Weylyn’s POV

I hated seeing my brother so upset. It had been the two of us against the world every since Callum left- got taken away. He had been the one to step up for us when Lily refused to. He learned to cook and even though Callum will always be better at it than him it was the thought that counted. He figured out how to do laundry, helped with homework even though we were in the same grade and he barely knew what he was doing.

It made me feel guilty. We were the same age yet he was always the one who did all the hard work. When Rowan started coming around the house he was the one that took the beatings and the yelling from Lily when she thought he had been fighting at school again but that’s when I stepped up.

I helped clean his wounds and dealt with the panic attacks that sometimes followed. I listened to rants about how unfair Lily was being when she refused to let him watch TV after the school called her about something we’d done. I kept him calm in arguments with teachers or mom when she bothered to show her face.

I don’t know if it was exactly equal but it was something I could do for him and I was happy to do it.

Now I sat in my chair beside Liam watching him storm up the stairs. I wanted nothing more than to follow him but I also knew that he needed to be by himself for a little bit so I stayed put.

“Should we go check on him,” Callum asked after a few minutes of tense silence.

“He won’t want to see anyone,” I said, trying to make my voice as firm as Axel’s but it came out with a slight tremor. Callum frowned at that.

“I’m sorry that we upset him,” Andrew said with his own frown as he shot me a guilty look. “It truly wasn’t our intention.”

“Seemed like it was. You were picking on him.”

“He was picking on us too,” Andrew said. “We just gave him back everything he gave us.”

“He’s a child,” I said with a glare that I rarely used. I didn’t like being mean, nothing good every came out of it but they started it this time. “You are the adults. You’re supposed to be mature about a child acting out, not stoup to their level. It’s very unbecoming of you.”

“You’re right. We should have done better.” I appreciated the apology but it didn’t make me feel any better.

“I’m not the one you did it to. Your apology should be going to him.”

“And it will,” Callum said, his frown still in place. “When we have breakfast tomorrow I’ll make it better.”

“Good luck with that. He won’t want to speak to any of you.”

“Maybe I can change that in the morning. Does he still like pancakes?” I couldn’t help but smile. It was something we used to do at home. Callum would try to correct Axel on something, Axel would make him mad, Callum would blow up, Axel would storm off, Callum would make chocolate chip pancakes the next morning and would apologizes, and we would go about the day like the day before never happened.

“I doubt that will ever change.”

“Well for now I’ll set him a plate aside in case he comes down later,” Ryder said as he did just that. “But the rest of us should eat before it gets cold.”

Dinner was quiet considering all that happened a few minutes ago until Andrew was finished and looked up to me.

“How are you adjusting here? Do you like it?” I wanted to hate this man. He had upset my brother in less than 15 minutes of meeting him and that just didn’t sit right with me.

“It’s fine,” I said with a shrug.

“Just fine?”

“Well it was better before you got here.” To my surprise he smiled.

“I swear you are both so much like Callum it hurts.” 

“Getting flash backs over there,” Callum teased as he took in my confused face. “This was all pretty much an exact replica of the first time I met Andrew too. I guess we should have seen it coming. I had just sat down for my first session, he asked that same question, I gave that same answer, he started asking too many questions I wasn’t ready to answer, and then I stormed out.”

“It’s uncanny,” Andrew said as he stared at me. “If you could pick one thing to make this place feel more like home would you pick?”

“I don’t want this place to feel like home.” Home wasn’t a good place. It was lonely, cold, uncertain, and painful. Homes shouldn’t feel like that and I’ll be damned if this place is anything like that home.

Andrew frowned at my answer but didn’t ask anything else as he turned his attention to Bram, who was watching everything as if he were ready for a fight. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to get a new conversation started and the awkwardness in the room lessened but never went away completely.

Eventually Andrew left. I helped clean the kitchen, though Ryder said I didn’t need to, before going to hide away in my room for a while. I stayed there tucked in my bed with a book that Ryder had given me the day we went to their shop.

By the time I finished, it was well pasted time to go to sleep but every time I started to fall asleep I shot back awake and went to touch my brother for comfort but he wasn’t there. I hadn’t slept alone for 2 years and even before that we had several sleep overs, mostly on nights that Rowan was staying the night. Those had always been the worst nights.

Rowan had started coming into my room a few months after he started dating Lily seriously. It had started out as nothing. Just coming to check on me, talking with me for a bit before I dozed off, making sure I was comfortable. Before long he started rubbing a hand up my leg, across my chest, over my butt. It got worse after that.

I had told Axel one night when he woke up and heard me crying. I was all but hysterical or I would have never told him but the second he figured out what was happening he went bat shit. He picked a fight with Rowan in front of Lily and even though he never said why the look in Rowan’s eyes was enough for Axel to confirm the subject that I had danced around.

Rowan had beat him to a bloody pulp while Lily just stayed there watching the whole thing go down. She eventually got him to stop and we never talked about it again. Lily to her credit hadn’t let him anywhere near the house for months after that and even after that he wasn’t allowed over unless she was home. Any time Rowan started shit when she was home, she would distract him or straight up tell him to knock it off but the visits to my room didn’t stop.

