Family Affair by Elle M Thomas

Chapter 19

 

Declan

 

There is no disguising my smirk as, from a safe distance, I watch my brother undergoing an interrogation from our sister. I assume the ‘Liv’s pregnant’ cat is well and truly out of the bag now.

I’m still lost in my smug enjoyment of my brother’s discomfort when I catch Liv in my peripheral vision coming alongside me. She looks flustered and a little upset.

“You okay?”

“Fucking arsehole dickhead twat in there.” Her thumb is thrown back towards the kitchen.

I skim the room. She can only mean one person, Christian.

“What did he say?” I know it will be vile, but nothing prepares me for the fact that not only did he say shitty things, but he actually lay his hands on her, grabbing her. “Are you okay? Should I get Mase?”

“Fuck no!” She looks horrified. “The last thing any of us need is for Mase to lose his shit with Christian, so, thanks, but no thanks.”

“Fair point, but you’re okay?” I am genuinely concerned for her wellbeing.

“Yeah, Anita kind of came to my rescue,” she says and then looks around. “I am sure she was with me when I left.”

I look around, following Liv’s gaze, neither of us finding Anita.

“Well, I don’t see her, so you go and lend your husband some support and I will go and find Cupcake.”

She grins up at me and my term of endearment for her sister and I swear she looks ready to cry.

“Go, shoo,” I tell her before spinning her in the direction of my brother while I head for the kitchen to find Anita.

 

~~~

 

I hear Christian’s voice as I get to the kitchen but don’t quite catch what he says. Anita’s voice takes over now.

“Maybe we should return to everyone else…perhaps you could introduce me to your wife and children.”

Whilst her words sound reasonable enough there is something off in her tone and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I can’t quite put my finger on what her voice is laced with, but whatever it is, it’s heavy and loaded. Is it contempt I detect? Maybe not, but it’s not positive and yet somehow familiar.

I hear a hiss that is definitely Christian’s meaning he is picking up on the negativity my Cupcake’s voice is aiming at him.

I’ve heard enough.

“Anita,” I call, walking in, hoping my face doesn’t divulge my irritation and concern at whatever is going on between them. “Oh, Christian. I didn’t realise you’d escaped the circus.” I offer him my best fake laugh. “Anita, Bethy wants to pick your brains on catering.”

Anita looks a little stunned, but relieved more than anything. She steps back from Christian making me realise just how close to each other they were. I am getting more and more pissed off with every passing second I stand here so am relieved when Anita comes alongside me and takes the hand I offer.

We return to the others, and I keep Anita close by for the remainder of the afternoon, ensuring Christian keeps his distance. Mase keeps checking in with me meaning he knows something is off with me, as does Liv who says nothing, but her gaze is constantly flitting between me and her sister. Eventually, a couple of others make noises about leaving and Mase quickly jumps on that bandwagon. Thank fuck because I feel ready to explode with pent up rage at the niggling feeling in my head that there is something between Christian and Anita I am unaware of, but I won’t be unaware for much longer if I get my way and I always get my way.

 

~~~

 

We have barely left my mother’s property when Mase launches into his own version of the Spanish Inquisition for Liv about Christian.

“So, what did he have to say?”

“Nothing really.”

I avoid looking at either of them because he did far more than nothing really and I don’t want to get dragged into this, especially not when I am more interested in what was going on between him and Anita.

“You’re lying!” Mase accuses with an angry snap in his voice.

“Mason!” Liv hisses. “He doesn’t like me and is generally unpleasant, we all know this, so, he didn’t really have anything new to say. Happy now?”

“Fucking ecstatic,” Mase grinds out between gritted teeth.

I briefly move my glance from an uncomfortable looking Anita to the woods we are driving past, but my attention quickly snaps back, much like my head when Anita speaks.

“Why doesn’t he like you, Tristan?”

With the use of the wrong name, she has all of our attention.

“Christian,” Liv corrects.

Anita flushes at her mistake and if that doesn’t piss me off and increase my suspicion a little more.

“I mean he’s not exactly a super friendly people person with anyone,” Liv continues.

Mase nods his agreement. I maintain my silence.

“But I think he only really attempts to be civil professionally or if the person he’s dealing with is somehow advantageous to him. I am not and have never been advantageous to him and in terms of having been employed by him, well, he very much had me pigeonholed as his receptionist and no more.”

Liv was pretty much spot on in her summing up but wasn’t done yet.

“He wasn’t unpleasant to you, was he? I assumed you were on my heels when I left the kitchen.”

My rapt attention is now fully on Anita, looking for any sign of, well, anything that might offer some answers to my unanswered questions about her and Christian.

“No, no,” she mutters. “I mean why would he be? I doubt he knew who I was or most likely he must have thought I was something to do with catering, the food…” her voice trails off, possibly because she can hear how flustered she is becoming, and if she can’t, I certainly can and that convinces me even more that there is something off with her and Christian, or Tristan as she earlier called him.

