Joss

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I’d never seen so many beautiful people in one place in my entire life. Literally, not one of them was anything less than stunning looking, but each in their own way.

The Badd brothers were, easily, eight of the sexiest men I’d ever seen in one place. All the men were easily identified as brothers with their rich, thick, deep brown hair and, except for Xavier, they all had expressive mocha brown eyes. What a gene pool.

Luce, though… was the only one who made my heart pound. There was …something about him. I couldn’t identify it or place it, beyond raw physical attraction to a gorgeous man. Which in itself was unusual for me, as my life had not, over the past few years, lent itself to idle nonsense like crushes on guys. I’d been too wrapped up in survival to be bothered with guys. But Lucian? It was impossible not to be attracted to him. He gave off a quiet, mysterious, calm confidence. His eyes, whenever they landed on me, seemed to see into me, into my soul. I’d exchanged a handful of words with him, and knew literally nothing about him nor he about me, but I…

I felt like I knew him, somehow.

But this didn’t explain why I was in an industrial kitchen, standing at a massive grill, helping Lucian flip two dozen burger patties. Nor why I kept forgetting to breathe whenever Lucian got too close to me, when his thigh nudged mine, or his hip bumped mine, or his elbow brushed mine. Nor did it explain why I was so reluctant to leave, so eager to stay here in this bar and have this meal with this enormous gathering of people—these perfect strangers.

Lucian prodded a few of the patties with his spatula, and then glanced at me. “So. How’d you end up in the Passage?”

“I fell in. Didn’t see the edge.”

He frowned. “Right, but what were you doing on the docks in the first place?”

“Walking.”

Lucian laughed. “I thought I was terse, but wow.” He bumped me with his hip. “You’re taking uncommunicative to a new level.”

“I’m uncomfortable with personal questions.” I poked a patty with the tip of my spatula. “I have no idea how to tell whether these are done.”

Lucian’s eyebrow quirked up. “You’ve never made hamburgers before?”

How to admit to that without answering a lot of personal questions? I didn’t want him to see me as…well, as what I was—a homeless orphan.

I just shrugged. “I don’t cook a lot.”

He nodded. “Fair enough, I suppose. Well, we’re going for a nice medium. Take your flipper and poke a little hole in the burger with the corner of it, pry the hole open, and see what color it is in the middle.”

I frowned at him. “Flipper?”

He lifted his…what I’d been thinking of as a spatula. “This. It’s a flipper.”

“I thought it was a spatula.”

Xavier, at the deep fryers, reached over to an open-sided metal shelving unit, grabbed and held up three different utensils. “The word ‘spatula’ is, in fact, an umbrella category for a whole wide array of kitchen utensils. It is not incorrect to call that device you’re holding a spatula, but it is, more accurately, a flipper or turner.” He held up the thing you’d use to scrape the last of the pancake batter out of a bowl. “This is also a spatula, but it is correctly termed a scraper.” He held up a slotted, wide-bladed…um, thing. “This is also spatula. But they each have different specific names and uses.”

That eyebrow of Lucian’s arched yet again— I was noticing he could communicate a wide variety of emotions with just that one eyebrow. “Thank you, Xavier, for that highly informative breakdown on spatulas.”

“You’re welcome.” Xavier seemed to have completely missed his brother’s searing sarcasm.

I gripped my…utensil, and followed Lucian’s instructions. “So. I’ve used my spatula flipper mc-deal thingy to poke a hole. What color is it supposed to be inside?”

“A nice pink. Not too red, like raw, but not brown all the way through either.”

I peeked inside the patty. “Well, this one looks kind of like that.”

Lucian looked too. “Yeah, that one’s done.” He gestured to the patties on the grill, in rows of four burgers across. “I put these on here back to front, so the burgers closer to the back will be done before the ones in front. So we can probably start taking the ones farther back off the grill.”

We stacked the burgers on a giant platter, and then Xavier took the platter, along with a giant bowl full of French fries, and another full of chicken tenders, out to the table.

“So,” I said. “We’re done cooking burgers?”

Lucian laughed as he opened a refrigerator unit nearby and pulled out a tray of patties. “Hardly. That’s only twenty-four burgers.”

I stared at him. “Only twenty-four?”

