Page 32 of Avalanche
The thought bursts through me with the weight of a mallet driving in a fence post, cracking like the avalanche that ripped that mountain out below us. He’d be an idiot not to marry her. To let the opportunity he’s been given slip through his fingers. An idiot.
“Shit man.” The words gust out of me on an exhale. “I’d marry you if that would work.”
I shake my head, huffing out a laugh of disbelief. Because I would, in a heartbeat. I might be straight as shit, but I can’t imagine a reality in which I’d let an empire like that escape my grasp. I press my palms into the carpet to stop my hands from shaking.
“Thanks?” Antoine blinks at me in surprise, lips curling as he fights a confused smile.
Liam narrows his eyes at me, like maybe he thinks I’m going to try and steal his boyfriend from him or something. Which, maybe I will.
“You’re not a chick, mate,” Liam bites out. There’s a bitterness in his voice that has my antagonistic intentions softening, the twisting discomfort of pity taking its place. “His lawyer said it has to be a woman.”
I look at Lily automatically. She’s leaning forward, elbows on her knees, her chin resting in the palms of her hands, fingers latticed over parted lips. She stares at the carpet, at my outstretched legs, at the shoes scattered in front of the door. At anything but us.
Later, I would think that maybe I should have looked at Matty. Matty, who has made no secret of his complete adoration for Lily since almost the day he met her. Matty, who hasn’t breathed a word since Antoine started talking.
“I can do it.” Lily’s answer is barely more than a thready breath, but it cuts through the waiting silence like a knife. She gives the floor a determined nod, then turns to face Antoine. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll marry you.”
Antoine stares at her, green eyes wide with surprise. When Antoine doesn’t reply, Lily flushes, wringing her hands in her lap.
“I mean, if that’s what you’re asking?” Her teeth catch her lower lip, her chest shuddering on a stuttered exhale. “I don’t… I’m not after your money or anything. I just thought?—”
Her rambling is cut short by Antoine nearly falling off the arm of the couch to get to her, hauling her against him in a burst of excited French. I catch a few of the words, the familiar mon dieu and merci and ma puce twining with a rush of others. I don’t have to understand him to hear the gratitude in his voice, the relief.
I don’t have to guess at the look Liam is shooting the pair of them either, sitting in the corner of the couch with a Lily-sized gap between him and Seth.
Jealousy.
I swallow, surprised to find that the feeling is my own, too. It hits me harder than I would have expected, a sharp, clawing sort of thing that has my shoulders bunching. It echoes against my earlier doubts, reminding me of the irritation I felt coming home to the smell of sex, of that sense of being outside something while Lily, Liam, Antoine and Matty exchanged love-sick smiles and knowing looks.
Someone makes a pained sound and I blink to awareness, the room sharpening around me. Matty has risen to his feet, his face contorted, blue eyes shining against reddened skin. He stares at Lily and Antoine for a long moment, looking like a man who has just watched everything he loves go up in flames. He stumbles back, big hands flying to his chest as if he can feel his heart ripping out.
“You… you can’t.”
The words sound so contorted, they’re almost inhuman. He shakes his head as the hands clutched to his chest clench into fists.
“You can’t.”
Every part of me tenses at the sound of those words. The look Matty gives Antoine is harsh and dangerous, full of raw, blind anger. There is no soft smile, no embarrassed grin.
Antoine must hear it too, must feel the threat at his back because he releases Lily, putting her behind him as he turns to face Matty.
Matty’s nostrils flare, lips quivering as he bares his teeth. I expect him to lunge, to attack, something. I pull my legs beneath me, ready to move to Antoine’s side, adrenaline rushing through me so fast it makes my head spin.
The couch creaks as Seth rises to stand, placing himself quietly between Matty and Antoine, between Matty and all of us. He’s taller than Matty, I realize. Bigger too, even though you wouldn’t know it by the gentle way he moves or the way he always seems to compress into someone smaller when he sits down. Like he’s afraid of taking up too much space.
Awareness flickers behind Matty’s blue eyes, reptilian instinct giving way to humanity. He blinks, color draining from his face as he draws in shallow, rasping breaths.
“You’re okay, man,” Seth tells him, but there is a hardness to his voice I’ve only ever heard once before. A warning. I remember what that warning looked like last time, the dented dry-wall and bloodied tiles of that bathroom. The cuts across the back of Seth’s knuckles. Tom’s broken face.
I rise to my feet, my body humming with the need to move, the need to do something.
“Shoes on, mate.” I push past Seth, knocking my fists against Matty’s chest as I bark the order up at him. I don’t think about how big he is. About the fact that I can feel him vibrating with anger beneath the palms of my hands. “Come on. Get your shoes on.”
I tilt my head to the pile of shoes in front of the door, then give him another push. He huffs, then yields beneath me, reluctant and slow. I guide him to the door, moving him like I would one of my sister’s horses. They’re big too, bigger than him. But even the unruliest of them will fall back if you approach them right. Keep your voice and body language steady. Act like you expect them to listen. And never, ever let them see your fear.
I shove my own boots on, socks bunching around my ankles, not bothering to lace them right. “We’re going for a walk,” I tell him, nudging one of his boots towards him. “Come on. I don’t have all day.”
His hands tremble as he pulls on one boot and then the other, fingers unable to tie the laces. I shove his coat at him. “Coat on,” I order, grabbing another coat from the pile. I think it’s Liam’s, but whatever. It fits me well enough.
