I picked the towel up off the floor and tossed it in the direction of the closet. I was usually much cleaner than this, honest.
“I’ve been eating,” I told them as I moved towards the bed, towards them. I hadn’t lied, I had been eati
ng, just not as much as I should have been. “And, I do sleep. Or, at least I try to sleep. I just…”
“Have been having that awful dream.” Abel said softly.
I didn’t know why I was surprised, I shouldn’t have been. Nothing about me seemed to be a secret between them. I didn’t like that very much.
If everyone knew about my reoccurring nightmare, then did they already know about the kiss I had shared with Quinton? I hoped not. I would like for some things to remain private between the whole lot of us.
“We know about the dream,” Addison confirmed in a soft voice that mimicked his brothers. “Tyson told us this morning.”
I bit my bottom lip, unhappy at hearing this news. I imagined it had been Quinton who blabbed, I never thought it would have been Tyson. His potential BFF status dropped a notch at hearing this news. Best friends weren’t supposed to share your secrets, even if it was only to family. They were supposed to take your secrets to the grave. Or was that only with girls? Were there different rules because he was a boy and I was a girl? I didn’t know, I had never had a best friend before, boy or girl.
I couldn’t think about it, it would give me a headache.
“We also know about Marcus moving,” Addison said, keeping the information flowing.
He sat up on my bed and scooted down until he was at the bottom of the bed and he hung his long legs off the side. His bare feet touched the floor and he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Hunched over like that, he looked older and, for the first time since I walked out of the bathroom, I noticed I wasn’t the only one with dark smudges under my eyes.
Addison had them too.
“And we know about you moving in with us,” Abel said as he moved down the bed until he sat beside his brother. He leaned back into the bed on his elbows and crossed his feet at the ankles.
Why weren’t they sleeping?
And why did they never wear socks or shoes?
I stood in front of them and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Why haven’t you been sleeping?” I asked them both quietly. “You know why I’m having problems. What’s your excuse?”
Addison stood up suddenly and loomed over me. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Abel sitting up straight on the bed. His eyes were all for his brother and he looked worried.
I had to crane my neck back to look Addison in the eyes. I wasn’t short, but I wasn’t that tall.
“There’s this girl,” Addison rumbled angrily. “She means everything to my family and she means everything to my brother and me. But she’s been going through some shit and she’s shut us out. I don’t like being shut out. I don’t like seeing the hurt and the worry in my twin’s eyes. I don’t like it at all, Ariel. And I really don’t like that it’s there because of you.”
Direct shot, straight through the heart.
He raised his big hand and cupped my cheek gently. His hand was warm and felt so nice I couldn’t help but close my eyes and lean into his touch.
“If you’re hurting, we are hurting,” he whispered fiercely, his voice full of some dark emotion. “That’s how family works. But it’s different with you because you are a girl. It’s worse because you’re a girl. There are so few of you female witches and after Annabell we never thought we would get one of our own. Now we have one, we have you, and it was supposed to be different.”
I sucked in a sharp, pain filled breath and would have moved back, away from him, but the hand not cupping my jaw curled around my hip and he forcefully pulled me into his massive body. I didn’t want to be closer to him. I wanted to get far, far away from him and his words.
“No, no,” he said hurriedly. “Don’t take that the wrong way. It wasn’t meant to be taken like that. We’re supposed to watch over you. We’re supposed to take care of you.”
He let out a shuddering breath as he slid the hand on my cheek down to my neck and back. His hand moved back until he palmed the back of my head and tangled his fingers into my wet hair.
“Since meeting you, we’ve messed everything up. Hell, we messed everything up before we met you. I think you know that before we actually met you, before you and your mom moved in with Marcus, that we all shared a dream about you. We all knew you were coming and we all knew what that meant, what that meant for us on the whole. Yet we left for the whole summer anyways. You were left alone with that woman for months while we were off on some bullshit male bonding trip. Quint was right to want to stay here because of you. But we didn’t stay because he was outvoted, and it kills me to think about what you went through when we could have been here for you but weren’t. Then we’re back all of two days and you’re bleeding from a goddamn head wound caused by that awful woman. What kind of messed up things did you go through that we missed while we were gone for the summer?”
His nostrils flared angrily as he sucked in a deep breath.
His light, light blue eyes, eyes I could easily lose myself in, filled with tears and unspoken words. He closed them tightly and when he opened them again the tears were gone. He’d successfully pushed them down and away.
I wished this was a skill he could teach me because I would love to learn.