Fallen Son: A Fallen Men Christmas Story (The Fallen Men) Page 2

  “Can it, babe. Lou’s not feelin’ great.”

  Immediately, Harleigh Rose’s face melted with concern, and those hard blue eyes went soft like overwashed denim. When her hand touched my shoulder this time, it was gentle. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s nothing,” I assured her, shooting Z a sidelong glare for worrying her. “I’m just a little under the weather. Nothing to be scared about.”

  My best friend’s eyes turned to stone again. “You promise?”

  My heart burned at her concern. H.R. was as rough as the motorcycles she was named after, but secretly tender as the second of her names. I both loved and hated that she felt for me enough to ache for me.

  “I’m good,” I swore.

  “We deserve to know if something’s wrong with you,” Nova inserted, leaning forward to use the force of his thickly lashed bedroom eyes on me. “We’re family.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I retorted, needing to move on from this conversation because I hated them worrying, and I hated lying to them, even if it was by omission. “You guys mean everything to me.”

  “Damn fuckin’ straight,” he agreed. “If you’re sick, we’re all sick. You get me?”

  My lips twitched, but I knew he was serious as hell so I bit back my smile. “I get you, Nova. Now, quit frowning or you’ll crease that pretty brow and ruin the only thing you have going for you.”

  Everyone else burst out laughing, but Nova only leaned back and shared a quiet, intimate smile with me that said more than he ever would with words. He loved me, and it was important for him that I knew that.

  My throat ached and tears crawled up from the backs of my eyes.

  “Fuck,” I muttered as I turned back to face the front.

  “Warrior,” Z reminded me quietly as Nova, Lila, and H.R. began to chatter about something else in the back. His heavy hand landed on my thigh and gave a rough squeeze.

  “We’re here!” Harleigh Rose crowed as we turned left onto the long drive that led up to the cabin.

  There was a collective gasp from the girls as we saw the reconstructed cabin for the first time since Zeus had started to work on it again. He’d begun construction almost as soon as it had burned down two years ago, but he refused to hire contractors or even let any of his Fallen brethren help with the project. He’d built the first cabin, and he alone would rebuild the second one.

  It was no wonder that it had taken him so long when it was easily twice the size of the original. Made of massive cedar logs my biker lumberjack had cut down himself, it was two stories with a steeply peaked roof and beautiful gables. It looked like something straight out of Cressida’s Pinterest account.

  “She’s crying again,” Lila noted as Zeus parked at the top of the hill beside the pale yellow, snow-covered home.

  “Hell, if I cried, I would too. It’s sick, Dad,” H.R. praised as she opened the door and slid into the knee-deep snow. “Seriously, it could be in some kinda home magazine.”

  “You like it?” Z asked me quietly as the rest of them got out of the SUV.

  I ripped my eyes off the house and turned them, shining with tears, to my man. “You’d have to be dumb and blind not to love it. It’s almost as beautiful as our house in Entrance. Only reason it doesn’t beat that is because we don’t have any memories here yet.”

  His lips twitched. “Well then, get your sweet ass outta this car and let’s get on with makin’ some memories.”

  I laughed and opened the door to jump down into the snow, but he called my name, and I paused to look over my shoulder at him.

  His eyes were liquid silver with banked heat. “Don’t think one’a those memories isn’t goin’ to be me spreadin’ you out on the dinin’ room table and feastin’ on you for hours. I’m sure we can convince the lot of ’em to take a long, long fuckin’ walk at some point.”

  “I’m counting on it,” I told him with a saucy grin before I hopped out of the car and moved over to Cress where she stood beside King’s bike to wrap my arm around her waist.

  “Hey,” I said softly. Leaning my head against her shoulder, I loved the way she smelled of books and apples.

  “Hey, honey,” she murmured back, tipping her head against me. “How’s my girl?”

  I bit my lip but didn’t stiffen the way I wanted to. Cressida was one of the most perceptive people I knew, and though the question was asked mildly, I wondered if she’d guessed about my pregnancy.

