I pull Jessie onto my lap as Mikey places two bowls of popcorn on the coffee table in front of us before sitting beside us on the sofa. A few seconds later, Liam sits beside him and Jessie stretches her legs out across Mikey’s until her toes are almost touching Liam’s thigh, and he bends his head and kisses them softly, making her squirm and giggle The sound of her laughing is so fucking good to hear.
Mikey and Liam smile at her and she leans against my chest, her cheeks flushed pink. She looks up as Shane walks into the room and I wait for the change in her, for the tension to slip into her body, but it doesn’t. She stays relaxed, even as he reaches us and stands there with a frown on his face.
“No room for me then?” he asks with an arch of one eyebrow.
“You snooze, you lose, bro,” Liam laughs and Mikey grins up at him.
Shane, my grumpy big brother, who never takes a night off work to watch a movie with us, simply rolls his eyes before leaning down and kissing Jessie softly before taking a seat on the nearby armchair. It has been a week since he got back from his business trip and things finally seem back to normal around here. In fact, I have never seen my brothers happier.
“Hey, I meant to tell you, Con, I found out what kept blocking up the garbage disposal. It was a piece of Cyril’s ear,” Mikey laughs as he tosses some popcorn into his mouth.
Jessie looks between the two of us with an expression of horror on her face. “You put someone’s ear in the garbage disposal?”
“No, Angel,” I tell her, brushing her hair back from her face. “At least not up here in the apartment, anyway.”
“So who is Cyril?” she frowns as she looks between the four of us.
Shane flashes his eyebrows at me while Liam and Mikey glance at each other. The truth is none of us want us to think about Cyril and what happened to him.
“What is it? Who, or what, is Cyril?” she asks again, her voice going up a few octaves as she shifts on my lap.
“Cyril was a teddy bear,” I say with a sigh.
“A teddy bear?” She rolls her lips together as though she’s trying to stop herself from laughing. “Who did he belong to?”
I look at my brothers, and they stare back at me. “What?” Jessie says, the edge creeping into her voice as the four of us share uneasy glances.
“Cyril was a huge teddy bear that Conor bought for you the day you left with Alexei Ivanov,” Shane answers her question.
“Oh?” she says and I sigh inwardly as the change in her demeanor is instant.
“He was as big as you, Jessie,” Liam adds.
“What happened to him?” She turns to me, her eyes wide and brimming with tears.
There are a few second’s silence and I wonder who is going to answer because she is fucking killing me here.
“Conor tore him to pieces after you left and set him on fire. Most of him anyway,” Mikey eventually answers.
A single tear runs down her face and I brush it away with the pad of my thumb. I know that she still feels so much guilt for what happened that day, even though we all understand why she did what she did. And we have all forgiven her, but I don’t think she has forgiven herself.
That day when she left almost broke me. It almost broke all of us. It’s still too painful to think about, and it makes me feel sick whenever I do. It still stings like fuck. And now the memory of it is here in the room with the five of us, like someone who has gate-crashed our movie night. And while Jessie and I talked about her leaving during our drive back from Arizona, I’m pretty sure the rest of my brothers have avoided discussing it too much because it just fucking hurts. I see the pain in Jessie’s eyes too and wish I could take it away for her.
“I’m so sorry,” she says as a sob catches in her throat. “Cyril sounds lovely.”
“He wasn’t. He was the ugliest bear I’ve ever seen,” I tell her. “He deserved to die a terrible death.”
“Stop trying to make me feel better,” she sniffs. “I can’t believe you bought me a teddy bear.”
“It truly was fucking hideous, Jessie,” Mikey says as he takes her hand in his.
“I know you’re only being nice,” she says with a shake of her head. “I don’t know what I can do to make it up to all of you.”
We all sit in silence as the atmosphere in the room grows increasingly tense. Damn Cyril! It’s Shane who eventually breaks the tension as he stands and walks over to us. Cupping Jessie’s chin in his hand, he tilts her head so she can look up at him. “You want to be punished for leaving us, sweetheart? Will that make you feel better?” He narrows his eyes at her.
“Yes,” she breathes, taking me by surprise.
“If we do this, then we move on. No more guilt. No more feeling bad every time that day is mentioned, okay?”
“Okay,” she nods.
Shane licks his lips and then his eyes flicker to mine for a moment and I am left wondering what the hell he is cooking up in that devious mind of his. “Go to your room,” he nods toward the hallway. “We’ll be along in a little while, just as soon as we’ve figured out what your punishment is going to be,” he orders.
I release her from my embrace and she stands obediently, with her head slightly bowed. I’ve never wanted to do the whole punishment thing with her because what we have is about something much deeper than I’ve ever experienced before. But fuck me if seeing her submissive side doesn’t make me as hard as fucking iron.
“Okay,” she whispers before she heads out of the room, leaving Liam, Mikey and me to stare up at our oldest brother and wait for him to explain what kind of punishment he’s thinking about. The wicked glint in his eyes tells me it won’t be about punishment at all.