“Have you seen my brothers?” He gestured through the open doorway, to where Bast, Bax, Brock, and Zane were standing in a line abreast, each of them holding a pitcher of beer in one hand. “That plate will be empty in five minutes.”

“Are they…are they competing to see who can drink an entire pitcher of beer the fastest?” I asked.

Lucian leaned backward and watched through the doorway for a moment, and then nodded. “Looks like it.”

“It’s two in the afternoon. On a Wednesday.”

“We own the bar, and the bar’s closed for the day.” Lucian shrugged. “That’s my brothers for you.”

“Who will win, do you think?” I asked.

Lucian snorted as he laid patties on the grill. “Bax, by a lot. Zane won’t be far behind, Bast will be third, and Brock last.”

I watched the contest: When one of the twins—I wasn’t sure which was which—said “Go!” all four men lifted the pitchers to their mouths and began chugging. Sure enough, it was clear within seconds that Bax was going to win. He finished the pitcher faster than I’d have believed possible, and Zane was only a few seconds slower. There was a lot of cheering as Bax finished, each of the women howling for her man. It was a loud, boisterous event, this chugging competition. And then, to cap it all off, Bax held up a finger, quieting everyone, and then let loose a belch so loud I think the glass of the windows rattled.

I shook my head at the spectacle. “That’s disgusting.”

“The burp or the chugging?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, come on.” He rolled his eyes at me. “Like you’ve never chugged beer before?”

And here we were again, at an awkward question. “No. I don’t chug. Beer or anything else.”

Lucian made a sarcastic face. “Well pardon me, m’lady. Sorry my family offends your delicate sensibilities.”

I stepped away from him, one hand on my hip. “Fuck off.” I flipped him the bird. “I said nothing about you or your brothers, just that I don’t chug.”

“Have you ever tried it? It’s fun.”

I rolled a shoulder, discomfort rifling through me. “I’m…not twenty-one yet.”

“Neither am I.” He just waved a hand. “It’s a family party, so it’s not like anyone’s going to report us. No big deal.”

“Not interested.”

He sighed. “Suit yourself.” He flipped burgers, each motion neat and smooth and economical.

“I feel like you’re judging me.” I helped him flip, but made sure to stand far enough away that he couldn’t make contact with me again.

“I could say the same.”

“I just…drinking like that isn’t my thing.”

“Look, I’m just trying to make you feel at home, okay?” Lucian met my eyes. “I know we can be loud and crude and vulgar, but we’re good people.”

“I don’t doubt that. I’m just…I’m used to being on my own.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

I whirled to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His gaze on mine was even and unruffled. “You don’t answer the smallest, most innocuous question.” He shrugged and turned his eyes to the grill. “You’re prickly.”

“Well what, you want my life story within ten minutes of meeting me?”

“No, but you could pretend to be interested in, oh, I don’t know…basic conversation?”

“I don’t know you. I don’t know them. I’m new to Ketchikan.” I threw both hands in the air in an I-give-up gesture. “This whole day has been kinda overwhelming for me.”

He did the eyebrow again. “The whole day? It’s not even three o’clock in the afternoon.”

I sighed, and set down the spatula…flipper…whatever. “Look, it’s just been a very, very, very long day for me. Falling into the water was just the cherry on top. And then you saved me, and then you have a million brothers and sisters-in-law and whatever, and now there’s a chugging contest, and I’m just…it’s a fucking lot to take in, okay?”

With a nod, Lucian seemed content to let it go, and we finished cooking the burgers in silence. When they were done, Lucian stacked the finished burgers onto another platter. “Come on. Come sit and eat.”

“We just had eggs and bacon.”

“And now we’re having burgers and fries.” He led the way to the table, where two spaces had been saved for us, sandwiched between the two sets of twins who seemed to be married to each other, or something. “If you’re not hungry, don’t eat. If you’re hungry, eat.”

“Oh is that how it works?” I asked sarcastically. “I had no idea how appetites function.”

Lucian hadn’t been kidding when he said the first platter would be gone in minutes; by the time we sat down, the platter was totally empty, and Bax reached for another burger even as Lucian set the platter down.

Bast eyed me as I sat, spine straight, hands on my lap. “Want a beer, Joss?”

“I’m not—I’m not twenty-one.”

