Chapter 1

Kimani

I came down those stairs with the worst attitude and I was not even going to pretend otherwise.

My head had been pounding since this morning, my throat still felt scratchy from whatever bug decided to make me its home since Friday, and I had been stuck in this house for three days with nothing but medicine that tasted like punishment and television that stopped being interesting by Saturday afternoon. I was miserable and I had every right to be miserable and nobody was going to tell me differently.

I gripped the railing as I came down the last few steps, my oversized sleep shirt hanging off one shoulder, my braids half pinned up and half doing whatever they wanted. I had not bothered fixing myself up because I was sick and this was my house and nobody told me company was coming.

That was the first thing that irritated me.

"There you are," Jaxon said the moment I cleared the bottom step, and he was already smiling that big, annoying, unbothered smile of his like he had not just shown up unannounced while I was in the middle of feeling sorry for myself. "I was about two minutes away from coming up there and dragging you out myself."

I scoffed. "You are just…"

I stopped. My feet stopped, my words stopped, everything in me just stopped mid-sentence because I finally registered that Jaxon had not come alone.

Roan was sitting in the armchair across the room.

He was not standing, not pacing, not making himself known the way most people did when they walked into someone else's space. He was just sitting there with his legs spread and his elbow resting on the arm of the chair, his phone in one hand, his eyes on the screen. He looked like he had been sitting in that chair his entire life and the chair should feel honored about it. He had not looked up when I came downstairs. He had not acknowledged me at all.

I felt my jaw tighten.

"What?" Jaxon laughed a little, reading my face the way he always did. He crossed the room and reached for my shoulder. "Come on, Kim baby, I came here because of you. I just had to drag this iron block along with me." He gestured behind him at Roan, who still did not look up from his phone. Manspreading. Utterly unbothered.

The irritation that moved through me was fast and hot and I had to breathe through it.

Roan King was thirty years old, Jaxon's best friend, and the single most infuriating human being I had ever been forced to share a room with. He had this way of making you feel invisible and hyperaware of yourself at the exact same time and I genuinely could not stand him.

That was what I told myself.

"Mom called you, didn't she," I said to Jaxon, pulling my attention away from Roan and planting it firmly on my brother where it belonged. "That is the only reason you are here. I have been sick since Friday, Jaxon. Friday."

I do not know what changed in the room when I said that but I felt the shift.

And then a pair of frost blue eyes lifted from that phone screen and found my face.

Roan was looking at me now. Not smiling, not frowning, just looking, with this quiet, sharp, searching expression that he wore like it cost him nothing. Like looking at me was something he was simply evaluating rather than choosing to do.

I looked away first. I always looked away first and I hated that about myself.

"You didn't call me," Jaxon said, his smile dimming just a little. "If you had just called me…"

"And tell you what?" I crossed my arms and looked at him properly now because this was an argument I had been sitting with for three days and I had a lot of material. "You never call me, Jaxon. You don't call me unless somebody tells you there's a new boy looking at me funny and then you show up within the hour like some kind of alarm went off. Then you have the energy to track down every guy who breathes near me and make his life difficult but when I actually need you, when I am sick and Mom is working and this house feels too quiet, you are busy. You are always busy with work and you don't even…"

His arms came around me before I could finish the sentence and I hated that it worked, that the second Jaxon pulled me into a hug that tight I felt some of the sharp edges in my chest go soft. I did not hug him back right away. I kept my arms crossed between us and let him do the work because he deserved to do the work.

"I'm sorry, baby," he said against the top of my head, squeezing once. "You know you're my treasure, you know that. I should have called. I should have checked on you sooner and I didn't and I'm sorry."

I wanted to respond but I could feel those frost blue eyes still on my face and it was doing something to my concentration that I resented deeply. Roan had not said a single word since I came downstairs and he still was not saying anything but he was watching this whole exchange with an expression I could not fully read from the corner of my eye.

I hated that I could never read him and I wanted to.

Jaxon pulled back and held my face in both his hands the way he used to do when I was small, checking me over like he could assess the damage from the outside. "Tell me what you need. What do I do to make it up to you, hm?"

I sniffled a little, more for effect than necessity, and thought about it. "My chocolate bars," I said. "You were supposed to bring them. You always bring them when I'm not feeling well and you didn't bring them this time."

He winced. "I forgot."

"You forgot," I repeated slowly.

"Kim baby…"

"You forgot my chocolate bars when I have been sick since Friday." I unfolded my arms and turned slightly away from him, aiming my gaze at the far wall. "You really do not treat me right anymore. I don't know what happened to you."

"I'll go get them right now," he said immediately, and I could hear the guilt doing its work on him the way it always did because Jaxon Bennett could not function properly when I was unhappy with him and I was not ashamed to say that I knew this and I used it. "Five packs. I'll get you five this time."

"Five," I said, like I was considering whether that was sufficient.

"Five. Right now." He was already patting his pockets for his keys.

"But Mom isn't back yet." I turned back to look at him, letting a small frown sit on my face. "You want to leave me alone in this house?"

"You won't be alone." He said it so easily, so matter-of-factly, like it was the most reasonable solution in the world. "Roan will stay with you." He glanced back at his friend and then at me again. "You remember Roan, right? You've met before."

I blinked once. I remembered Roan just fine. I remembered him in ways I was not going to examine right now.

"I don't want your friend's company," I said, keeping my voice even, keeping my eyes on Jaxon specifically. "He's been sitting there being grumpy this whole time and he can't even say hello. I want you to stay, not him."

I was not looking at Roan. I was not going to look at Roan. But my body had its own opinion about his presence in this room and it had been voicing that opinion since the moment I spotted him in that chair, this low, traitorous warmth that started somewhere in my stomach and radiated outward no matter how many times I told it to stop.

"Just thirty minutes, baby, I promise." Jaxon pressed a kiss to my cheek and before I could argue or negotiate or come up with a single good reason that he could not dismiss, he was heading for the door. "Thirty minutes and I come back with five packs. I'll even get the dark chocolate ones."

The front door closed behind him and the room went quiet.

I stood there with my arms loose at my sides, staring at the closed door for a moment too long, and then I made the mistake of turning around.

Roan had put his phone down.

He was looking at me now with his full attention, frost blue eyes and that sharp unreadable face and those long legs still spread like the armchair was a throne he had claimed, and the corner of his mouth had curved into something that was almost a smirk.