Page 9 of Burning Demons (Burning Torments #1)

Chapter 9

Wren

Since I had yet to come down from the adrenaline kick my run-in with Tate caused, I sat behind my cello and put the energy to good use by means of “The Swan.” Cello was one of those things that just came easily to me. I guessed everyone had one talent or another, and I had found mine early on.

Alex and some others on the football team couldn’t understand my fascination with playing an instrument and had called it gay too many times for me to count. That hadn’t helped my growing complex over doing something artistic when I looked like a big brute at all. Not everyone was into classical, and I got that, but the comments kinda hurt. They were more proof I couldn’t come out in this town. I had enough unwanted attention. With the scar, my size, and the cello, it was bad enough.

Pushing everything out of my head, I closed my eyes and let my mind drift as I played. The movements in my arms and hands, the continuous sound and vibrations in my ears, the weight of the cello across my body transported me. When I played, it was all about the music. Slow or fast. Sad or cheerful. It all made my chest tighten and release in pulses I couldn’t explain. I smiled so wide as I got into something fast and bit hard on my lip. The thrill, the tingles, Tate gave me those too. As much as he pissed me off earlier, I still wanted to play for him. I was playing for him. He’d never know, and I’d never admit it, but there it was.

“The Swan” bled into Bach. Before I knew it, my hand was cramped, and hours had passed, but I couldn’t stop. My heart beat like it might burst as I got through the first few bars of the much harder Vivaldi Concerto I constantly worked to perfect. I missed a few notes, then came to a halt, breathing heavily and sweating.

“One day,” I whispered. The piece was hard as fuck, but I knew I could master it if I kept at it. Daddy had loved Vivaldi, so Momma said, and I had tried every piece I could find at some point.

Without the music in my ears, the house was too quiet. I turned on some tunes, lay down, and was out like a light before I knew it, until something woke me with a start.

Blood rushed in my ears, but I didn’t know why my heart raced. I got out of bed, on high alert in half a second, and opened my door. The house was as silent as the grave, dark, asleep with everyone else. Then I heard it.

“S-s-stop,” he whimpered. “No. Stop.” I startled when he shouted and took a step closer to his door but froze when he mumbled, “Fuck.”

I didn’t know how long I stood there, straining my ears, heart hammering in my chest, but Tate didn’t say anything else. Nightmare? Would it be weird to check on him? Tate whimpered again, and weird no longer mattered.

His room used to be storage for odds and ends. I hadn’t been in here much since Sam rushed to get it ready for Tate. Now, with his stuff and scent all over the place, it felt—strange.

“Tate,” I whispered from beside his bed.

He grunted.

“Tate,” I said a little louder.

“What?”

“Are you awake?”

He grumbled something, then half sat up, eyes blinking open. “Wren?”

“You okay?”

“Ugh.” Tate twisted and face-planted into the pillow. “Let me sleep, Country Boy.”

Yeah, he was fine. I nearly kicked his mattress for calling me Country Boy but didn’t. On silent feet, I went back to my room and slept, but it was neither solid nor restful.

After a few more hours of tossing around in bed, I got up early and eager to find out if Tate was okay after his nightmare. That hit of vulnerability last night was still with me. Maybe he couldn’t be mine as my ever-persistent and twisted fantasies wanted, but he was family now, and I could care about him for that reason alone.

Tate’s door was closed, with no sound coming from the other side of it, so I set out for a run. Momma was pulling weeds in her flower beds when I came back ten miles later. I had that exhausted high going and plopped down on the front porch steps, breathing hard, and lay out like I might die.

She only laughed. “Cello sounded good last night.”

“Thanks,” I breathed.

“My water is right beside you.”

I dumped it over my head.

“That wasn’t what I meant for you to do with it.”

“I’ll get you another one in a moment.”

She laughed again.

I must’ve dozed off because Momma kicked my foot when she moved to the other side of the walkway. I jerked and shot up.

“Go get me and yourself another water.” When I got to my feet, she added, “To drink, Wren.”

The cool air inside the house was a shock, and I thought about swimming before I showered. I pulled down an extra cup as Momma’s was filling under the tap, then filled my own to the brim, gulping it down on the spot.

A crunch made me turn. Tate was eating cereal at the table.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my arm, which only smeared sweat across my face. “Uh, hey.” All the anger that fueled the first part of my night had vanished with his shouts. Now, all the care-because-he-was-family shit I told myself just this morning got eaten up with how innocently gorgeous he was with the sun highlighting him through the window, his sleep-disheveled hair, and his cheeks full of food.

