“It’s about damn time.” Bliss’s father’s voice made me pause and I closed my eyes tightly a moment. Battling over the option to stay and watch this or get away from it. The guy I’d just met outside wasn’t who they all thought he was. The easy-going happy Eli was gone and I wanted to warn them all to be careful. Which seemed silly but at the same time I thought both Eli and the others needed a proper introduction. They didn’t know this Eli at all, and I wondered if he remembered them. If he remembered how important they had always been to him. Because the guy outside didn’t seem to give a shit that he was hurting them all by his absence.
“Good to see you too, Cage,” Eli’s drawl was deep, and I bit my bottom lip thinking that his darkness did things to me that I should be ashamed of. I needed to just keep walking up the steps and forget this night. Forget Eli and all his hidden issues and sexiness.
“Gran left an hour ago,” a female voice added.
No response from Eli. I paused and waited for him to speak. When a few seconds went by with nothing I gave up on my good sense and I turned around on the stairs to see what was happening. Eli’s sister Crimson was glaring at him with a hand on her hip. She was waiting for a response. It was a stand-off that she was going to lose because Eli cocked one eyebrow at her and waited. If she wanted a sibling quarrel, she wasn’t going to get one with him.
Everyone in the room had remained silent. Like me, they were all watching the scene unfold. Possibly waiting on an explanation from Eli I knew they would never get. Their silence, his void almost bored expression confused them all and it was making me nervous for him or maybe I was nervous for them. Hell, I didn’t know who to be worried about which was ridiculous.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” Eli said, lifting his gaze from his sister to give the rest of the room a glance. Then he walked past his sister toward the food still out on the table. Bliss moved quickly then and went to meet him. Everyone eased back into conversation but it was still much quieter than it had been, it seemed forced now. As if everyone was still focused on Eli. Trying to figure him out and confused by what they had just seen. I was right there with them. I may not have grown up knowing him my entire life, but I’d been around him enough to know this was all unexpected. But then so had his running off after the wedding. At first, I had assumed like everyone else it had been his way of dealing with Bliss getting married to my brother. And it still may possibly have been. Whatever the reason for his running off he wasn’t returning the same guy. The one who had loved Bliss since he was a boy was gone. This was not about Bliss.
“Is no one gonna fucking mention all the damn ink and the hair?” The deep voice came from the corner of the living room. Jimmy Taylor was pointing at Eli with the whiskey glass in his hand and grinning as if he wanted to either toast Eli or laugh. I wasn’t sure.
I held my breath. Jimmy Taylor was a cut up. Never serious. He was trying to lighten the mood, but I wasn’t sure it was possible to ease Eli’s mood.
I turned back to Eli, and I fought the urge to close my eyes. This may all go very bad very quickly.
“You want some of this. Don’t act like you don’t,” Eli replied and although he didn’t smile. Which was a shame because I knew Eli had a great smile, he did appear relaxed. Not confrontational.
Jimmy laughed then and the tension in the room eased. “Fuck yeah I do. Good boy gone bad. Sexy as hell.”
Eli gave a shrug of his shoulders. “I did it all for you,” he told Jimmy and that got laughter from others in the room.
I let out a sigh of relief. Why I cared so much about how this all went down, I had no idea. This didn’t affect me at all. These weren’t my people. I barely knew them. Some more than others. I tried to remember most of their names, but that was hard. Then figuring out who went with who and was related to who . . . that was a clusterfuck and I needed a family tree to keep in my pocket as a cheat sheet.
One of Bliss’s brothers stood up and I couldn’t remember his name. They all looked alike and they all had names that started with C. It was equally confusing. “I think we should all just be thankful Saffron isn’t here for this,” he announced loudly. As if he were speaking to a crowd much larger than the people in the room.