown up with him, I'd have found it irritating as fuck. As it was, it was just who he was.
"What doesn't he want you guys to tell me?" I asked, looking around, finding Seth shaking his head, and Fallon reaching for his phone, pretending the text he had was of the utmost importance.
In the end, it was the stoic, quiet Malc who stood slowly, moved toward me, and said in that gravelly voice of his, "Andi is back in town," before he headed out as well. Ripping the band-aid off, that was the kind of man Malcolm was.
I'd done a lot of work, a lot of fucking work, to have no reaction to that name. I wasn't even sure I'd accomplished the task on the outside.
But on the inside, her name just caused a slight twisting in my gut. None of that crushing, overwhelming helplessness that used to be there.
Or the hopeless, useless love either.
"What, for the weekend?" I asked, glad when my voice came out casual as I made my way toward the coffee pot, even though it smelled like Malc had brewed it. Which meant it was probably strong enough to float a fucking horseshoe on. Coming from a mom who pounded energy drinks like water, it was somewhat inevitable that her only child would grow up to have his own caffeine addiction.
Fallon exhaled hard. "The way I heard it, there was a car packed with boxes involved."
"Who'd you hear that from?" I asked, going for casual even if my thoughts were starting to swirl.
"My sister," he said. "She found some beaver on her last trip..."
"A beaver?" Seth asked, snorting.
"Beaver, groundhog. I don't know. Some fucking furry thing. And she thought its leg was broken, so she brought it over to see if Rey could rehabilitate it. She didn't see Andi, but who else would be there with boxes?"
That was fair enough.
Fallon and Finn's older sister, Ferryn, had been away for a good chunk of all of our lives, running off at sixteen. So she didn't know what kind of car Andi drove like the rest of us would. Hell, she probably wouldn't even know her if she saw her. And because she was still working on building up her relationships with her aunts and uncles, including Rey and Reeve—Andi's parents—she wasn't going to ask personal questions if they didn't volunteer information first.
"But if she's back with boxes, why doesn't anyone know?" Seth asked, shaking his head. "You know how information spreads with the moms."
That was another good point. It had been one of the few downfalls of growing up in such a tight-knit community. Nothing was ever private. If you got a bad grade, got into a fight at school, cut your own hair with the kitchen scissors, everyone knew about it by the next morning. Which meant everyone would rib you about it as well.
That said, it also meant that if someone got wind you were in trouble, that you needed a tutor, needed a shoulder to lean on, needed someone to make you chicken noodle soup when you were sick, someone was always quick to step up for the task.
"Dunno. Guess Rey and Reeve didn't tell anyone," Fallon told me, shrugging. "Fact is, it seems like Andi is back in town. So now I gotta wonder," he said, looking over at me, a dark brow quirking up.
"No, you don't," I insisted, shaking my head.
"Yeah, but, somehow, I still do," he told me, lips twitching.
Because he was a dick.
"Fallon, don't," Seth demanded, knowing our future president was a bit of a shit-starter, and that I was quick to raise my hands when I was pissed.