Tate waved his spoon as he munched on his Cap’n Crunch. He swallowed. “You look hot.”

Fuck me. My ears heated, and I dropped my eyes. Then he saved me from having to think of something to say to that.

“You always work out this early?”

Oh, had he meant that kind of hot? I could breathe again and even smiled since Tate seemed fine despite his screaming last night. “Yeah, sometimes. I get a run in early, then go down to the school for strength training.”

He hit me with a cockeyed smirk that was wrecking my train of thought.

Oh, shit . He’s my brother. Stepbrother. Estranged stepbrother? Fuck it. He’s not blood. Just think about it . Think about those lips . Mmm, too full . I want to sink my teeth into them . Fuck, stop it .

He dipped his gaze to my throat when I swallowed, then returned it to my eyes, skipping right over my cheek, and stuffed a huge spoonful in his mouth.

“Thought about becoming a firefighter after high school,” I said as if I needed to explain why, even though he hadn’t asked.

He froze, then shoved more in his mouth.

“Um. There’s this guy, Mr. Stevens. He’s a firefighter but runs this training boot camp on the side. It’s for the firefighters, but others join just to do it. I’ve been talking to him. Nice guy. Anyway, he and I train together sometimes. On the side, the two of us, when he has time for it. I can’t do the boot camp yet. It’s legit, like, actual camp, but it’s during the school year, so I can’t go until after graduation. Sounds intense, though.”

Tate narrowed his eyes. “Mr. Stevens gay?”

“Huh? I dunno.” Why would he ask that?

“Has he touched you?”

What in the … “You’re being weird, dude.”

Metal clanged against the ceramic bowl loud enough it seemed to jerk him out of whatever was going on in his head. He shrugged and focused on his cereal, slowly picking up his spoon again.

“You feeling okay today? After the …” I thought better about calling out his nightmare, so my question hung awkwardly in the air.

He nodded, regardless of whether he understood my meaning or not, shoveling in the last of his breakfast. Tate tipped his bowl and drank the milk. Why that had me smiling was a mystery, like everything else I felt about him. Maybe it made him human. Hot, lickable, but human.

“Oh, okay, um, cool.”

“Cool.” He smirked as he rinsed out his bowl, then stuck it in the dishwasher. His eyes lowered to the full cup of water in my hand. “That for Winnie?”

“Yeah.” I glanced down, then up. “Oh, shit.”

We both kind of chuckled, and I left him standing there and headed back outside. Momma didn’t seem to notice how long I’d been gone.

“Thanks, sweetie.” She took a long drink, then sat the cup in the shade on the porch. “You working out with Mr. Stevens today?”

“Yes, ma’am, I think so. I need to text him. Momma, do you know if he’s married?” Why did I ask that? Why was Tate so deep in my head? Now he had me wondering about Mr. Stevens, who’d always been super nice.

She straightened. “He is. His wife works at the school in the office. Why?”

Think. Think! “Uh. Um, you know. I mean, firefighter and all. Just wondering if he has time for family.”

Momma smiled. “Oh, well, honey, as with any job, he has to find that work/life balance like the rest of us. You should ask him about it. He knows you’re interested in being a firefighter.”

I didn’t, though. It was all business when I met up with Mr. Stevens right before lunch. We worked hard for an hour like always, but I kept the side comments to myself. Mr. Stevens seemed okay with that too. Why would Tate ask if the man had ever touched me? That was just weird, right? If I asked Tate why, he’d know he got under my skin about it, and maybe that had been the whole point.

When I got home, I fell into the pool, fully dressed. The water was too warm. I came up wiping my face, wishing I’d jumped in the shower instead, and found Tate standing at the edge of the pool in low-slung shorts and no shirt, smoking.

Watching me.

“You can take your shirt off. I’ve seen the scars now.”

I sliced my hand across the water, making a wave of it splash over his legs.

He laughed. “Dick.”

“Yes, you are. Why were you spying on me in the bathroom anyway?”

He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t know you were in there, and I needed a shower too. Not just your bathroom anymore.” He took a deep drag, muscles flexing, penetrating eyes never leaving me … I was very glad my bottom half was in the water.

He had a point, but I wouldn’t concede. Just to watch his reaction, I pulled off my wet shirt, wrung it out, and tossed it toward a patio chair.

Tate lowered his eyes as if he didn’t care one whit that I knew he was scanning my body. My dick twitched. It cared. It cared a lot.