That’s when Axel decided on nights Rowan was home, I wasn’t allowed to sleep in my own bed. It had worked and I’m thankful for it but it didn’t erase everything that had already happened.

I didn’t like sleeping alone anymore.

After hours of trying and failing asleep I went to the room across the hall. I didn’t knock before trying to open the door. It didn’t budge and Axel didn’t get up to open it. I tried to bite back the tears as I started back to my own room when I saw the flash of a TV being on down stairs.

I didn’t want to be alone and there was a small chance it was Liam, Ryder, or Callum, all of which were better than staying alone, so I went downstairs.

Jax was sitting in front of the TV, which was playing some show about meerkats. There was a glare on his face and his eyes were a little fogged over like he wasn’t fully watching the show in front of him. Jax was not my favorite of all of Callum’s husbands. He seemed mean and had the muscle to do some real damage.

I was about to turn and bolt back up the stairs and just deal with the no sleep when his eyes cut over to me. He gave a weak smile that I didn’t return. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he asked as he made room for me on the couch. I shook my head but came closer anyway. “Me either. Nightmares suck. Besides, the ass crack hours of night is only time they play Meerkat Manor anymore and I need to get caught up on my show.”

“You watch the discovery channel,” I asked as I glanced to the screen, still not sitting down.

“It’s about the only thing I watch,” he said with a small smile. “Jax can’t stand it so that makes it a bit more enjoyable.”

“You aren’t Jax?”

“Carter,” he said and thankfully didn’t seem annoyed at having to correct me. “Same thing just better really,” he said mostly to himself. “Do you want to sit? It’s better than being alone right?”

I hesitated. Axel didn’t like him and Axel was usually good at spotting assholes from a mile away, but Callum wouldn’t date someone like Rowan so maybe it was okay?

“Are you a pedophile,” I asked, taking a small step back, ready to bolt up the stairs in case I didn’t like the answer. 

His eyes shot open as he openly the stared at me in disbelief.

“I’m asexual. I don’t like sex with adults, let alone kids.” I sat down. There was plenty of room on the couch but I need the comfort of another person so I sat down beside him, a few inches between us just in case he was lying. Callum had always been a heavy sleeper but I was convinced if I yelled rape loud enough at least one of the other four people in this house would wake up.

“Do you like meerkats,” he asked after a while of us sitting in silence.

“They’re fine I guess. I don’t really know anything about them.” He hummed.

“Well I’ll have you know they happen to be one of the best animal. A cat, dog, rat thing that’s also a prey animal. Pretty cool right?” I shrugged because a cat, rat, dog, thing didn’t really seem like my cup of tea, I preferred my cats to be real cats.

“Any particular reason you’re up at this hour,” he asked after even more silence. I had been trying my best to completely ignore him but it seemed like I wasn’t going to get that lucky.

“Axel wouldn’t let me sleep in his room and I don’t like sleeping alone.”

“I’m not that fond of it anymore either,” he admitted with a frown. “I used to hate it though. All that touching wasn’t great for me.”

“You didn’t like being touched,” I asked with wide eyes. I didn’t like it either unless it was Axel and that was only because I knew his touch wouldn’t turn the way Rowan’s had. Maybe he was like me.

“I hated it,” Carter confirmed. “Jax’s dad used to be a real piece of shit. He beat us real bad, caused quite a few scars. Any time someone touched them I was scared they were going to beat us too. It took a lot of time before I got that idea out of my head.” So not like me then. I was happy he didn’t go through what I had but I was hoping someone would understand.

“Is that what the nightmare was about,” I asked before I had a chance to stop myself. “You don’t have to answer that."

“That’s what most of mine are about,” he admitted anyway. A little bit like me then.

“Do you think they’ll ever stop?”

“Andrew seems pretty convinced they won’t but they are few and far between at this point so I think he’s wrong. I used to have them almost every night but now it can go months without them so maybe I can make them stop and prove Andrew wrong for once. The meds help though. I don’t want to think about how often they would come if it weren’t for them.”

I think I liked Carter. He was no Ryder; that man was nice, he always spoke to me in a quiet tone, talked about books, never touched me the way Liam always touched my shoulder when we played videos games today, and seemed to have a constant bright light around him. But Carter was nice in his own way. He could have sent me away but he chose to let me stay. His voice was deep and would be scary if he was yelling but so far he hasn’t ever yelled at me. And he talked about meerkats rather than books but it was better than sitting in silence.

Carter talked just to fill the silence about any animal that popped up on the screen and his voice was soothing. As the hours went on my eye grew heavy and his voice never turned harsh.

My eyes fell shut as my head found his shoulder for a pillow. He stopped mid sentence and his head shifted to look down at me. I was too tired to be nervous about what he would do next. If he hit or touched me I worry about that then but he only huffed a small laugh before turning back to face the TV so I guess it was okay.

I fell asleep to the chirps of meerkats and the beat of Carter’s heart.