Page 10 of Tarnished Embers
“Okay, Dad.” She won’t look at him, her attention on her still mostly full plate of food. He doesn’t notice though as he turns back to Odette, dismissing his daughter and her pain like the fucking fool that he is.
I let her tug my fingers away from her core, but quickly flip my hand so that my fingers tangle with hers. A zap of electricity lights up my arm, and I catch her wide eyes as she looks back up at me. This effect she has on me, while wholly unexpected, isn’t unpleasant.
“Best finish your breakfast, Sugar,” I instruct her quietly, rubbing her knuckles with my thumb and liking the feel of holding her hand in mine. It’s so small, just like she is. “Looks like we’ve got a busy day.”
* * *
“WAR OF HEARTS - ACOUSTIC VERSION” BY RUELLE
EMBER
As instructed, we take Davis—our driver—and the Bentley, which is a seven-seater so it can fit all of us, and head into the centre of London. The boys all jostle to be either side of me, but Prince and Cas win when they point out that the twins had me to themselves this morning. My cheeks must be flashing neon red because I had no fucking idea that it was common knowledge that they were in my bed.
I’m still furious about my dad pulling me from college, my shoulders tense with the injustice of it. Yes, I might not have lots of friends there, I’ve mostly kept to myself the past few years, but it was still something that was mine, something that I enjoyed doing every day. Not to mention it got me out of that mausoleum of a house, though I suppose it won’t feel so empty now that the guys are there too.
Either way, he should have consulted it with me because I’ve been basically raising myself since Mum died. He’s not been there to have a say and certainly hasn’t earned any kind of right to say what I can and can’t do. My jaw clenches, frustration at my inability to just say all of that to him giving me the start of a headache. It’s been this way for the past couple of years, the more he withdrew from me, the more I couldn’t speak my mind, some part of me fearful that if I did, he’d leave entirely.
I settle in my seat when a flare of pain in my heart has me rubbing my chest as I remember the way he shouted at me, completely railroading me. He really isn’t the man I used to know and admire. Is that because of Odette? Was he really like this before he met Mum? Or is this the man he’s become and I just didn’t see it? I guess given the distance that’s now between us, how would I know the sort of man he is?
“Where to, Miss Everly?” Davis asks, interrupting my pity party. His eyes dart to mine in the rearview mirror. He’s around my father’s age, early fifties, and is handsome in a silver fox kind of way. He’s been with us for the past couple of years since Dad decided we needed a full-time driver—in part, I think because he’s too worried something will happen to me if I learn to drive myself. I would have liked the option, but I never wanted to make an issue out of it. I always wanted to keep the peace, yet look where that got me. Now I have a new stepmother and four stepbrothers that I had no fucking clue about until yesterday. I clearly matter so little to Dad that I don’t need to be involved in anything to do with our family.
I take a deep inhale, deciding that I need to step out of the huff, otherwise, I’ll just spiral into a pit of despair, and I promised myself I wouldn’t go back there.
“We’d like to see the sights, so um, maybe Trafalgar Square?” A rush of genuine excitement enters my veins when I think about going to the National Gallery and showing them some of the wonderful artwork inside. It’s one of my favourite places in London. I love all the museums, but the beautiful art that’s housed at the National always calms my soul. I’ve spent many an afternoon getting lost in its galleries, letting my mind just absorb the beauty around me and forget all the pain and heartache.
“Of course, Miss,” Davis replies, and then the privacy screen comes up between us and him, leaving me with my new stepbrothers.
“What has you smiling so beautifully, Little Cinders?” Cas questions in a husky voice as we pull onto the main road. An involuntary shiver runs down my spine at the sound. Shit, I am so fucked when it comes to these guys.
“Why do you call me that?” I counter, twisting around to look into his beautiful, copper eyes, which sparkle in the light when the spring sunshine hits his face every so often. I’m itching to capture them on paper, my fingers twitching with the need for my pencil and watercolours. I could even add in some metallic, just to try and capture the way they practically glow.
“I asked first,” he replies with a smirk that does terrible things to my already damp knickers thanks to Prince at breakfast. To be fair, it was a good distraction, although a part of me is pissed that he stole some of my crossness, even if I was never going to win that battle. I take in a sharp breath when Cas reaches out and tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear, his touch sending pulses all the way down to my needy core.
“I thought maybe we could go to the National Gallery, and I’ll show you some of my favourite paintings, if you like?” I’m useless to resist his commands when he touches me. Now that the words have left my mouth I feel almost shy, sucking my lower lip under my teeth and nibbling it. Hetuts, his thumb pulling my lip out and lingering for a moment before he pulls it away.
“That sounds perfect, Little Cinders,” he says, his lips quirking up in a half smile, and I can’t help mine doing the same. “And I call you that because you remind me of Cinderella with your long, blonde hair and big, sad, blue eyes.”
My brows dip when he says the last bit, not wanting to believe that he can see more than I’m willing to show to the world. “I have sad eyes?” I have to swallow past the lump in my throat as his face softens and he palms my cheek. For a moment, for a single space in time, I forget that he’s my stepbrother, and I lean into the touch, my breath easing out of me in a sigh of pure bliss. Cas calms me in a way that I’ve never experienced before, and I’m quickly becoming addicted to the feeling. The body wants what it wants, even if the mind knows it’s wrong.
“There’s a world of pain in those blue depths of yours, Little Cinders, like your heart has been broken and you’re not sure how to put back the pieces.”
How does he see me so clearly? How does he look into my eyes and understand the pain I’m going through from my mother dying and my father pulling away to lose himself in business and a new family, as if it’s plain for all to see?
Tears sting my eyes and he lets out a deep sigh before he tugs me closer until our foreheads touch. It feels so intimate and leaves me taking a trembling breath that fans across his lips. I close my eyes and tears spill down my cheeks in a warm river, but I don’t wipe them away. I can’t move as I breathe him in, his tart, toffee apple scent a balm that I need more of.
“Like recognizes like, Little Cinders. We share the same pain of losing a loved one, we all do. Your sorrow is ours and ours is yours. It’s what connects us, Ember.”
My hands come up, fisting his soft jumper, and a small sob falls from my lips. Then I open my eyes and I’m drowning in his copper orbs.
“W–who did you lose?”
He takes a shuddering inhale, and the sound is so raw that it breaks my already fractured heart a bit more. “My mom had a miscarriage when I was nine and she fell into a deep depression. She couldn’t get over the loss. One day, we couldn’t wake her up because she’d OD’d on sleeping pills.” A soft noise escapes my throat, my hands tightening in his jumper until my fingers go numb. “Dad wasn’t able to cope, all alone with an angry and hurting nine-year-old boy. He jumped off Manhattan Bridge two months later. Odette had been a family friend for a while, trying to help Dad, and then took me in when I became an orphan.”
“No—” My gasp ends on a muffle as I pull him closer to me, burying my face in his neck and sobbing against his skin. “Cas, I—” My chest tightens at the memory of what I’d done earlier, the way I’d cut myself. I’d never go that far, to take my own life. Well, not anymore anyway.
“Shhhh, baby. It’s in the past now, and I never would have met these guys or you if it hadn’t happened, so it’s not all bad.” He pulls me even closer, rubbing my back to soothe me when I should be the one comforting him. I soak in his embrace for a few moments before I drag myself away from him.
“Shit, Cas, I should be comforting you, not the other way round,” I say, my voice thick.