Page 5 of Bells

“Nice.” Church gave me a sour look. “Prick. For the record, I’d be bending you over, Sinclair, not the other way around.”

“Fight you for it,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.

“We doing a dick measuring contest because we all know mine is the biggest.” Stitches chortled, grabbing his junk through his jeans.

“All lies,” Ashes called out as he approached, his face damp with sweat and smudged with soot. “I have the biggest cockandthe best.”

I snorted at him as Church and Stitches laughed loudly.

“What?” Ashes blinked innocently at us.

To be fair, we all had big cocks, but Ashes had a little something the rest of us didn’t. His sanity. Or at least some of it. He was the only one of us, despite his illnesses, who could keep his shit together most days. I wasn’t sure how he managed, but he did. I’d never tell him how strong I thought he was though, especially after everything he’d been through in his life. The last thing I needed was him bringing the compliment out though and smacking me in the face with it whenever we were having this conversation. A conversation which we tended to have a lot.

Maybe it was a guy thing.

Or maybe it was anusthing.

Didn’t matter. We were family and loved each other. Nothing past that mattered.

“You guys know it’s true,” Ashes continued, looking back to his fire, a smile on his face.

I glanced at Church who was watching him, a smirk on his lips.

“Yeah. You’re right. Your dick is the biggest,” Stitches said, winking at me.

We liked to keep Ashes in good spirits, especially when he was riding his high from his flames.

I threw my arm around Ashes’s shoulders and watched the fire with him in silence. Many minutes later, I finally spoke.

“Are you OK?” I murmured as Church and Stitches smoked more weed behind us and talked shit to one another. They were brothers. Adopted brothers. Church’s old man adopted Stitches when we were kids to keep Church from going completely insane. I was pretty sure Everett, Church’s father, knew exactly what Stitches was to Church. They were both the devil on one another’s shoulders. Sometimes I wondered which one was worse, but at the end of the day, I knew Church held that trophy. He lacked warmth and compassion when it came to those outside our circle.

“Yeah, man. Are you?” Ashes didn’t look away from his flames as they licked the night sky.

“Trying to be.”

“Aren’t we all,” he muttered. “And Isabella? How is that going? For real. No bullshit.”

“I like her. A lot,” I admitted, looking at him. “She makes me feel. . . different. But she also pisses me off. Is that love?” I let my arm fall away from his shoulders.

He turned to me and cocked his head, his eyes sparkling in the dancing light of the flames. “I’ve never been in love before, but that can’t be hate, right? Especially if it makes you feel something. . . good.”

“Right. Can’t be,” I said softly, looking back to the fire.

I swallowed hard.

I couldn’t deny I felt something for Isabella. It excited and terrified me. It made me feel almost human. My feelings were always hard to sort through, but I felt like maybe I was getting it right with her. That maybe this was how it was supposed to feel.

When I was a kid, my parents went through a nasty divorce after years of my old man abusing my ma. He’d always been good to me until the day he took me from her and tried to kill me before turning the gun on himself. I watched from the floor in a puddle of my own blood, a bullet wound to my chest, as he blew his brains out after calling my mom so she could listen as we exited the world together.

I had trust issues. I had personality issues. I hated getting close to anyone. All the doctors said I struggled with PTSD. That I’d developed mental issues from what I’d been through. Behavior problems. Anger issues. Everything that could go wrong with a kid happened to me.

My mom sent me off here, to Chapel Crest, after I scared her and her new husband too much.

All I had were my best friends. The watchers.

I looked around at my family, taking in their faces.

Each looked troubled in their own way, but it was our norm.

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