Page 33 of Threads That Bind Us
“Yeah, my place,” I reply, mirroring her expression. If she wants to make this seem out of place in front of Ana, that’s her choice.
“We can’t go to your place,” she scoffs, holding Ana’s coat out for her.
“Why can’t we go to Charlie’s place?” Ana asks, glancing between the two of us cautiously.
I don’t blame her—this sounds like the beginning of a fight to me, too.
“Because Charlie lives kind of far away. And by the time we cook and eat and clean up, it’ll be late, and you’ll be tired, and then we’ll have to drive all the way back home,” Gwen says, stepping between me and Ana to pull her sister’s hair out of her collar. But Ana’s eyes catch mine and I take my shot.
“You could stay the night,” I say with false nonchalance, watching Gwen’s shoulders stiffen instantly at my words. “I’ve got spare rooms and toothbrushes, and I have the ingredients to make that lemon pasta we had last week in Georgetown.”
Ana’s eyes flash with the first sign of energy since I picked them up, and she was giggling with Kenzie. She turns to Gwen, whose teeth I can hear grinding.
“Can we go?” she asks, bouncing on her toes a bit. “I really like that pasta.”
“You sure you’re okay with this?” Gwen asks, combing the ends of Ana’s hair with her fingers. “Staying the night and everything?”
Ana just rolls her eyes. “I would have said no to him if I thought it was weird.”
A pinprick of guilt needles at me for manipulating Ana like this, but I brush it off. Moving them into my home is safer for her, too.
Gwen lets out a sigh of defeat, and I know I’ve won the first battle of the night. When she turns and leads Ana down the hallway toward the exit, she shoots me a glare over her shoulder that crackles in my chest likea firework.
The drive outto Maryland is pretty quiet, with Ana distracted on her phone and Gwen purposefully icing me out. Despite the tension rolling off Gwen, I’m at ease. I have a plan, a mission. It feels a little over-zealous, applying a lifetime of training to something as low-stakes as getting Gwen to change her move-in timeline. But the pattern is comfortable, familiar, like an equation that you slide the variables into.
The thought keeps me in high spirits as we pull through the manned gate and onto the long drive almost an hour later. Ana perks up in the back seat, slipping her earbuds out and peering through the window at the dusk-covered view. My home isn’t anything grand, just a single-level ranch, but the property is fairly large. Native plants and grasses stretch over the dips and valleys of the yard, stretching around the house for almost three acres. It’s too dim to make them out clearly, but the shadow of a few buildings is barely visible at the edge of the property. From the outside they look like old barns, but they house weapons and motorcycles, and panic rooms, all connected to the house via tunnels.
“Do you have, like, animals?” Ana asks, shoving her shoulders between Gwen and me, lifting off the seat to see further before her sister pushes her backward.
“Seatbelt on until the car is off,” she mumbles, clearly still fighting her anger at me. The more I can get Ana on my side, the more Gwen will want to feed into her enthusiasm.
“No animals,” I say, parking in front of the small garage attached to the house. “My cousin, Emily, loves researchingnative plants, and she was visiting when I was looking for a house. She said I had to buy this one because it was basically a nature preserve of Western Maryland wildflowers.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Ana agrees, which is about as high of praise as I can expect from a teenager.
“They’re all dormant right now, but in the spring, the whole yard looks like a prism. Colors everywhere.”
Ana hums appreciatively as I get out of the car and open her door for her. I hear Gwen’s door open and close behind me, and a huff from her as she follows us toward the house. A bubble of laughter climbs its way up my throat, but I suppress it. Sure, Gwen’s affection is a lost cause tonight, but I don’t need to test my luck any more than necessary.
I try to be as subtle as possible, unlocking the door with my code and thumbprint, but Ana’s standing right next to me with her eyebrows raised.
“Safety first,” I say lightly.
She looks at me with teenage incredulousness, but follows me inside anyway.
I close the door behind Gwen and reach for her coat instinctually, helping her slide it off her shoulders. She shoots me another glare that fills me with warmth before I move to help Ana.
“Make yourself at home,” I say, turning to hang everything up, letting Ana slip off her shoes and explore.
I can tell Gwen noticed at least some differences from the last time she was here, because she can’t seem to settle on any part of the room. Decorative pillows and blankets are thrown around the cushions of the conversation pit. A projector screen hangs on the wall over the fireplace. There’s a brand new dining table, just big enough for the three of us to eat at, between the living area and the peninsula where Gwen and Icame to our agreement. Art and decor hang on the previously blank walls, all purchased by Bea when I told her I needed my home to look morelived-in.
This thing where Gwen avoids my gaze has become my new favorite game. I like how she simmers, how she lets her anger build, how she tries to control it. Even more, I’m addicted to how she loses that control and justhasto aim her fury at me. I pretend gravity is forcing her toward me the same way it makes her the center of my attention.
It feels so different from all the times I’ve gotten victims to submit to me. Because I don’t want her to break. I want her to detonate, for her anger to burn so hot it consumes me, too. I want her to turn all that passion toward me, in whatever form she’ll give it.
“This is the coolest living room ever,” Ana says, walking around the edge of the sunken couch. She seems hesitant, but not scared, almost like she doesn’t want to intrude.
“Who needs a normal couch when you could have a movie theater, right?” I joke.