Page 14 of Brody
Maybe even forever.
I was happy for him. I was happy for both of them. While I hadn’t known Trent that long, it was obvious that he’d been lonely before, and I knew for certain that Magnus had been itching to find a companion. The number of times I’d seen him make a fool of himself trying to talk to an attractive man was proof enough of that. If they found that companionship with each other, then I wished them all the luck and would welcome Trent into the life we were building with open arms.
Yet, that didn’t stop the pinpricks of jealousy that assaulted me every time I saw them together. Unlike Magnus, I’d never really sought a long-term companion before. I already had him and Creed, my pseudo-brothers, along with some biological family scattered around the country. Whenever I needed attention of a less platonic type, there were places I could go to have thatparticular urge satiated. So, a romantic partner hadn’t been on the top of my priority list.
Or even on the list at all, if I was honest.
Seeing Magnus and Trent now, however, made me rethink this stance. Despite everything happening, Magnus had smiled more in the last few weeks than he had in the previous year, and Trent was definitely to thank for that.
The two of them made a romantic relationship look easy, and I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like if I found something like that for myself.
Not that I even knew where to start looking. I had a lot on my plate right now, building our home and dealing with fallout from the body we’d found. Plus, options in such a small mountain town were limited.
Once again, I pushed these feelings down to deal with them later. It had become such a habit that I didn’t even need to think about it as I put on a neutral expression and stepped out onto the porch.
Magnus and Trent immediately leaned away from each other, though Trent didn’t move from his spot on the arm of Magnus’s chair.
“Anything wrong?” Magnus asked. His hand casually rested on Trent’s thigh.
I sat down in my own chair heavier than I intended.
“Not wrong, but… things with Ellis are more complicated than I expected.”
Magnus—the annoying bastard—just smirked at me. “Oh, dropping a tree on a man, causing him to lose all his memories, and then taking him home with you isn’t a straightforward situation? I’m shocked.”
Snatching up an empty beer can that had been sitting by my chair, I tossed it at Magnus’s head. “Shut up. No one asked you for your opinion.”
Magnus responded by flipping me the middle finger with the hand that wasn’t glued to his boyfriend’s leg.
Eventually, after several minutes of childish bickering, I explained about the memory that Ellis had regained and his subsequent panic attack.
After I’d finished, the three of us sat in silence for a few moments. Onyx and Indigo had rejoined us on the porch and taken their usual place asleep at our feet. Their heavy breathing punctuated the night air, joining the hum of insects and the whispering of the wind in a natural symphony.
“So,” Trent eventually spoke up, breaking the hush that had fallen over us. “I hate to bring it up, but I have to ask. Do you think he killed someone?”
I longed to crack open another beer, but the cooler I kept on the porch was empty and I didn’t feel like going all the way back into the house to get one. Instead, I simply laced my fingers together over my stomach and leaned back as far as I could in my chair.
“I don’t know. His memory might not be accurate, and even if it is, there aren’t a lot of details to go off of. Burying someone isn’t the same as killing someone.”
“Plus, even if he did kill someone…” Magnus shrugged. “Well, we know from personal experience that there are a lot of reasons to take a life. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.”
“But we also can’t assume he’s innocent, either,” I added, glancing back at the house where Ellis slept upstairs. “For now, I’m just going to let him rest. We’ll come up with a better plan tomorrow. All we can do is take it one day at a time.”
The next day,bright and early, we were interrupted by an unexpected delivery. Before Ellis had even woken up, and I was still drinking my first cup of coffee, a man showed up on our doorstep from Rynkirk’s police department to drop of what remained of Ellis’s belongings. They’d kept the destroyed tent and other various supplies to try and figure out Ellis’s identity, but when nothing was forthcoming, they were apparently legally required to hand the items over.
I wouldn’t have minded, except that the delivery came without warning, and the man making the delivery barely waited for confirmation that Ellis was here before dropping everything on my front porch and immediately leaving without another word.
Granted, a bunch of mostly broken items were barely worth the effort of delivering, so I could understand the man’s frustration, but now I was left with a pile of useless junk blocking my front door.
Or maybe not so useless after all.
Magnus and Trent were still over at Magnus’s house—and I was not going to interrupt them—so I was left to clear off my porchby myself. As I was sorting through the heap, separating the items that were broken beyond repair from the ones that could be salvaged, an idea occurred to me.
At almost the exact same moment, the front door opened behind me.
“What’s all this?” Ellis asked as he stood in the doorframe. Sleep still clung to his eyes, and his curly hair was adorably rumpled. My clothes were a little too big for him and my shirt had slid to the side to expose one shoulder. The scene he created was achingly domestic, and a rush of heat flooded my skin. I quickly turned away, hiding my undoubtedly red face and cursing my pale complexion that showed off the slightest change in color.
“It’s, um… the police came by and dropped off your stuff.”