Bast waved a hand dismissively. “Meh, it’s just a beer, it’s not a big deal. Besides, you’re about the same age as Luce, which makes you close, right? I wouldn’t serve you if we had customers around, but this is family. It’s cool.”

Not wanting to appear ungrateful or rude, I shrugged. “I guess I’ll have one. Thank you.”

There were at least half a dozen pitchers of beer on the table, not counting the four empty ones the brothers had chugged from.

Bast poured beer into a clean glass and slid it across the table to me with the practiced ease of a bartender. “Bottoms up, sweetheart.”

“Wait, hold up!” Bax, sitting across the table from me, interrupted. “Don’t drink yet—everyone, glasses up. We’re doing a toast!”

“What are we toasting to?” asked one of the female twins—she was the only person at the table aside from Jax who wasn’t drinking a beer, now that I had one, and I noticed her T-shirt was a little tight around the belly, likely making her a few months pregnant.

“To Joss,” Bax suggested, lifting his beer high. “For falling into the Passage, and into our lives.”

“To Joss!” was echoed by more than a dozen voices all at once.

“Um. Thanks?” I managed to speak in something louder than a whisper, somehow.

My cheeks burned. I don’t think I’d ever felt so awkward or on the spot in my life, even though no one seemed to expect anything of me. Everyone lifted their glasses and held them toward the center of the table—there were far too many people for everyone to clink, but everyone made the gesture, at least.

I wondered, though—how had I fallen into their lives? I was spending the afternoon with them, not staying forever.

After everyone had toasted and taken a drink, a dozen different conversations erupted, and the focus was no longer on me.

Bax, now on his third—or was it fourth?—burger, winked at me. “Welcome to the fam, babe. We just made your life a whole lot more interesting.”

I blinked at him. “All I did was fall into the water.”

Bax grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Yeah, well, you clearly don’t know how things work in this family.”

Eva, a stunning woman with jet-black hair and a perfect hourglass figure, giggled. “Don’t scare the poor thing, Baxter. She’s new and you people are a lot to take in.” She addressed me, then. “The Badd brothers kind of have their own gravitational pull. Once you’re in their orbit, it’s hard to escape.”

The woman next to Eva was a small, delicate, loud woman, with blonde hair cut at her chin. Clea? Claire? Something like that. “What Eva means is that these boys have a way of pulling you in and making you never want to get away. It’s not that you can’t escape their orbit, it’s that they have a way of making you not want to, even the ones you’re not actually with.”

“What can I say—” one of the Badd brother twins said.

“We’re just that lovable,” the other finished.

What made their ability to finish each other’s sentences impressive was that they had the girl twins, Lucian, and me in between them.

I glanced at Lucian, who was watching all this conversation without comment; he seemed happy to let the conversation flow around him. “Do they do that a lot?” I asked him. “Talk in synch like that?”

“You’re new, so they’re showing off,” he said.

Again, calling me new, as if by falling into the water and being rescued by Lucian, I had somehow opted into a Badd Family adoption without knowing it.

One of the male twins, with long, loose brown hair and a piercing through the center of his lower lip, leaned forward to catch my attention. “So, Joss. What’s your story?”

I froze. “Um. My story?” I had both hands around my burger, but I suddenly had no appetite. “You know. Nothing special.”

“Oh, come on. Everyone is special. Everyone has a story.” The twin snagged a pitcher as he spoke and refilled his pint glass. “I’m not asking for your deepest darkest secrets here. Where are you from? That’s easy enough, right?”

You’d think.

“Um, I’m from upstate New York, originally.” A true answer, at least. “A little town outside Buffalo called East Aurora.”

“Nice.” He spoke around a mouthful of French fry. “And what brings you Ketchikan?”

I shifted on the chair. “I, um. I just kind of ended up here.”

The other twin, the one with an undercut, guffawed as if I’d said something hilarious. “Yeah, okay. Like what, you went ‘whoops, let me just accidentally end up in a remote Alaskan city accessible only by sea or air.’”

“I mean, yeah, sort of.” I gestured at the first twin who had spoken, and then the second. “Which one of you is which?”

The first twin, with the long loose hair, lifted his hand. “I’m Canaan. My wife is Aerie.”

The other lifted his hand, then, in a mirrored gesture of his brother’s. “I’m Corin, and this is Tate.”

“So, you accidentally ended up here?” Bax asked. “The real question, then, is what you’re running from.”

