Dusk (Dangerous Web #1) - Aleatha Romig Page 0,14
than once that my presence was a distraction. That’s why I started trying to help. The men would be busy day and night. I began a routine of cleaning and cooking. I started in Mace’s apartment but slowly expanded to common areas. I then offered...over the years, it grew into more.”
“And now there are so many of us.”
“Madeline is a big help. She’s really taken to wanting to know more.” I thought about our friend, Patrick’s wife. “We’ve all had such different backgrounds.”
Araneae nodded as she finished the last of her meal.
“I guess,” I said, “I didn’t want Sparrow to think I was just taking advantage of him.”
“He wouldn’t...”
“Looking back, I think he was also too distracted by everything to even consider me. I was the quiet distraction until...”
“What happened?”
I took a haggard breath. “You would think this would be easier. It isn’t. It’s never easy to say your brother died.”
“You and Reid weren’t officially a couple when Mason...when the explosion...?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Literally, that same night, Mason found out about us.” I rolled my eyes. “And Patrick and...”
“Sterling?”
My mind went back to that night, standing out by the apartments. The rage radiating off my brother as the wheels turned in his head, connecting the dots. The total disinterest in Sparrow’s gaze as he called me a distraction, not for the first time, and the way Patrick tried to soothe the entire situation.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a drink from the water bottle. “Anyway, we agreed to discuss it later. But, well...later never came, not for a long time where Mason was concerned.”
“Oh goodness, Lorna. When I said I felt alone during my first lockdown, I must have sounded like a spoiled brat. Holy shit. Who told you about Mason?”
“Reid and Patrick did, together.”
“What about Sterling?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t speak to me or look at me. Not for a while. I know he wanted me gone, but what was he going to do, kick the sister of his dead best friend out on the street when the Sparrows were in an all-out war?”
Araneae placed her emptied plate on the floor and turned to me. “I never...you two seem...I mean, you joke, but he loves you like he loves everyone in the tower.”
I nodded. “I know. We are good.” I took a deep breath. “That man of yours is complicated.”
“Oh, you’re telling me,” she said with a smile. “I want to hear more about Reid. How did you go from secret lovers to husband and wife?”
Before I could answer, the room went dark. The chicken I’d consumed churned in my stomach as Araneae and I reached for one another’s hand.
“The blindfolds,” she whispered.
That was the rule the man named Jet had given us. We could remove the blindfolds as long as we put them on when someone entered the room. The turning off of the light was our warning.
“Shit.” I stood, scrambling in the darkness.
“They’re here,” Araneae said. “I put them in my jeans’ pocket.”
I reached out in the darkness, feeling the piece of rough fabric. We both hurriedly secured the fabric over our eyes and resumed our seats on the bed. In the process, I stepped on the plastic plate as the plastic fork rattled against the concrete floor.
The locking mechanisms clicked and the bottom of the door moved, scuffing the cement floor as it opened inward.
Reid
“They were supposed to be secured,” Sparrow said, sitting forward, peering through the window of the SUV as Laurel, Madeline, and Garrett came out onto the large porch. The ladies, their hair blowing in the breeze, stepped forward toward the railing on the porch, watching as our vehicle came closer.
“I texted Garrett as soon as we entered the property,” Patrick said. “He knew it would be us.”
As the driver brought the SUV to a stop, the doors flew open.
While everyone got out of the SUV, consciously or unconsciously, Sparrow and I hesitated, staying back by the vehicle as Patrick and Mason hurried toward their wives. It was impossible not to appreciate their evident need to be with the one they loved. To see, touch, hold, and hear one another. They were my friends, my family, and I wanted their happiness. I was also keenly aware of the sensation of being excluded from the joy. The loss of Lorna’s and Araneae’s presence hung around Sparrow and I like a fog—on a clear, sunny day—a barrier keeping us from the others’ happiness.
Yet before that cloud chained us in, both Madeline and Laurel