  The desire to tell her was powerful. Cressida had been my teacher and my confidante before I’d even reconnected with Zeus and met the rest of his family. There was a soft, eternal bond between us, a gentleness that swaddled me like velvet. I felt safe and harboured by her love, and I knew she would be nothing but supportive and thrilled at the news, especially because she’s been secretly longing for a while now to get married and have babies herself.

  But I didn’t tell her.

  The kernel of fear still kept my lips sealed shut.

  “I’m good,” I said, but it wasn’t a promise.

  And based on the way she paused, then pressed a kiss to my hair, we both knew it.

  The men finally unloaded our things, and we made our way as a unit up the slight slope to the front of the house.

  I noticed a second after Zeus did that there was a light on in one of the windows left of the door. He cursed savagely, dropped the bags in the snow, and pulled his gun from his boot.

  “Nova, with me,” Z ordered immediately in a low, quiet tone. “King, get the back.”

  King handed his helmet off to Cress and took his wicked-looking knife out of the sheath on his belt while Nova reached into his waistband for a compact gun he easily adjusted in his hands.

  I stood back, curling my arm tighter around Cress and then linking hands with H.R. when she made her way over to us. Lila stood on H.R.’s other side, wrapped around her like a vine.

  “No matter how many times I’ve seen them head into danger, I’m always a little afraid,” Cressida admitted as they made their way closer to the house.

  “Only a little?” I asked. “I’m scared to fucking death half the time.”

  We all laughed nervously as Zeus silently unlocked the front door and swept inside with Nova at his back. There was a loud crack within, like something falling, and then silence.

  As one, the girls moved toward the house.

  “Dad?” Harleigh Rose called. “If this is some kind of prank, I swear to God, we’re going to make this trip a living hell for you!”

  A moment later, Nova appeared in the door, his gun gone, but his face somber. “Get in here.”

  I was moving before I knew it, sliding past Nova to search the open living/kitchen for Zeus. I moved on autopilot through the first floor, desperate to have physical confirmation of his safety even when I could hear him murmuring in one of the rooms at the back.

  I found him in the small mudroom at the back of the house, his broad back obscuring whatever he’d found in the far corner, his big frame squatted down on his heavy motorcycle boots. King stood just behind and to the side of him, his expressive face creased with concern.

  We made eye contact, and he nodded slightly, giving me the go-ahead to move to my husband. I sensed the other women arriving at my back, but ignored them as I walked to Zeus.

  I didn’t know what I would find, maybe an injured wild animal curled up and dying or evidence of a break-in.

  Not a single part of me was prepared for the sight that awaited me over Z’s broad shoulder.

  A young boy was curled up so tightly, his frame so painfully thin, it seemed his bones would burst through the skin. He wore a tattered sweatshirt covered in mud and something that was probably old blood, given the wounds at his wrists. His face was obscured by dirt, his hair a dark, matted tangle over his forehead, but his eyes…his eyes were the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen. More beautiful even than Nova’s famous gaze. Ringed with a heavy tangle of lashes and punctua
ted with spears of pure black, they were gorgeous and utterly terrified as they stared at us gathered between himself and his only exit.

  I wanted to pick his bony frame up off the floor and drag it onto my lap so I could stroke his filthy hair and coo to him the way I would if I found an injured and abused stray dog.

  But this wasn’t a dog.

  This was a boy, and his terror filled the crowded room like the acrid smoke from a plastics fire. We were all paralysed, suspended in it and trying to see a way through the smog so that we could reach him.

  Unsurprisingly, it was Z who tired of inaction first.

  Slowly, he held up his big, scarred hands and carefully shifted from his deep crouch to the wall beside the boy, sinking gracefully to his ass despite his bulk. The boy watched with those beautiful, big eyes unblinking.

  “Get a blanket from the car,” Cressida whispered to someone behind me.

  The boy’s eyes skittered from Z to us, and he curled even smaller.

