Page 36 of Killian
Ellie
Killian heldmy hand in his grasp the entire ride to his house. I didn’t read anything into it, but it felt so damn nice. Just having someone there for support. It had been a really long time since I’d had that.
Bri greeted us when we walked in. She was curled up in a ball on the couch. Her wave was timid, but I was simply thankful she was safe. When your life was thrown into the upheaval mine had been, the little things were what mattered most.
“What’s wrong?” I moved in front of her, kneeling on the carpet.
Food would need to wait. I had bigger fish to fry.
“Just everything, Ellie,” she poured out. “How did all of this get so fucked up?”
I shrugged. “That I don’t know, but I think it’s been going on longer than anyone realized. It’s too much to have it all coming at once.”
“You think?”
“Only thing I can come up with. Rolled it around my head a million times, and I don’t think it started when I came and got you that night. I could totally be talking out of my ass, but it’s something I want to figure out.”
“Yeah. Your house.” A tear welled in her eye. “I brought you into a mess that I didn’t even know was happening. You should totally unfriend me.”
“No tears. Shit happens, Bri. The only thing that meant anything in that house was you. Everything else can be replaced.” There were a few things that couldn’t, but Bri was the important one. “You coming out of that breathing was all I needed.”
She sat up and wrapped me in her arms, her body softly shaking. I hated that whoever was screwing with us had made Bri cry. She felt unsafe. That just wasn’t right.
A gun. I was going out tomorrow and getting a gun. End of discussion.
She pulled back. “I can’t keep staying here, Ellie. I appreciate that Killian has let me, but I need my own space. You two are great together, and I’m not good at being the third wheel,” she rambled. “Where could I go for that? What could I do? My parents’ house? I don’t want any bullets in them. I don’t know what to do. Everything I touch falls apart, it seems. Where can I go where someone else won’t get hurt? What curse has hexed me?”
“Let’s worry about that tomorrow. This just happened yesterday. We need a breather.”
“You need a breather,” she fired back. “I’ve been sitting here all day trying to come up with a plan, but nothing I come up with works.”
“Like I said. We’ll deal with it in the morning.”
Pots clunking in the kitchen had me turning to it.
Killian was cooking. For me. Big, strong alpha male Killian was cooking. I had no idea he cooked. This was a surprise. I thought maybe he’d go out with a bow and shoot his dinner or something, but never actually cook. Crazy.
Turning back to my friend, she had a small smile playing on her lips. “He’s a good guy, Ellie,” she whispered, “You should give him a shot.”
I wanted to laugh but held it back. “Right. The notorious playboy is going to become a one-woman kind of man, all for me. That’s virtually impossible. No man changes for a woman.”
“Just because he was that way in the past, doesn’t mean he’ll be it today.”
“Bullshit. You watch too much Dr. Phil.”
She smiled as we both said, “Past behavior predicts future behavior,” then burst out in a fit of giggles.
“We watch too much television.”
It was nice to see the smile on Bri’s face. That was what I wanted for her. A lifetime of this. Happiness.
“Yeah. But those housewives. Those take the cake.” We had a few guilty obsessions, and this was one. It was horrible because we didn’t like watching it on television. We’d rather stream it so we could binge-watch.
There were a couple of them, and we’d just watched the reunion show and got all the gossip from there. It made it a very quick season.
“Yeah. Do you want to eat whatever macho man in there is bangin’ around cookin’?”
Bri smiled once again. She liked the idea of us together. That was something else to figure out when I wasn’t exhausted and hungry. “Do you think he went out and cut up a pig or something?”
