Page 23 of Making Choices

“Oi.” Cherub clicks her fingers next to my ear. “Don’t tell me you’ve fallen asleep.”

“Nah. I was just thinkin’ about the first time I met you.”

With a groan that speaks to her annoyance as much as it does the pain she’s in, she rolls off me and retakes her feet. “I do not want to hear this story again.”

“Why?” I ask as I accept the hand she offers me, even though I don’t really let her take any of my weight since she’s barely two days out from having the stuffing beat out of her by Alex. My back is feeling better, not perfect, but good enough for me to gently snag Cherub around the waist and carry her with me to the closest couch. I settle on the cushion and hold her sideways on my lap. When she glares at me, I grin. “Don’t you like knowin’ how irritated with the world you’ve been from birth.”

“Irritated doesn’t cover it,” Toker interjects as he barrels into the den. He snags the remote from the coffee table and collapses onto the couch next to us. The bowl of popcorn he’s holding is thrust at Cherub while he picks up her legs and pulls them across his lap. “You were loud as fuck and angry at everyone.”

“Except Venom,” I tell him. The reminder is as much for me as it is for Toker. “She stopped cryin’ the second he held her.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Star-crossed lovers since birth.” The madman pokes his tongue out at his cousin. He closes his eyes and puckers his lips, totally missing Cherub passing the bowl of popcorn to me. “Venom and Cherub sittin’ in a tree. K. I. S. S. I—”

Toker doesn’t finish spelling out the word because Cherub pounces on him. Despite her bruised ribs and stiff movements, her hand is beneath the hem of his t-shirt and he’s screaming in agony from what is, no doubt, a brutal nipple cripple before he can do a thing about it.

“Mercy. Mercy,” he yells.

“Are you going to make fun of me and Zeke again?”

His face screws up and he whimpers, “No.”

“Are you going to let me pick the movie?”

“Yes.” Toker concedes without hesitation. He shoots me a pleading look when she doesn’t immediately let him go. I grin at him, then open my mouth to toss in some popcorn. “What else do you want?”

Cherub’s face is filled with humour and a little malice as she pretends to think. Her cousin squeals like she’s twisted harder and I grimace. She’s ruthless when she wants to be. “I want you to meet me, sober as a judge and straight as an arrow, at the gun range after dinner.”

“Fine. Fine.” He hits soprano level with his final plea. “Whatever you want.”

“You’re gonna be straight, right?”

Toker’s eyes fill with panic when his cousin makes a pincer motion at him with her free hand. “Yes. God. Yes. I’ll forgo my after-dinner bong so I’m fuckin’ straight.”

“Good.” With a satisfied smile curling her lips, she lets him go and crawls back onto my lap. “I need you clear-headed if you’re going to help me teach Delia how to shoot.”

Toker groans. “Tank’s Delia?”

“Do you know any other Delia’s?” I enquire.

“No.” His pained expression would be funny if it wasn’t so out of place. “She’s the only one.”

A frown pulls my eyebrows together. “Is there something goin’ on there? Fuckin’ a brother’s missus without permission will earn you a bullet.”

“Jesus. Fuck. I wouldn’t do that.”

Cherub and I exchange a look, but she’s the one who verbalises what we’re both thinking. “Yes, you would. You even have the scar to prove it.”

“Okay.” Toker rubs the shoulder where one of the old timer’s shot him for the same crime he just said he’d never commit. “So, maybe, I would. Delia’s not that kind of girl, though.”

“I know.” Cherub holds her hand out for the TV remote. “That’s why I want you straight while we teach her. She’s still feeling her way in the club and I don’t want to dump her in the deep end by exposing her to you when you’re high.”

“Whatever,” her cousin mumbles as he reluctantly relinquishes the clicker. “Like I’m the worst of us. Slash and Venom smoke just as much as I do. Hell, you partake in the green stuff regularly, little Miss High and Mighty Cherub.”

Cherub and I snicker at his deflection and he flips us the bird.

After moving through the channels, Cherub settles on the first Die Hard movie. I lift my arm in invitation, and she takes the popcorn from me and hands it to Toker. Once she’s snuggled into my chest, I wrap both arms around her and pretend like this situation is as platonic as it normally is.

Because it has to be.

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