  “Now, don’t mind them, kid,” Zeus mumbled in that low, smooth purr like a luxury engine. “Look at me, yeah?”

  He did as he was told, licking lips so dry and chapped they bled.

  “You cold?” It’s like hell frozen over up here on the mountain. You need to get warm or you’re gonna be sick. ’S almost Christmas, can’t be sick for Santa.”

  The boy frowned at the mention of the holiday, and then blinked rapidly as his eyes filled with wet.

  Zeus hunched even lower, shoulders rounding, so that he was almost eye level with the boy, and when he spoke, it was in a voice so achingly kind, it made me want to cry. His entire demeanor reminded me all too much of the enormity of his heart and how deftly he’d handled me, terrified and trapped, that day so many years ago in the parking lot of First Light Church.

  “You got somewhere to be for Christmas, boy?”

  More wet, pooling in the troughs of his lower lids.

  “’S okay. You don’t got somewhere else to go, you can do Christmas with the Garros, yeah? This is my family. And me? I’m Zeus Garro.”

  The boy stared at him with his tear-filled eyes, lips compressed like a closed zipper to hold back his sobs. But there was a shift in the air around him, as if Zeus had unwittingly unlocked one of the many doors barring this child from communication and comfortability.

  “You need help,” my husband continued, speaking quietly but somberly as if to an adult. “We’re the ones that’re gonna help you. Now, can you answer some questions for me?”

  The child bit his chapped lip and a bead of blood formed, then slid slowly down his chin. Z reached out slowly and brushed it away with his thumb, leaving the boy trembling but silent.

  “You got parents somewhere?”

  A slow blink, then a slight shake of the head.

  “You sure? They aren’t lookin’ for you right now?”

  The first tear slid free of his lid and streaked through the dirt on his cheek.

  “They dead?”

  A flash of hesitation so brief, I wondered if anyone else saw it and then just as quickly decided they all did.

  Our family weren’t the kind of people you could fool easily.

  The boy nodded his head, firmer this time.

  “You run away from some bad foster family?” Z asked.

  But it was the end of the questions. The boy’s head slowly tipped down as if it was too heavy to hold up, and then he was crying silently into his curled-up knees.

  Without hesitation, I dropped into a squat and shuffled closer so I could comfort him by putting a gentle hand on his hair. He looked up with a start and an exclamation of breath that was almost animal, cornered and afraid. I hushed him, cooing soft, nonsensical things just so that he could hear the truth of my friendliness in my voice as I stroked his hair.

  Seconds later, he relaxed enough to blink his tears away and stare at me. He seemed mesmerized with something about my appearance. A moment later, his dirty hand lifted to finger a lock of my almost white blonde hair.

  “You like it?” I asked him with a little smile so he would know it was okay.

  He licked his lips nervously, then gave a little nod.

  “If you don’t have anyone else, and you can’t stay here in this drafty house, do you want to go home with us? At least until we sort something else out?” I asked him as I ran my hand over his thick mop of hair.

  He studied my face like an archeologist with found spoils, rapt and discerning, as if he could read all my secrets so easily in my features.

  Maybe he could.

  I knew from experience with Tayline, Cyclops’ on and off old lady, that runaways grew up well before their time.

  I leaned closer to him to whisper, “When I didn’t have any family left, not really, these guys took me in, and I’ve never looked back. Not once. That man who talked to you? He’s been my guardian monster since before I was even your age, and he’s taken really good care of me for that whole time.” I traced my finger over the edge of his sweet face and knew he would be heart-stoppingly lovely without all that grime and all the grief mucking it up. “I know he’ll take good care of you too. We all will.”

  His gaze searched my smile for sincerity, and finding it, he nodded once, almost curtly and slowly started to stand. Zeus and I stood with him, slower so as not to spook him, but when we were up, he scooted between us and the wall, naturally using us a protection against the rest of the strangers in the room.

