Page 64 of Always Watching
It doesn’t stop me from crossing my arms over my chest as I glare. “What are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to introduce someone?”
I’m still caught up on Ranen’s confession, and on giving the words back to him—the wordloveclings almost heavily in the air, impossible for me to ignore. I want to hear him say it again.
I want to make him say it over and over.
I have to push that want to the side, because Ranen and Wylder are both looking at me expectantly, and I relent with a groan.
“Ranen, this is Wylder. My dumbass brother.” Wylder arches a brow, and I continue on. “Wylder, this is Ranen. My… boyfriend.” It still doesn’t sound right, but it’s the best I can do, given the circumstances. It’s strange though—I’ve said it before, but it feels like it has more weight now.
“Boyfriend?” Ranen repeats the word softly. His eyes are wide like he realizes it too. It’sdifferentthis time. Imeanit, not just as a way to get my dad off my back.
And Wylder, the asshole, mouths it back at me like he can’t believe I said it, drawing the syllables out.
Honestly, I can’t believe it either, but not for the reasons he might think.
“It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Ranen. Of course, it could have been under better circumstances than this.” He glances around the apartment, and finally, his eyes land on the mess. “Fuck, North, when Dad said you needed help—”
“Dadcalled you?” I can’t hide the incredulous tone in my voice, but it just makes him laugh even more.
“He didn’t say you’d made this big a mess, little brother.” He crosses his arms over his chest, and it makes his biceps bulge. “I thought you were better than this?”
That’s the problem—I usuallyambetter than this. I’ve been more messy since I met Ranen than I have since I was a teenager. Even then, I was a little better at covering my tracks.
But this… telling Ranen that Iwatchedhim, that I’ve been obsessed with him from the beginning, from the first time I saw him?
I was practically asking for trouble.
But somehow…
My eyes flick back to the lithe man in the corner of the room as he looks my brother up and down with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.
“Uh, I’d offer you a drink, but there’s kind of a body in front of my refrigerator.” He says it in a confident voice, but I don’t miss the way he moves around the room until he’s standing beside me.
If I was smart, I’d try to play it cool around Wylder, so he doesn’t realize how much Ranen actually means to me.
But I’m apparently even less smart than I thought, because my arm goes around him and I pull him closer. Ranen melts into the side of my body like he was waiting to see if I was going to claim him in front of my brother. I’d already let Dad know how I feel about him—things haven’t changed.
At least, they haven’t changed in any way that would make me want to show him off any less.
If anything, I want to show him off even more. I want everyone and everything to see that he’s mine.
I want—
“Seems like you two have already had a good time, so can you wipe that look off your faces until we get this mess cleaned up?” Wylder interrupts my thoughts, and I scowl. I risk glancing down at Ranen, but he’s laughing softly even though his cheeks are flushed. It’s not like there’s any way for us to hide what we’ve been doing.
Might as well embrace it.
The sound of his laugh draws Wylder’s attention to him again, and my brother grins at him from behind his beard. “You’re a strange little thing, aren’t you? Are you a killer too, or…?”
He trails off like there’s some logical explanation for what’s going on, a reason why someone who looks as sweet as Ranen would be able to summon up a smile at all when there’s a deadbody a few feet away from him and his entire body is covered in bruises and bite marks from his very feral, very violent lover.
“No, I just love your brother,” Ranen says and draws himself up taller. It takes me a second to realize what he’s doing. “So whatever you need to do to get rid of this, to make sure he doesn’t get caught, I want to help.”
He’s making sure Wylder knows our secret is safe with him—that he’s not a threat, not a danger to me.
He’s trying to prove himself in a way that only someone who’s in love with a killer would have to.
