Gradually, with each word uttered, my eyes widened until I was pretty fucking sure I couldn't look more stunned if I tried.
Link snickered at me. "Cat got your tongue?"
"No, but it should have yours," Rex ground out, glaring at Link. "Where the fuck is your head at talking to him that way?"
Link shrugged. "You try dealing with a call at four AM from someone's Old Lady..."
"What?" I ground out, my entire body tensing at what Link was inferring. "My Keira called you?"
Link let the treadmill slow down, and as it whined to a halt, he grabbed his water and took a deep sip. All the while, he milked the fucking attention until I wanted to rip off his goddamn head.
"Funny how she's your Keira when—"
Rex was suddenly there, his hand on my shoulder, holding me back. "You know not to fuck around with Old Ladies, Link," he grated out, shooting me a concerned glance.
"Fucking around with them?" Link frowned. "Fuck you, Rex. She was upset."
"Why was she?"
"Apparently over something she didn't feel comfortable talking about with you." He sniffed. "What she told me in confidence can't be repeated."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Are you looking to have your ass kicked?"
"You could fucking try," Link snapped. He folded his arms across his chest, his sweat-flecked biceps bunching as he tensed them. "Get your head out of your ass, man. That's all I'm saying."
"You have no right to make any opinion about what I do."
"I have every right when Keira's the one calling me."
My gut churned at that. Why would Keira call another brother? I'd never realized they were close. Hell, Keira had never spent all that much time here. None of the Old Ladies did. Mostly because of the sweetbutts...
Okay, that was the only reason.
I didn't really blame them. As great as it was for the brothers to have pussy on tap, and to have a walking strip show wherever we went, for the Old Ladies, it wasn't exactly a fun time, was it?
I knew they had their own get-togethers. Parties or some such that they held every week at their homes, but Link wouldn't have been invited, would he? The entire point was to be in a brother-free zone, wasn't it?
"I can see I got your mind ticking over," he said dryly, "but as always, Storm, you don't see the trees for the fucking woods."
Rex huffed. "It's the other way around."
Link shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Either way, it's right. He's focusing on the fact that she called me, that I'm the one she spoke with, not the fact she was crying."
"Mostly because you threw it down like a goddamn gauntlet to make him jealous, dumb fuck." Rex squeezed my arm. "What's going on with you, Storm?"
"Nothing."
Rex snorted. "Keira moved out two months ago for a time out. You've been fucking everything that moved ever since."
"You'd better not have fucking told Keira that," I snarled at Link, concerned over what my brother had told my Old Lady when everything that went down on the compound was sacrosanct.
"Like she doesn't already know." He arched a brow at me. "In fact, I think she might be getting some action of her own. Last time I visited her and Cyan, she was talking about a date."
My blood surged in my veins until I could hear my pulse throbbing in my ears.
Keira was fucking dating?
What had started out as a break, just some time to get our heads together, had morphed into something else.
Something that had me fearing there'd be no getting back together. No resolving our differences.
Christ.
What the hell had we done?
We should never have taken a break, never put distance between us. How the fuck could we fix things if she was in our family house and I was staying here at the compound?
I wasn't ashamed to admit that I felt shaky. Shaky as fuck. For a moment, Rex was the only thing keeping me upright, and I knew he knew it because he muttered, "It's okay, bud. You can still fix things."
My jaw clenched. "How can I if she's fucking someone else?"
"You've been fucking all the sweetbutts," Link pointed out, ever goddamn helpful. "Do they matter to you?"
"Keira isn't like me," I snarled at him. "She doesn't sleep around unless it matters."
"Maybe she changed." He shrugged. "You can't condemn her when you've done much worse."
While he was right, I wanted to.
How fucking dare she be dating some fucker when she was mine?
Like he felt the aggression surge inside me, Rex put both his hands on my shoulders and ground out, "Calm the fuck down, Storm. Don't do anything rash. You make another mistake, and it's all it will take for this break to become permanent."
Because he was right, I backed off, backed down. But I still felt like I was torn between puking and ripping off either Link's head or the head of the guy Keira was seeing.
I pulled back and staggered toward the wall so I could lean against it. As the bare brick cut into my skin, I let it ground me. For a while, I stared ahead, not really looking at anything, not even thinking all that much.
Thinking hurt.
Had I lost Keira?
Forever?
I scrubbed a hand over my face, and in that second, Link was there. Pushing his fucking luck as per goddamn usual.
"Link," Rex warned, but the faint clank of the weights told me he’d gone back to working out.
"What?" he sniped, just on the border between insolence and respect for Rex's station. "I'm telling him to pull his head out of his ass. We should have done it a while ago."
With his attention split, I let it rip. A single punch let some of my aggression flow free and had Link coughing up his guts as he cradled his stomach. I didn't surge forward, though, didn't flow into a fight. I'd just needed to pay the SOB back for telling me this shit the way he had.
Holding his belly, Link glowered at me, and the fact he didn't come after me and that Rex didn't stop what he was doing, told me they knew I wasn't going to take this further.
I was well within my rights to. A brother knew not to fuck with another man's Old Lady. He should've known not to get in between them too, but Link couldn’t keep his nose out of shit.
"Why was she upset?"
"Some kid in Cyan's class is picking on her."
My eyes flared wide. "She's being bullied?" I blurted out. Why the fuck hadn't Keira told me that?
"Don't get your panties in a twist," Link grumbled.
"No? My woman calls you about my kid being bullied, and you don't think I should be pissed off?"
"He has a point," Rex said dryly.
"You're so helpful," Link grumbled, wincing as he straightened up. Rubbing his gut, he glared at me as he said, "They weren't tears of sadness. They were angry tears."
Either way, they were tears. My woman was crying. And she didn't think she could come to me.
More than anything, that made me feel surer than ever that we were over.
If she couldn't share her sadness, and wouldn't share her anger, then what the fuck were we?
Nothing.
That's what.