Page 37 of Dirty Dancer

That… that had beenepic.

Riding that high, I slipped into my own room for a shower and to change. Jasper still wasn’t back, but there was a message from Mickey. He would be back in the late afternoon and volunteered to pick up our favorites from the Thai place. The fact the guys’ orders ticked up on the screen just made laugh.

It was sonormal.Our normal, and I loved every moment of it. I wanted to soak in these moments. The jokes. The teasing comments. All over dinner orders. Jasper had even sent in his own Thai order, which had prompted me to do the same. If we had to postpone our date again, we’d make it up to each other. We always did.

Still, it made me smile as I added my requests, before I ducked myself into the shower proper. After I’d cleaned up and blown my hair dry, I got dressed in comfortable clothes. The dance capris and an oversized t-shirt were ideal.

Socks were my concession to the rough floors downstairs. I had no plans to go out. The sitting room was empty as I made my way through it and out the door.

More changes were taking place throughout the upstairs. We’d converted Milo’s old room and added more space to it so when he came with Lainey and the other guys, they had their own space. Theo needed his space too, but the guys had finished that before Theo arrived to stay. The last was a storage room and armory that was locked and coded.

Every change converted the place into a home. Liam still had his apartment. He had several properties. So did I, but I didn’t care about them so much. Mickey had his string of safe houses, and bolt holes he could use when he was moving abused women and children into safety.

But the clubhouse had become our real home. I was riding those warm thoughts as I descended the stairs and headed for the kitchen. I needed something to eat and it would be a few hours before dinner. If we had the frozen pizzas, I could put one of those in the oven. The guys teased me, but ever since I’d discovered a deep fondness for the frozen pizzas, they were always in stock.

Theo rose as I crossed the living area and I slowed. He had a game controller in hand and sported a pair of headphones. “Hey, she’s here, so I’m going to take a break.” He paused for a moment, then snorted. “I’ll be back in a few, don’t start without me.” Then he pulled the headset off.

“Levi?” It was a guess, but he and Bodhi’s younger brother had formed a bond long before we found them. The game system had arrived along with instructions for the accounts Bodhi had set up for the boys. It had amused me, we had a game system of our own, but the guys hadn’t wasted any time setting this up for Theo, and he’d been in front of it as often as he could.

“Yes,” he said, his mouth tightening and his chin raising. Oh, he expected me to tell him off or something.

“Cool,” I said, then motioned to the kitchen. “I’m going to get some lunch. Hungry?”

I wasn’t going to discipline him. That wasn’t what he needed from me. Honestly, I wasn’t at all sure what he needed yet, or what I did for that matter. He was my brother. A younger one. Like me, he’d been kept in the dark about the existence of anyone else, even our father. A man he was far better off not knowing and one I wished that I had never met.

“I could eat,” Theo said as he followed me. Like Milo, Theo was tall. At the rate he was growing, I had a feeling he’d be as tall as Vaughn. He was already a quarter of an inch taller than Freddie. It was sometimes a challenge to remember he was only fourteen. Just barely fourteen at that.

Once in the kitchen, I poked around in the freezer and found a nice stash of my favorites. “Pepperoni okay? Or do you want Hamburger? Or Sausage?” I held up each of the boxes one at time. “There’s also a little bit of everything, which is my favorite.”

“Pepperoni,” Theo said after a beat. “Also, can’t you get pizza delivered?”

“Yes. But it’s not the same.” I carried the two boxes over to the stove before I started it to get it preheating.

“Yeah,” Theo said slowly. “I can tell. Those are flat and kind of disc like and not at all hot, steamy and fluffy like the other stuff.” It was impossible to miss the sarcasm underlining every word.

“You don’t have to eat one,” I said as I stripped mine out of the plastic and set it on the cookie sheet.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it, but that’s… that’s weird to eat that when you could just order one.”

“I like them.” I stripped his out of the plastic and set it up too. Now I just had to wait for the oven to beep that the preheat was done. This was one of my favorite parts. Kellan had been teaching me to cook, but I’d mastered this and I liked being able to fix them myself.

He wore a troubled expression when I glanced over at him. As if suddenly aware of my scrutiny, he folded his arms. “Sorry.”

“For what?” I glanced at the temperature on the oven before focusing on Theo again.

“For—” He hesitated. “I don’t know. I guess I sounded rude. So, sorry.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?” Theo repeated.

“Yep,” I told him. “Okay. You thought you were rude, you said sorry, and I’m okay with it. All good.”

The oven beeped and I happily twisted to slide the pizzas in to heat and then set the timer. It was a silly bit of accomplishment for me, but I did like that I could do it. Theo watched me with a frown like he couldn’t figure me out. Rather than walk over to the table, I bounced up to sit on the counter. His scrutiny might be a bit uncomfortable, but like his earlier puzzlement, it didn’t bother me.

But after a bit of a prolonged silence, I canted my head. “Is something wrong?” Because he had Levi waiting out there for his game and he was just standing here.

“No,” he said quickly. Almost too quickly. Then he frowned. “Why are you hard to talk to?”

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