I swallowed hard, tracing patterns in the sweat on the outside of my pint glass. “Um. I’m not running from anything.”

Bax did the eyebrow thing, now—the expressive eyebrow quirk seemed to be another trait all the brothers shared. “And I’m Abraham Lincoln.” He winked at me. “‘Then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.’”

“I…um—”

Zane, the scary one, threw a French fry at Bax, interrupting my attempt to come up with an answer. “You did not just quote the Bible at her.”

“I thought we’ve established that I can actually read,” Bax said, “all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.”

“Quit trying to talk like Xavier,” Zane said, and threw another fry, bouncing it off Bax’s head. “Next thing you know, you’ll be quoting Shakespeare or something.”

I watched this exchange, waiting for someone to get angry.

“I can quote Shakespeare, I just choose not to.” Bax drained his beer, poured another, and polished off the last of his burger. “I’m not into sounding like a pretentious douche. I think Xavier is the only person on the planet who can non-ironically quote poetry without sounding like a total asshat.”

Zane reached for another burger, adding ketchup and mayo as he responded to Bax. “You can quote Shakespeare from memory?”

Bax shrugged. “Sure.”

“I call bullshit.”

“‘These violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder. Which, as they kiss, consume.’”

Zane laughed. “You only know that quote because you watch Westworld.”

“Romeo and Juliet. Friar Lawrence in Act two, scene six.” Bax gave his brother the double middle finger. “Bet you didn’t know I played Friar Lawrence in college.”

Eva twisted away from a conversation with Dru—Bast’s wife, a curvy, gorgeous redhead—to stare at Bax. “You were in a play? You never told me this.”

Bax shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “It was…ah…well—um.”

Brock chortled. “It was to impress a girl, wasn’t it?”

Bax blew a raspberry. “I didn’t need to join a stupid play to get chicks, bro. Believe that shit.” He sighed. “I lost a bet with a couple guys from the D-line.”

Eva eyed him warily. “What was the bet? Or do I not want to know?”

Bax’s grin was embarrassed. “Ah, you may be better off not knowing.”

Bax only laughed all the harder. “Well, we were drunk and talking shit, and so of course the bets got crazy. None of us had a lot of money, so we were trying to come up with stakes that didn’t involve money. Well, one of Bobby’s best friends was the director of the drama team’s play, and they still needed a Friar Lawrence, to the point that they were desperate. Apparently the guy they originally cast had come down with mono or something horrible, and had to pull out. Like, the play was literally in two weeks, and they had no Friar Lawrence, and nobody was stepping up. So the bet was if I failed to score with three girls at once I had to audition for the part, and if I did score, Bobby had to wear a dress to school every day for a month.”

Eva laughed, now. “And you couldn’t score?”

Bax faked outrage. “Of course I scored! Jesus, what kind of a loser do you take me for? I got four girls to agree to go to my dorm with me. But by the time we got back there, two of them were a fucking disaster, like couldn’t walk on their own. So me and the other two got their friends to their rooms, and I ended up with those two girls in their room, just because it was closer.”

Eva shook her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I was a player, babe, what can I say?” He grinned and winked at her. “So the next morning I got dressed and left their room, because I’d never actually gone to bed—ahhh…anyway, I met Bobby, Mac and Deon for breakfast, and was all like, I won the bet! Better start picking out dresses, yada yada yada.”

“But the bet was for three girls, not two,” Bast said. “So you lost.”

Bax nodded. “Exactly. But I’m a man of my word, so I tried out for the part, and I got it. But I did score, technically, meaning I didn’t totally lose the bet, so Bobby had to wear a dress to school for a week instead of a month.”

“And were you any good as Friar Lawrence?” I asked.

Bax cackled with laughter. “Hell no! I was terrible! I forgot half my lines, and the ones I did remember, I sounded like I was reading from a cue card, like a fucking robot or some shit.” He shrugged. “But I still remember that speech.”

He took a deep breath, staring at the ceiling as he recalled the words, and then quoted:

“These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness

And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so.

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

Here comes the lady. Oh, so light a foot

Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.

A lover may bestride the gossamers

That idles in the wanton summer air,

And yet not fall. So light is vanity.”

Xavier clapped. “You are full of surprises, Baxter.”