My mood is darkening with every breath I take. I need this conversation to end before I lose my shit completely. Not that there won’t be a conversation about this, but it will be private—between me and Anita and it will be happening the second we leave this car if I have any say in it.

 

Anita

 

My stomach hasn’t stop churning since I saw Tristan…I still can’t get my head around him being called Christian. My slip up, calling him by the name I’d known him go by has caused raised eyebrows and smirks if not suspicion from Liv and Mase—Declan? Well, that is a different story because as much as he has held my hand and kept me close, he is antsy and agitated with everything, but I suspect mainly me. Did he hear something when he came to the kitchen? Something I said, or God forbid, what Tristan said? I am certain he didn’t hear anything about me having sex with the other man or he’d have said something, of that, I am sure.

“So, where are you two going? Home, Dec’s, ours?”

Liv spins in her seat to face us. I remain silent, deferring to Dec to make the decision for us both. My preference is to go home and not face the conversation I feel sure is impending with Dec, a conversation I neither want nor have any clue what it might involve. At least going back to my sister’s home will allow me to avoid whatever awaits me a while longer or possibly even gain some insight into what that conversation might involve.

“Mine,” Dec replies, blowing all alternatives out of the water. “I have work later and Anita and I have things to sort out before then.”

Liv frowns as her glance lands on me. My response is a shrug. Dec says no more while Mase remains silent but takes a turn that confirms we are going to his brother’s home.

 

~~~

 

Dec is pacing the floor of his flat while I sit on the sofa, watching him, waiting. Seconds turn into minutes and the minutes seem to last for hours.

I get to my feet. “Maybe I should go—”

“You are going nowhere!” Dec roars, turning until he stands before me. “I don’t even know where the fuck to start here. There is something going on between you and Christian…I don’t know what or why but there is something and I don’t fucking like it.”

I stare at him, unable to deny any of what he is saying. I wish I could.

“Say something!” he barks at me, his grip on all things good seems to be hanging by a thread.

“What? What do you want me to say? You have got something of a bee in your bonnet about me and a member of your family and you expect me to say something? But what? Why? I don’t know what you want from me, Dec. You have said it yourself, you don’t know what it is or why you think it, but somehow this is my problem rather than yours.”

Dec steps away, his fingers running through his hair, tugging the ends, hard judging by the pained expression on his face.

I move towards him and feel nothing but guilt now. Not because I think I owe Dec anything in the way of an explanation about my past any more than he owes me one, but because I know I am lying to him, or about to if pushed. His reaction to discovering me in his mother’s kitchen, talking, regardless of what he heard, to the man I now know is his stepsister’s husband, has convinced me that telling him the truth would be a bad idea. Until I must. If I must.

I briefly acknowledge to myself that there is plenty that I do feel guilty about but none of that is something I intend to discuss or divulge to him…to anyone.

“Dec. I don’t know what’s going on here. If I have done something, tell me. If you’re pissed off with me, tell me, but I am not staying here to put up with your mood swings based on whatever is in your head. So, if you want to talk about it, we can, but I mean talk with actual words, not sulking.”

Silence is his only response for a few seconds as he seems to consider what I am saying.

“Sorry,” he eventually says. “I don’t know why it bothered me so much, but when I came to find you in the kitchen, you seemed familiar with Christian. Too familiar.”

“Familiar?” I am doing everything I can to hide the panic that I hear in my voice.

“Yes, familiar.” He sighs loudly. “I don’t know what it was, but…for fuck’s sake. Sorry. Look, there’s something I need to tell you and maybe that is what’s wrong with me. Why I got myself in such a fucking state hearing you talking to another man.”

He sounds disgusted with himself that me speaking to Christian, regardless of what he heard, got under his skin. I do briefly smile before remembering that my conversation in the kitchen, whilst innocent on this occasion has less than innocent origins.

“Dec, maybe I should go—” I repeat my earlier offer. Maybe it would be better for us both to have some time to think. Dec to think through whatever is bothering him and me to think about what I am going to tell him because despite my earlier thoughts on telling him nothing. Lying. I won’t do that, not that I plan on telling him the whole truth.

“No, please, stay. I told you, there’s something I need to tell you and I think that something is fucking with my head.”

“O—k—ay.” I feel nervous now. What could possibly be fucking with his head like this and as it is clearly related to me, maybe he would be better off removing me and it from his life.

“This afternoon, I was thinking and then I came to a realisation, and I was okay with it, or so I thought.” He looks awkward. “I am okay with it, kind of, but it’s a shock and not what I planned on any level—”

I cut him off, hoping to somehow stop his ramblings. “Dec, you’re worrying me.”

“Sorry.” He takes a very deep breath. “Although maybe you should be worried. “Anita…” Another deep breath follows. “I love you, okay? I. Bloody. Love. You.”