Page 75 of Control Freak

“Well, maybe not with you, but them…” I waved my arm toward the table. “It’s their home too. It’s already a pretty full house.”

“If you get tired of Holden, you can move into my room,” Bailey offered.

Gray elbowed him in the ribs. “Ix-nay the oyfriend-bay ealing-stay.”

Bailey looked at him blankly. “What?”

“Nix the boyfriend stealing,” Axel said. “Jesus, do you really not know Pig Latin?”

“Uh, no?” Bailey said.

“Gen Z,” Axel said with an eye roll and a sigh.

“Wait, I’m not stealing any boyfriends,” Bailey continued. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

“You just offered to let him move into your room,” Holden said, jaw clenched.

“After I’m gone!” Bailey yelped. “I’m going to college in the fall, right? That’s whatyoukeep telling me.”

“That’s months away,” Holden said.

“Well, I didn’t think he’d get tired of you next week,” Bailey said, shifting his gaze to me. “If so, I can’t help you. I don’t steal anyone’s boyfriend, but I’despeciallynever do that to Holden.”

There was a murmur of agreement while Holden shifted uneasily. And no wonder. We hadn’t exactly put a name to our relationship.

Still, the thought of being called Holden Cross’s boyfriend filled me with a pleasant warmth. And the brief touch of his fingers against mine under the table was enough to make my heart cartwheel.

“Thanks, guys,” I said, blinking hard. “You’ve made me feel like a part of the family, and I just don’t ever want to do anything to ruin that.”

“You can’t,” Gray said, nudging my ankle with his boot. “That’s the great thing about families. They stick together.”

“Not all of them,” I said quietly.

Gray glanced uneasily at Axel, as if expecting a wisecrack, but his brother was concentrating hard on his biscuit.

“You’re right,” Gray said. “Sometimes things go wrong. But this family sticks together. Right, guys?” He tapped his tattoo on his inner wrist. “We’ve got bro code, and, um, I think I speak for all of us when I say it extends to the people we care about too.”

My gaze slipped to Holden’s wrist, where he was inked to match his brothers. “My most painful tattoo,” he murmured.

“Not even close to as bad as the one on my ribs,” Axel said. “That was a bitch.”

“You have a tattoo on your ribs?” I asked.

Axel lifted up his shirt, displaying a skeletal hand holding a set of poker cards. The artwork was beautiful. “Emory drew it.”

“Really?” I leaned in to examine it more closely. Dalton settled a big hand on Axel’s thigh as if to claim him. “Emory, you’re so talented.”

Emory blushed. “Fox did the ink. I’m still learning.”

“Still,” Axel said. “Your design is killer.”

“And Fox isn’t all that,” Dalton muttered.

“It wasn’t the physical pain that was so hard,” Holden said, gazing down at his tat. “My wrist was broken twice before I was three years old.”

There was a sudden and sharp silence at the table. The brothers seemed on edge. Surely, they knew about Holden’s childhood abuse, but the way he said it so matter-of-factly was chilling.

“My mother grabbed me and dragged me around. She’d twist my wrist when she got angry, and…well, they call it a radial fracture, I guess.”