Page 74 of Shattered Veil

I found myself smiling as I draped an arm over her shoulders.

“I’m not usually a no-strings man, Darlin’.” I attempted to smooth the frazzled pieces of her hair, tucking the strands behind her ear. “You make me feel especially…stringy.”

Lowering my head, I had said the last word against her lips.

She said a wispy, “Stringy, huh?”

I nodded. “Very stringy.”

“Good,” Cassie replied quietly. “Me too.”

We were attached at the mouth, then, and it could have been argued that it was either of our doings. The gentle, soft movements, along with the tightening in my chest at our verbal acknowledgments, had me immediately yearning to walk her back to bed. To strip our clothes, bury ourselves under the covers, bury myself in her, and murmur in her ear that she was mine as our bodies worked us up to ecstasy.

There was no time for that, though, and we both seemed to come to that realization with a disappointed exhale as our lips parted.

“Meet you at Henry’s?” I breathed.

“I’ll be right behind you,” she murmured. “Have to drive Sky home; she said her apartment maintenance would be by at some time today.”

“Mmm, right,” I replied. “I had told her I’d cook you both pancakes. I’ll have to apologize.”

Cassie chuckled. “Another time, baby.”

I flexed my fingers that had wound their way around the back of her neck, kissed her deeply, and allowed ourselves a last, brief moment before we willingly left our purgatory.

Colton was late.

As Claire had reminded all of us, he hadn’t set an exact time to arrive—a simple, ‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ was all that she said was given—but as it was approaching fifteen minutes over that allotted hour, late was the descriptor that we were all using. Despite Claire’s insistence that his inevitable return was good news, the passage of time made us all restless, and the anticipation for Colton to arrive was palpable amongst us.

Zoey was far from her usual boisterous self, staring at the wood grain of our table and seemingly stewing in her own emotional hell. Liam was beside her, taking turns between carefully examining her expression for traces of distress and snapping his dark eyes to the entrance.

Cassie had sat next to me, as per usual. Upon the mention of the word late, she began to occasionally check the time on her phone, glance to her brother, and then fidget with her fingers in her lap under the table. On the third iteration of this, I blindly reached for her hands with mine, finding her scratching at the edges of her cuticles, and her motions stilled when I squeezed her right palm. I avoided looking at her, and she did the same, but the interlacing of her fingers through mine and quick exhalation through her nostrils showed me her silent thanks. My heart skipped as her grip remained strong, and both of our pulses secretly thrummed in time beneath the wood.

Claire seemed to be the least concerned of us all—an elbow on the table, she was simply resting her head on her hand as she watched Luke with an expression of sympathy. My brother was the only one not sitting in his usual spot, his feet tapping along the hardwood of Henry’s as he walked in front of our table and back.

“This is a set-up,” Luke murmured. “This has got to be a set-up.”

Claire sighed loudly. “It’s not a set-up.”

He stopped in his pacing for a moment to look at her pointedly. “All of us gathered in one place? Waiting for him to show up with potentially incriminating shit on us? He’s gonna bust in with the cops and get us all fucking arrested.”

She sagged further into her seat, head thrown back as she let out a none-too-patient groan. “Colt hates cops, and he has no reason to blindly fuck us over. I know you’re anxious, baby, but you need to try to take a breath—”

The front door swung open so quickly that the bell chime had a near-angry appeal.

All of our heads whipped to the entrance, Luke’s pacing halted directly in front of our table, and he exclaimed:

“Where the fuck have you been?!”

Colton stood stock-still in front of the door as it clunked shut, holding what appeared to be the infamous laptop under an arm by his side. He squinted in Luke’s direction, cocking his head to the side so far that his inky hair left the right side of his face and hung from the roots.

“What ever happened to hello?” Colton retorted snippily. “How are you?” He turned an about face, gave the door a quick once over, and flicked the deadbolt shut. As he faced us once more, he griped, “Thanks so much for risking your livelihood for us, Colt—it means a lot.” Colton stomped his way toward the bar, past Luke, who was now appraising him with crossed arms, and began to wave his free hand about as he complained, “No, don’t bother with any of that! My shoulder did get fucked when I rammed the closet door, by the way.” He gently set the laptop down on the bartop and rotated his right arm in a circular motion as if to test his shoulder’s mobility, grumbling, “Stupid, goddamn keypad lock.”

Colton took his seat with a shocking amount of grace, inhaling a long, seemingly cleansing breath and letting it out with an audible exasperation. Claire was the one to respond:

“How’d ya get out of 2D, Colt?”

She spoke with a lackluster sigh, and it wasn’t until that very moment that I realized that Claire wasn’t concerned. Yes, her eyes had bounced around the entire group, lingering on Zoey and, most often, Luke, care and worry held within her gaze…but she wasn’t concerned about Colton in the least. It was as if she knew, without a doubt, that he would return. That he had the ability to avoid the police and snake his way back, and the only caveat to that was time.

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