For some unknown reason—which was a complete lie; I knew exactly why—I brushed over my bare abs with my hand, grinning when Tate watched the movement intently. Never in my life had I wanted any sort of attention for the hard work I put my body through. I did it for me. I liked the high and the strength it gave me. But having Tate’s eyes on me was a whole new experience I could get used to.

He lifted his gaze, stopped at my still-smirking mouth, then snorted and took a pull from his cigarette as he sat down, putting his feet in the water.

I sunk low to cool my head, then came up and smoothed my hair back. Tate was still staring at me closely but now leaned back on his hands, the cigarette between his lips. He sucked on it, then blew smoke out the side of his mouth. Seriously, smoking was not this fucking sexy. I had to be losing my goddamn mind.

“Those’ll kill you one day,” I said. The hundreds of warnings I’d heard throughout my lifetime came out like automation. Smoking killed, they said.

“Eh, something else will get me first.”

“Oh.” I snorted. “You live that dangerously, huh?”

“You don’t know me.” He laughed when he said it.

Maybe I didn’t, not yet, not as much as I wanted to. And yeah, I really wanted to. “Why’d you call me shallow yesterday?”

Tate snickered. “Because you’re hung up on looks.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are. It’s okay. Everyone is, really.”

“Look at my face, Tate. I’m not hung up on looks.”

“Exactly. You care about those scars because you’re hung up on looks.”

“Agree to disagree.”

He rolled his eyes. “Heard you playing last night.” Tate took a huge pull of the cigarette, then stubbed it out on the patio before dropping the butt into a mostly empty Gatorade bottle and sliding into the water.

“Yeah?” I wouldn’t ask what he thought, even though I was dying for him to tell me. I had played every night since he’d been here, and all he’d said about it was it didn’t sound horrible. That could mean anything.

“Yeah.” He grinned as if he knew it was eating at me to hear his opinion on it.

The little shit gave me nothing. He was gonna make me ask. We circled each other in the water a few times, but ultimately, I caved.

“What’d you think?”

“I’m no expert, but you’re as good as any professional I’ve heard.”

He could be blowing smoke up my ass, but it filled my chest with possibilities that made me tremble. “I’ve thought about that,” I said outside of my head for the first time ever.

“What?”

“Playing professionally. Like, maybe in Boston. The BSO.”

We hovered around the middle of the pool, both of us keeping our legs bent so only the tops of our shoulders and heads were above the water. Sunlight splashed across the surface and reflected in his emerald eyes, lighting them up like the northern lights here in Alabama. He parted his lips as one side lifted in the most genuine smile I had seen on him since he’d moved in. A smile that made those green gems sparkle with more than just the light.

“Really? That’s ambitious.”

Hope had crawled into my throat and now choked me. “Oh, not that good after all.”

He splashed me when I lowered my eyes with the weight of failure.

“Don’t pout, Country Boy. You told me earlier you were going to be a firefighter.”

“I’ve thought about becoming a firefighter,” I corrected. “I’ve also thought about this too. Can’t I have two thoughts at once?”

“You tell me. Aren’t you Southerners supposed to be a bit slow?” He said it without any real bite in his tone, and I took the teasing bait.

“You motherfucker.” I lunged and dunked him under the water. He came up ready to go. For several minutes, we wrastled and pushed each other. For being more than fifty pounds lighter, he was surprisingly wily.

We were laughing and cursing at each other, and then both of us noticed we had an audience at the same time. I had a hand clutching his shoulder, and his were grabbing at my forearm to dislodge me. We looked up as one to see Momma filming with her phone.

“Momma!” I sank down to my neck in the pool just as Tate stepped in front of me. Was he shielding me?

“You two are so cute. Don’t stop. Sam’s gonna love this.”

“Momma, please don’t post that shit.”

Tate snapped his attention from Momma to me, and the look in his eyes confused me in my panicked state. Was it hurt? Anger? I didn’t want him to think I was afraid of being seen wrastlin’ with him. The scars. It was all about the scars.

“Honey, you know I won’t. I just wanted to show Sam.”

Tate gritted his jaw tight enough the muscle there ticked a few times. With a splash at me, like he was getting the last word in, he headed for the stairs and got out.

“Oh, don’t stop swimming on account of me,” Momma said to Tate, who wasn’t paying her any mind.

He walked over to the table under the umbrella, grabbed one of two towels, then ran up the steps and into the house.

“Tate?” Momma called, echoing the silent yell inside my head.