  My heart did some strange twisty motion in my chest. Unconsciously, my hand went to my stomach where my babies lived, and I wondered, shockingly and powerfully, if we’d added to our family even sooner than we’d anticipated.

  Cressida and I helped him get clean. He didn’t want us with him in the bathroom, but we turned on the shower, gathered towels, a pair of Z’s socks that would be way too large on him, but would at least give him some comfort from the elements, and old coat of King’s we found in a storage bin stacked in the new crawl space.

  When he emerged from the steamy room, he was transformed, and the beauty of the little guy made my eyes sting with tears. He was clearly Hispanic, his rich black hair kinky, but too short to tell if it would just wave or curl, and his skin that luxe olive tone that kept a tan long after it saw the sun.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever fallen in love at first sight. Falling in love with Zeus had been a gradual thing, like a seed planted in my soul at six years old that grew into an immovable, majestic oak as time marched on and the connection between us never waned.

  But looking at that boy with his thick lashed eyes and troubled mouth, I knew I’d love him until the day I died if he let me.

  Zeus’s words from years ago echoed in my head, how could a guardian monster abandon his girl when she needed him?

  I understood then, in a way only a parent could, that I wouldn’t abandon this boy, not when he so clearly needed someone to put him first for a change.

  Without hesitation, I moved forward to stand beside him and offered him my hand. He stared at it in trepidation, before biting his lip and sliding his smooth, warm hand in mine. I squeezed it gently and leaned down to smile at him.

  “Are you ready to see Zeus chop down a tree?”

  Interest flared in his eyes, but he only nodded slightly.

  I decided that was enough.

  His silence and the quality of thoughtfulness in his gaze reminded me all too acutely of Mute. I still felt his loss every single day of my life, especially now when I was pregnant and desperately hoping to have a boy so that we could name him after my quiet protector.

  “You okay?” Cressida asked, startling me out of my daze.

  There was empathy in her dappled green and brown eyes, an understanding of the layers of palimpsest that superseded this moment.

  I gave her a little grin and leaned into her hand when she reached out to move it down my hair. “Life’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “Stranger than fiction,” she quipped. “And I should know, I’m a literature professor.” r />
  We shared a soft laugh that was more about intimacy than humour and then moved together into the house.

  The rest of the group was already gathered outside, and I lost my breath again, this time to the sight of my husband trussed up to chop down the perfect Christmas tree.

  He was still in his heavy boots and old, dark wash jeans, the hem soaked through from the snow, but he’d shed his black duffel jacket and Hephaestus auto sweatshirt to reveal a skintight black Under Armor shirt that conformed to every single one of his many and magnificent muscles.

  My mouth went dry, and moisture pooled between my legs.

  Cressida laughed beside me. “Hold it together, girl. We’ve got business to attend to before you jump your man.”

  “Can you blame me?” I asked.

  Her eyes slid to King who had a black toque pulled lower over his riot of blond waves, his thick sweater pushed up to reveal his corded forearms, and an axe tossed over one shoulder.

  “No,” she said slowly, high colour burnishing her cheeks. “No, I most definitely cannot.”

  Harleigh Rose appeared in front of us and groaned dramatically. “Seriously, guys, haven’t we talked about this? You perving on my dad and brother in front of me has got to stop.”

  Cressida slung an arm around her shoulders and curled her into her chest to place a kiss on her streaky blond head. “Not possible. Sorry, honey. Trust me, one day, you’ll understand what it’s like to have a hot man, and you will absolutely not begrudge us some harmless ogling.”

  She snorted and swiped at Cress’s mouth. “You’ve got some drool just there.”

  Cress laughed and shoved her away.

  “’Nough of that,” Zeus called out, swinging his axe through the air and then catching it by the handle. “We got serious business to attend to. Hey, kid! You ever swung an axe before?”

  The little hand in mine tensed slightly, and I looked down to find his eyes wide with eagerness.

  Zeus caught it too. “You want me to teach you how to cut down a tree ten times bigger ’an you?”