Page 41 of Love Not Qualified

For some reason, I needed to know.

“If I wasn’t here, would you have accepted the job?” The unnatural sensation in my bones spoke for me.

Haelyn looked from side to side, her lips parting and even after she shook her head, I waited for her words before allowing myself to release a relieved breath. “No. I wouldn’t have.”

FOURTEEN

TRISTAN

“Where is she?” I asked, my mouth dry as soon as I stepped foot in my childhood house in New York.

Last night, I dropped in my bed and didn’t wake up until Kai called insistently. I knew he wouldn’t bother me unless it was something serious, so I jolted awake at five a.m. and clutched the phone tight to my ear as I answered.

When he told me Lacey, our little sister, wasn’t feeling well, I didn’t waste another second and let Ryker know I was going to leave, well aware he didn’t like the monthly trips I took to New York. However, he opened his eyes with the same urgency I had and we flew here together.

“Relax.” Kai stretched a hand forward. “She’s sleeping. Ray is with her.”

“Did the doctor see her?” Ryker asked, his palms buried deep into the front pockets of his low jeans.

Kai nodded, then guided us to the dining table. “He said, from what I described to him, that it’s nothing to be concerned about. He’ll visit tomorrow morning when she wakes up.”

I sighed in relief and sat down in my usual chair, Ryker right next to me. Kai didn’t sit but clutched the wooden edge of his chair between his fingers, glancing at the two of us.

“I’ll go get my wife and then we’ll come down to eat,” he announced, his chest rising with the deep breath he took.

Kai turned and took the stairs, leaving me alone with Ryker. I let my shoulders touch the chair and allowed myself to breathe a little bit lighter.

When my brothers and I were little, we’d get sick so easily that Dad and Mom never got a rest day until we were grown up. If I wasn’t sick, Kai was and if he wasn’t, Kiaran would be, and Ryker…

Lacey getting sick was an entirely new thing. Maybe it was our fault, because when Mom had her, all of us were on her heels, making sure she was dressed enough and she had everything she needed. I sometimes missed the times when she was just a baby and I would put her to sleep by rocking her little body in my arms.

Now she was a teenager, as she liked to call herself and we only got to watch as she grew at a high speed. Until last year, she used to spend a couple of months with each one of us, but after Dad died, we all agreed that it’d do her good to have a stable place to live in.

I threaded a hand through my hair. “I could use a drink,” I said, more for myself than to Ryker.

He barely huffed, and I lingered on my seat for a few more seconds, hoping he was going to stop me. Instead, he took his phone out and started typing faster than he talked. If that was the way he communicated, so be it.

I made my way to Kai’s home office where he kept the alcohol and found a few bottles of whiskey, but no rum. My nose scrunched. I didn’t even know how he managed to drink that liquid, it was my least favorite drink, but desperate times called desperate measures. Right?

You were supposed to quit.

Ignoring the stupid voice in my head, I grabbed a glass and poured myself some poison, already feeling the burn in my throat. The clear liquid moved along with the circular motions of my hand as I decided whether I should drink it or not.

Just this once. It’s just a glass.

I shoved it down my throat in one go, my eyes flaring with tears at the hot sensation coursing my neck.

Being in this house without my father’s presence was something I couldn’t digest with a clear mind. Everyone got over it so quickly that I was starting to ask myself what the secret was. It’d only been six months and this place was as cold and unwelcoming as ever. If it wasn’t for the regular Sunday gatherings every month and my family here, I would’ve never stepped foot inside this house again.

Too bad I didn’t really have a choice.

Before I knew it, I was at the table with everyone except Kiaran—who couldn’t make it on such short notice all the way from Costa Rica—and Lacey, already a few glasses in. I had lost count.

They laughed and ate, the forks clinking on the plates as I went deeper and deeper into my own head.

I shouldn’t have drank tonight. Not only because I promised to myself I wouldn’t have a drop of alcohol ever again, but because my thoughts ran back to Haelyn.

When I first asked her to come for an interview it was because I was curious about how she looked, and when I decided to give her a trial period, it was because I knew how much she wanted the job.

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