Page 5 of Myla: The Hawthornes

“So is mine,” I argued. I shook my head. Not the point. “I’d just rather sleep there.”

“I’m beat, love,” he murmured. “Wasn’t kiddin’ about that. You really want me out there searchin’ for your tent for the next hour?”

“You don’t have to help me find it,” I replied immediately.

“You’re not leavin’ this tent without me.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because you’re drunk.”

“And?”

“Myla, I’ve been with you when you’re drunk. You’d plan on lookin’ for your tent, then you’d see someone smokin’ and you’d go over to say hello, and when you were done with that, you’d forget where you were headed in the first place. So, you’d head back into the clubhouse, and an hour later, you’d be back out here, searching for your tent again.”

I just looked at him, annoyed that he wasn’t wrong.

“And the entire time, I’d be in here,notsleepin’ because I’m worried about you.”

“Fine,” I conceded, looking away from him. “I’ll sleep in here.”

“Thank the good Lord,” he muttered under his breath, the words laced with an accent that I rarely heard. He reached for his bag and dragged it under his head again.

“I can’t believe you brought a pillow,” I grumbled, smooshing it under my head with a huff. “EvenIdidn’t bring a pillow.”

“Guessin’ you brought makeup and hair shit, though,” he replied, amused.

Ignoring him, I kicked off my shoes and shuffled into the sleeping bag, pulling the heavy fabric all the way up to my chin. The inside flannel was fuzzy and soft like it had been used and washed a thousand times before. I shifted as a rock dug into my hip. The ground wasn’t nearly as flat as the space that Frankie and I had chosen for our tent.

Laying there, I listened as the field around us grew quieter. We could still hear the quiet rumble of different conversations, but whoever had been getting busy had finished, thankfully. I’d been trying to ignore it, refusing to even let my mind wander to recognize the voices.

“You’d worry about me?” I joked as my eyes grew heavy. “That’s cute.”

“Shut it,” Cian ordered.

I slept so hard that I didn’t even notice the lumps and bumps beneath me. Between the cool night air and the heat trapped inside the sleeping bag, it was probably the coziest I’d ever been. I woke briefly sometime later when Cian let the cool air in as he slid under the sleeping bag and yanked it toward him, making me roll almost on top of him, but the position was even more comfortable, so I fell right back to sleep.

It wasn’t until hours later that I fully woke up to a bright light shining in my face.

“Found her,” my brother Otto called loudly.

“What?” I blinked at him in confusion.

“You’re in deep shit,” he replied darkly. “Get up.” He looked at Cian. “You, too, fucker.”

“Great,” Cian muttered.

I followed him slowly out of the tent, wrapping his sleeping bag around me for warmth. The sky was growing lighter, but the sun hadn’t risen yet, and it was cold as hell.

Outside was chaos.

No one should’ve been awake at that hour unless they hadn’t gone to sleep yet, but there were people blearily exiting their tents all around us, wondering what the hell was happening. Some sort of sixth sense had my head turning back toward the clubhouse to see my dad and brother Micky stomping toward us, and another brother Rumi moving to intersect them, all of their expressions like stone.

“What the fuck?” I whispered in confusion.

“Brace,” Otto advised, just as Dad reached us.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he asked quietly. The volume could’ve made someone assume that the words were said gently, but the tone was as icy as I’d ever heard it.

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