Heading toward the door, I snag an apple out of the fruit bowl as I pass, before I pull my backpack around to my side so that I can shove it inside for later.
‘Oh, when does Henry get here?’ I ask idly, my mind already on getting my keys and heading to class. ‘Does he have a lot of stuff? The house is kinda small, but I can help you to move things around to make more room if you guys let me know when you need me. I’m pretty sure I can make some room in my closet if you need a bit of extra storage space.’
I feel the tension thicken in the room behind me, and I slowly turn around again to face my mum who is nibbling on her bottom lip as she gives me an apologetic look.
‘He’s not going to be moving here with us’ she whispers reluctantly as I feel the room start to spin around me and I grab hold of the wall beside me to remain upright, forcing myself to concentrate on my mother’s words. ‘His business is not really something that he can upend and move across the country, so . . he asked me if I would move to Maine to be with him.’
Caleb’s POV
‘Hawthorne Security how may I help you?’
I grit my teeth as the sound of our overly enthusiastic and relatively new receptionist floats through to my office.
It’s been two years and I still wonder how the hell I got here. Two years ago, I was a Marine, Special Forces, serving my country, standing beside my brothers as we stepped into more volatile situations than I care to count.
My brother, our best friend and I would spend so much time talking about reaching seventeen, joining up and fighting to protect people that couldn’t protect themselves.
Gage and Callan both chose the Army as their second home, but I had my heart set on the Marines and they couldn’t persuade me to go with them when they went to enlist.
I walked into the recruitment office the day of my seventeenth birthday and signed away four years of my life without a second thought.
I loved everything about being a Marine, so when Gage and Callen didn’t re-enlist after their first service, each of them returning from war with scars that couldn’t be seen on the skin, they decided to join my father’s private security firm.
I was happy to sign over a further four years of my life though, wanting to remain at the side of my brothers in arms, fight for what was right.
It seems that fate had other plans for me though, because only six months into my second term, my team and I were deployed on a rescue mission deep within an enemy territory.
The mission was supposed to be straight forward, a simple breach of a small militant group that had captured a reporter and were demanding weapons for her return.
We planned the mission in fine detail, knew the layout of their camp from surveillance and the officers were sure it would be an easy extraction, sending only a five man team for the op. Things went sideways within minutes of our breach, the militants were no longer working alone, and the firepower of the group that had taken over their little franchise was more than we could handle. All four of my brothers in arms were killed, the hostage was slaughtered on a live feed to our government, and I managed to crawl from the wreckage of the gun fight barely alive. I was evacced from the hot zone, and got myself a year in a military hospital trying to remove the bullets that were embedded in my leg as everyone praised my bravery, then gruelling months of rehabilitation to get me walking again.
Once I could stand up, I was given a nice shiny medal, a firm handshake with a ‘thanks for your service’ before being unceremoniously shown the door with an honourable discharge.
Still walking with a prominent limp, reliant on a walking stick, and with nowhere to go, no support from the people I gave up over five years of my life too, I ended up back on my dad’s doorstep.
He welcomed me back, set me up in my old room that still held the posters of scantily clad girls draped over muscle cars and hired the best physiotherapy team he could find to work on me.
Thankfully, I no longer need a walking stick to get around and only really suffer badly if I put too much pressure on my leg or overexert myself in the gym.
I instinctively rub my fingers over the scars that are hidden by my jeans. Fourteen months on and my left leg has so many scars I can’t bear to look at it and never wear shorts even in the warmest of Maine weather.
‘Mr Hawthorne?’ comes our receptionist’s voice uncertainly and I glance up to find the brunette hovering in my door, biting her lip nervously.
Candy, Clara, whatever the hell her name is, has that deer caught in the headlights look, as though I’m about to rip her apart.
‘What?’ I growl in annoyance, the way she skitters around me annoys me, probably more than it should, but I hate how everyone seems nervous around me, like I’m f*cking fragile or something.
‘I just wanted to ask what you wanted for lunch’ Courtney or Ceecee mumbles fearfully. ‘I’m just heading down to the bakery on Main to get everyone’s order.’
‘He’ll have the smoked bacon and chicken with ranch on rye, Iris’ my brother announces as he slides past her into my office, giving her a wink as she giggles and quickly writes down the order before disappearing. Looking at the man, is like looking in a mirror, we’re identical. Same piercing blue eyes we inherited from our father; same sandy brown hair that’s kept cut short. Whilst we served, all three of us sported haircuts, shaved in the severe style of the Military, but once my brother returned home, he grew his hair longer, his body losing the strong definition of the harsh training we had to do, making it easy to tell us apart, but now I’m out again, I’ve allowed it to grow a little meaning only those who know us well can tell us apart now.
Many people are fooled by my twin’s easy smile and laid-back attitude, but I know that underneath his fa?ade, is a man that saw things which changed him, as did our friend Callan. Both use different techniques to cope with what they’ve seen, our best friend f*cks the nightmares from his mind with any willing body, Gage buries himself in the job, taking any contract he can to keep busy.
‘Who said that’s what I wanted?’ I huff, grabbing some folders out of the top tray on my desk and starting to thumb through it.
Four years ago, I would have laughed if someone had said that I would end up behind a desk, dealing with paperwork, and bullsh*t people who thought themselves above everyone else. Unfortunately, with no idea what to do with myself and struggling to ingratiate my way back into the civilian world, my father’s pushing for me to join his firm had worn me down. His arguments about my tactical skills being utilised for security events, and my brother’s constant nagging about working together, just became harder and harder to turn down until I found myself behind this desk in a stuffy suit, wearing a f*cking tie that might as well be a noose for the way it constricts my neck. I was born for combat gear, a gun and stealth ops, not shadowing people with more money than sense and wiping the asses of stuck up rich kids who think we’re their f*cking servants.
‘That’s what you always order’ my twin retorts, reaching over my desk and stealing one of the mints from the little dish I keep beside me.
‘You need to stop growling at the staff’ Gage adds thoughtfully, ‘Iris is a nice girl, and she works hard, stop trying to scare her away with your angry asshole routine.’
I snort, pulling out one of the files from the bundle in my hand and throwing the rest back in the tray. ‘You’re only being nice because you want between her legs’ I retort scowling.
Gage gasps, pressing his hand to his chest as though I’ve seriously wounded him. ‘I have not now, nor will I ever, dip my nib in the company ink’ he scoffs. ‘I don’t even touch the clients, former or current! Everyone knows you don’t mix business with pleasure little brother, fucking the people who pay our wages or need us to pay theirs is always a bad idea.’
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.