Shawn was already waiting for me in my loft when I got home late that night, and I told him about the invitation my brothers not-so-kindly extended that he should-slash-better come to our next family dinner. And even though I tried-slash-threw-a-tantrum to dissuade him, Shawn wouldn’t get the hell out of my Jeep that following Sunday, and I had no choice but to bring him along.
We arrived a few hours before dinner, with my brothers immediately suggesting a game of touch football that I knew damn well would involve a hell of a lot more than harmless touching. They had that dark look in their already-dark eyes—the one that told me they remembered every word I’d blurted at the dinner table, and that my explanations about Shawn being a good guy now had fallen on deaf ears.
“They’re going to pulverize you,” I warned with the hem of Shawn’s shirt gripped between my fingers. We were standing on the sidelines of my front yard while my brothers waited impatiently on the grass for my boyfriend—like a pack of killer whales waiting for its prey to dive into the water.
“I know,” Shawn agreed, unpeeling my fingers from his clothes one by one. A soft kiss on my cheek, and then he added, “Let them get it over with, okay?”
I gnawed on my lip, but let him dive into the infested waters. And I watched my brothers eat him alive. I cringed every five seconds while my dad watched approvingly from beside me, his broad arms crossed over his even broader chest.
Fifteen minutes in, when Shawn finally intercepted the ball and took off toward the end zone, I bounced onto the toes of my feet and screamed for him to GO, GO, GO. I was waving imaginary pompoms down the field, jumping on an invisible trampoline, when Mason charged at him and landed a vicious shoulder to the ribs. Shawn went airborne, his feet flying out from under him, before landing in a curled-up heap. I had just put one boot in front of the other, prepared to tackle my six-foot-three, two-hundred-forty-pound brother to the ground, when Shawn rolled onto his side and held up a hand for me to stay where I was. I froze, my hard eyes narrowed viciously at Mason while he hovered over Shawn and smiled.
“I think maybe we should call a doctor,” he taunted while Shawn gripped his ribs and struggled to catch the wind that had been knocked out of him. “What do you say, Kit?” Mason’s voice boomed from across the yard, and not one of our other brothers stepped in to help. “Should we wait six years to call?”
Everyone watched as Shawn coughed and writhed, and I was two seconds from showing Mason how deadly my combat boots could be—when his hand dropped in front of Shawn’s face. I watched as Shawn took it, I watched as Mason lifted him to his feet, and I watched as every single Larson on the field that day landed an elbow or a knee or a well-placed shoulder. By the time I drove Shawn home that night, he was in no physical condition to be even sitting up straight. I cast a worried glance at him from the driver’s seat of my Jeep, the light of passing cars chasing away the shadows on his face.
“I think they like me,” he joked, and the only reason I could laugh is because I understood my brothers well enough to understand that they did like him. They beat the shit out of him, but they helped him back to his feet every time, and the fact that he was still breathing had to count for something. It was their way of making things right.
Shawn’s body was still achy from that game when he came to the next family dinner, and the next. My brothers chided him about how tender his bruises still were—just like they would tease each other—and even though Kale was the slowest to come around, eventually he stopped narrowing his eyes at Shawn from down the table.
“You really do love him,” he said to me quietly just before we left last Sunday.
Instead of denying it, I pulled away from our hug and smiled. Aside from my psychotic break during that unforgettable family dinner, I hadn’t said the words yet—neither had Shawn—but I felt them. I felt them when he smiled at me, when he held me, when he made me laugh. And I felt them when he did none of those things. I felt them all the time.
I expected Kale to shake his head or scowl or twist his lip between his teeth, but instead, he gave me a small smile—just a little one, but one that I remember perfectly as I stand under Mayhem’s blue glow with my elbow on the bar, directing that same smile at him and Leti. I always imagined what it would be like to see Kale with a boyfriend, but I never imagined he would seem so . . . peaceful. Content.
Happy.
He turns around, Leti leans into him, and I blush when my twin’s hands find my third-best friend’s waist, holding it tight as he steals a kiss that makes my ears blush.
“You guys are disgusting.”