Page 16 of We Are Yours

I bowed my head, unable to look into the depths of his soul any longer. It was too confusing, and I was emotionally drained.

It wasn’t until he confessed, “I need a friend too,” that our eyes locked again.

A wave of overwhelming gratitude washed over me, leaving me feeling almost breathless and vulnerable. The world had only shown me cruelty, and this was the first time I experienced pure kindness from a stranger who hadn’t even asked me my name.

With my grip still holding his, I silently thanked him for everything. Squeezing his hand while my eyes brimmed with fresh tears, I fought back the unrelenting emotions he was stirring inside me as if they belonged to him.

I openly showed him a vulnerability I never shared with anyone, wanting him to know how much his compassion meant to me. I couldn’t stay there forever…

Yet there’d come a time when I’d never want to leave.

And not just because of Julius. He was only half the reason.

Half my heart.

Half my soul.

The other half was reserved for his brother. The one who was supposed to hate me yet ended up falling in love instead.

Kraven

What. The. Fuck.

To say I didn’t think this whole unexpected situation was bullshit would be an understatement. Now, this chick was staying in my house, in the bedroom next to mine, and I absolutely had no say about it. She was literally a ticking time bomb, ready to explode in our faces.

I couldn’t believe Julius was blowing me off, like what I was saying wasn’t true or didn’t matter. How the hell were we going to explain to the cops why we had an underage runaway staying under our roof?

I mean, I’d brought a sketchy person home a time or two, though nowhere near this disaster.

To see my older brother, who was always the responsible one, the golden boy, making all the right choices, no matter how hard they may be. Him becoming careless wasn’t something I ever expected to happen, let alone witness. He wouldn’t see reason. I spent the past two days trying to reason with him, but it was useless.

He'd made up his mind, and she was staying in his space, no less. We hadn’t touched our parents’ room, leaving it like it was some sort of sick shrine, and now he’d basically moved in there when she could have easily crashed on the couch.

Neither of us could bring ourselves to actually get rid of our parents’ things. I guess it made it too real.

Shit, now I’m not making any sense.

I knew that shit would be contagious. I needed to stay strong on getting her the hell out of our house and our lives. The last thing we needed was another mouth to feed and someone else to worry about. If the past two days proved anything, it was how adamant Julius was on keeping her. It was as if she were nothing more than a toy that fell out of the sky into his hands instead of a girl who was obviously in trouble.

This was insane. He flipped a one-eighty on me in a matter of a few seconds, and I had no idea how to set him straight. My brother was in denial in a way I’d never seen before. Not even when our mother left for good.

Shaking away the thoughts, it was after ten when I walked into our house, heading directly to my bedroom. It was the only privacy I had now that my brother had invited trouble to openly invade our space.

We’d lived in this three-bedroom, three-bath, two-story house in a shitty neighborhood since we were kids. Our grandparents once owned it, and after they passed away, it went to their only living child, our mother. Although it still had a mortgage, it was better than having to deal with a noisy landlord who would call CPS on our ass.

We’d had some run-ins with them before, but luckily, we’d find Joe, and he was easily bribed to play his role as if he weren’t the root of the problem.

I didn’t want to run into trouble, taking the stairs two at a time. I hurried down the hallway to the sanctuary of my bedroom. It was the only control I had left—my own space.

From the moment I opened the door, a primal fury erupted deep inside me at the sight of her standing there, her expression resembling that of a deer caught in headlights. My anger was palpable, this suffocating pressure that made me want to lash out and introduce her to the rules, no matter the cost, since Julius refused to.

Someone had to put her in her place and make sure she stayed there.

One thing was blatant: she definitely wasn’t scared of me, or she wouldn’t be in there.

“What is this?” I snapped. “Fuck around and find out, jailbird.”

She stood wide-eyed like she’d just seen a ghost, and at this point, I might as well have been one. Eyeing me up and down, she took in the state I was in as I spewed, “Shouldn’t you be in my brother’s bed?”