Page 8 of Queen Crow

Focusing on her issues is much easier than dealing with all of the trauma and bullshit of my life right now. “Why have you been crying? I’ll kill someone for you. I’ve done it now, I will definitely do it again for you.”

She pulls back and then falls back on the bed, sighing dramatically. “No one told me it would feel this empty. I thought surviving high school would mean that life would become easy, and it’s really not. I have six brothers and a sister. I have a crazy fucking asshole of a sperm donor. There’s still a million people who want me dead. It’s never really going to… end, is it?”

Okay, so she’s having an existential crisis and none of the guys are equipped to deal with this at all. No wonder she’s been a mess, although I doubt she’sactuallybeen a mess. I’m sure her eyes watered once and Harley was such a dick about it that she never showed another emotion again.

Fucking idiot boys.

I lower myself down on the bed next to her, staring up at that same white ceiling as if it has answers for us. “It’s been a little like that for me too. I had all of these expectations about what my life would be like without Senior and Joey, and this is not what it looked like. There was a lot less blood and manipulative sex tapes in those fantasies.”

She cringes and catches my hand in hers. “Tomorrow morning, I am going to find that cunt, Donnelley, and skin her alive. Nate gave me some pointers. I didn’t realize I would ever use them, let alone so soon, but that bitch is dead.”

I shrug. “She’s not exactly an easy target. There’s a lot of… bullshit I have to update you on. I’m just… really fucking glad you’re home.”

She nods and squeezes my fingers with hers. “Me too. We might’ve needed that time away, but fuck is it good to see you. I’m never leaving again.”

I chuckle at her. We should really get back out there to the guys, but there’s also something vital about this moment of quiet. We had three years of these moments in our shared room at Hannaford, and now I find myself craving just sitting in the quiet with her.

Knowing she’s there for me, no matter what.

We lie there in silence together for another minute before I break it, still incredulous about Noah. “You have a kid brother who is both gay and a complete asshole.”

She groans and covers her face with both of her hands. “He’s also fuckingobsessedwith Ash. Like, trails-after-him-all-day-drooling levels of obsessed. He refused to stay behind with Harley and Blaise because he wanted to follow… never mind, I’m not going to scar you with what he’s nicknamed your brother.”

A giggle bursts out of me at the very idea of Ash navigating that sort of situation. “How has he been hiding all of this time? Why? How the fuck did some kid fake his own death?”

“Fuck knows. He won’t tell me a thing. He doesn’t trust me at all, but Wyatt was at his wits’ end over it all. He’s too… straight for this shit. He’s a cop, through and through. It was fucking weird, staring at someone who looks so much like Nate but talks about what’s right and legal. I would’ve bullied him in high school.”

I laugh at her, ignoring the banging on the door because it’s the same noise I’ve grown up with, a very impatient Ash demanding attention. “You weren’t a bully though, that was my forte.”

“If you two don’t get out here soon, I’m killing everyone. O’Cronin, that Luca dickhead, and the fucking brat with his shitty commentary,” Ash snarls through the door, and Lips turns to catch my eye, bursting into laughter with me.

Neither of us comment on the hysterical edge to it.

* * *

I wake up before my alarm in the icy-cold clutches of the nightmare tormenting me. Years of living in the Beaumont mansion have taught me not to scream or make a noise and Aodhan is draped over me. Even in his sleep, he's been stopping me from thrashing around and risking hurting myself.

I carefully move to grab my phone to check the time without waking him, just in case my panicked insomnia is kicking in again and we've only been in here for a couple of hours. There's already messages from Ash and Lips waiting for me, neither of them are sleeping well either.

Lips and I had to use every trick in the book to get Ash to agree to sleep here in Atticus’ fortress-style mansion for the night. He’d only backed down when I pointed out how much work it would take to get us all back home, only for us to come back in the morning to deal with the aftermath of the shooting and Donnelley’s attack.

"You should take the day off," Aodhan mumbles into my hair, his voice still rough with sleep, as his arms around me tighten.

I shift around until I'm facing him properly, the glow of the bathroom light illuminating his face enough that I can see the bone-tired lines on his face. We're all running on nothing, and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

"I can't, I'll go insane if I have to sit around here waiting for something else to happen. Lips is home. We'll figure this out together."

He makes an unhappy noise, a deep rumbling in his chest I've never heard before, and a smile surprises me as it stretches over my face. "I'm never going to get you to myself again now that she's back, am I? I wanna be jealous, but I signed on for this."

I giggle at his fake grumpy tone, mostly because I can tell he's putting it on. "She was willing to manipulate the shit out of my brother last night to save you, you should love her just for that alone."

He smirks and leans forward to kiss me. “I’m team Wolf for the relief I can feel in you now that she's home. And for the record, she was going to throw down with him for you, not me, which I can also get behind. I've always respected her, you know that. I might just be a little bit put off by how much your eyes light up when you talk about her."

I laugh at him, a quiet sound but one that instantly has me feeling guilty thanks to everything that's wrong with the world right now. Jack is dead. Atticus is dying. Ash saw that fucking tape and now he's going to be insufferable until we get the damage under control.

"It's almost noon; I need to get moving. If you let me go, I can leave you to get a little more sleep while I get ready.”

He grumbles again and then when he moves to get up, sweeping me into his arms as he goes, I'm a little embarrassed of the noise I make, the squeak flying out of me and probably rupturing his eardrum with its shrillness. "If I'm being forced to get up, then the least you can do is let me shower with you. I won’t hog the water.”