Page 8 of Bottoms
The mood in the room had simmered down from its point of nearly overflowing. Nik settled into his section of the couch, unwrapping a burger of his own. He seemed just as thrilled as I was to be eating, but we wouldn’t be able to find her unless we remembered to eat and sleep. After our third day of nonstop searching the city, Mike insisted we all needed an evening in the medical room.
The door to the lounge didn’t open, but Mike walked in from the hallway with two boxes of multicolored lights in his hand. He had a taunting smirk on his lips when he looked at me.
“Well, aren’t you all just a sorry sack of shit,” Mike chuckled before throwing the boxes of lights at me.
“Mike, I am not in the mood,” I started, my tone firm.
“You know,” Mike said, leaning against the wall casually, ignoring me. “I remember standing against the wall while you, Colten, and Fynn first came up with the insane idea to share a wife. I couldn’t imagine finding one girl that would not only agree to that sort of affair but fit with you boys.” He paused. Looking around at the three of us here on the couch, we weren’t even the same group, let alone little boys.
But somehow, Nessa had fallen into our lives, and I knew she was perfect from the very first moment. At first, it had made me angry to have found someone so perfect that looked at me with nothing but hate and fear in her eyes. She gave me the same look whenever she suspected we were involved in illegal activity. The look she would give us when she realized that we are what she always feared us to be.
If we ever get to look into her eyes again.
“We think Fynn has her,” I sighed. Mike knew Fynn as well as he knew the rest of us. Fynn was, after all, a founding member of the Arsenal.
Nik was the only one who didn’t know Fynn personally. He only knew the stories, and they were enough to make anyone squirm. Knowing Fynn in person made every story that much worse. Silence stretched out in the room like we were all waiting under bated breath for him to appear. If only it was truly that simple to get ahold of him.
“I think we should put the lights on the tree,” Nik said, getting to his feet and breaking the tension.
Putting lights on a real tree was a more complicated challenge than I thought. The first strand missed a large patch on one of the sides. So for the next strand, we tried to just fill that spot, which ended up with too many lights packed into one place. We needed to get the ornaments on the tree, and everything would look balanced.
Colten pulled the first boxed ornament out of the bag. His grip on it was firm, but his fingers moved delicately to open it and pull out the first ornament destined for the first Christmas tree allowed in Bottoms.
It was a snowman in the shape of a dick.
“No,” I said. “Nope.” I shook my head and looked at the horrific glass piece.
“Are they all like that?” Nik said, lunging for one of the bags. His hands fumbled, opening the box, and for a moment, I felt my heart plummet when it started free-falling towards the ground. Nik scooped it up midair, repositioning it in his grasp.
“Be careful,” I practically growled.
He opened the box, and his eyes lit up before he pulled an ornament in the shape of a camera out of the box.
“I think this one is for you,” Nik said, placing it back into the box before offering it to me.
My fingers traced the thin metal detail work on the otherwise blown glass ornament. Uninhibited memories of Nessa filled my mind while the husky sound of her voice echoed in my memories.
“You can always send him pictures, too.”
I set the box on the table before looking up. There were five bags, each full of ornaments. There had to be at least twenty boxes for us to open. Colten picked the next one, pulling out a shirtless merman with dark hair.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” I grumbled, feeling relief that maybe these ornaments were just random decorations that amused her.
“Halloween?” Nik suggested after he opened two more boxes and held up more mostly naked mermen. One was wearing a tie, and the other had a white lab coat partially covering his abs and a stethoscope around its neck.
Memories from Halloween flooded my mind, feeling like sharp, aching stabs of arousal and desperate longing. The scared look on her face in my office while she demanded a change in our terms. Her insistence on being open and available to other men had made my blood boil. After she explained her reasoning, Colten and I agreed to her new terms.
No one would get close enough to take her but us. Or so we had thought.
I looked over as Nik opened another ornament box. This one was a plane. My fingers reached for it, and Nik handed it over quickly. My skin traced the tiny black bumps that made up the windows of the design. At the same time, my mind showed me the scene someone would have seen had they been able to look through the windows of my private plane on our trip up to her childhood home for Thanksgiving.
“Ican’tbelieveyouhave your own private plane,” Nessa had said, looking around in awe. Really, the plane wasn’t much. I could fit a handful of people up front, and then there was a queen-sized bed in the back with a restroom.
“I hate traffic,” I shrugged.
I watched her hurry to sit in one of the oversized chairs, buckling herself in before folding her hands in her lap like she was riding in a car. She made me smile and laugh at her day-to-day quirks. I could sit for hours watching her and had often sat at my desk and watched her GPS location move around Bottoms as she went about her typical day.
Since Halloween, I had been talking to Hannah about transitioning into more of an executive role for Tops. So far, it had been going well. It gave Hannah something to do other than fuck five of my security members during the days. They were always quick to point at Nessa whenever I opened my mouth to voice concerns over their arrangement.