Bax bowed, laughing. “And that’s the story of how I acted in a play with the Penn State drama team.”

I leaned close to Lucian. “How much of that story is true, do you think?”

He grinned at me. “All of it, knowing Bax.”

“And his wife is okay with that?”

A shrug. “I mean, it’s not like he does that kind of thing now that he’s married, so how can she be genuinely pissed at him for something he did when they didn’t even know each other?”

“But I mean, the thing with the three girls or two girls or whatever? It’s kind of gross.” I shuddered.

Lucian just laughed again. “I told you, my older brothers are animals. They’re settled down now, but in their wild days, they drank like fish and fucked anything that moved.”

Baxter clearly overheard us, because he pointed at Lucian. “Hey now, I had standards! I didn’t fuck ugly, and I didn’t fuck desperate, because desperate means clingy, and clingy means I’d just break their heart when I left the next morning, and I’m not into breaking hearts.”

Lucian held up both hands palms out. “I stand corrected.” He addressed me. “My bad—what I meant to say was that Baxter was a connoisseur of hot but easy women.”

Bax nodded sagely. “That’s better. Although I take exception to the word ‘easy.’ Just because a girl likes a good time and isn’t looking for commitment doesn’t make her easy.”

The petite blonde woman, who was with Brock—the brother who looked like a Greek god—raised her beer over her head. “Amen to that!”

Dru threw a packet of mayo at Claire. “What are you talking about? You’ve said yourself you used to be the world’s biggest slut.”

Claire just nodded. “But like Bax said, I had standards in my sluttiness, and I’m not about to apologize for liking dick.”

Mara, a woman about my height with long blonde hair in a braid, howled in laughter. “Liking dick? You were a cock expert. You rode so much dick before you met Brock it’s a wonder your vagina isn’t a blown-out cavern.”

Claire tilted her nose up in the air. “My pussy is tighter than a drum, thank you very much.” She glanced at Brock. “Right, babe?”

Brock, tilted back on the hind legs of his chair, nodded. “Like a fuckin’ vise, hon.”

Claire pointed at Mara. “Unlike yours. Now that you’ve had a baby, I’m guessing you’ve got a nice case of beef curtains going on.”

I about spit out the mouthful of beer. “Ohmygod!” I sputtered, coughing. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

Mara just laughed along with everyone else. “I did so many Kegels while I was pregnant, if you could see my P-C muscle, it’d look like Bax’s bicep. My shit is just as tight as it was before I had Jax, thank you very much.”

I wiped beer off my chin with a napkin. “This is the weirdest, grossest conversation I’ve ever heard.”

Bax picked a French fry off of his wife’s plate and threw it at me, and it smacked into my forehead before falling to my plate. “Like I said, welcome to the family, Joss.”

“Seems like a dubious honor,” I said, before I could think better of it.

“Ohhh! Burn!” Bax shouted, cackling. “Yeah, you fit right in, sweet thing.”

I looked at Lucian. “Is it always like this?”

He nodded and shrugged a shoulder. “Pretty much, yeah.”

I sank lower in my seat. “God, I need this blizzard to be over.”

“Why? So you can keep running away from whatever it is you’re running from?” Bax asked. “I mean, come on, quit acting hard and relax. You know you’re having fun.”

I stood up abruptly, knocking my chair over backward. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about me!” I snapped.

Blood racing, pulse thundering in my ears, defensive anger raging through me, I whirled on my heel and stomped toward the stairs leading to the apartment. Within seconds, I had on my still-wet coat, hat, gloves, and backpack and all but ran down the stairs and to the door of the bar.

“You can all fuck off. You don’t know me, or what I’ve been through.” I shoved at the door, but it was locked, frustrating my attempt to make a dramatic exit. “Goddammit! How do I unlock this fucking door?”

“Good job, Bax,” I heard Lucian say. “Way to push too far.”

I found the knob to unlock the door and twisted it, shoved the door open and took three running steps outside, turning right as I exited. Of course, within three steps, I knew I’d made a mistake. What had been merely a very bad snowstorm when I arrived had worsened into a total whiteout blizzard, snow flying so thickly that I couldn’t see a single foot in front of me. I stopped dead in my tracks, fighting tears. I had to go back. It was bitterly cold, the wind slicing through me like a razor sharp knife; the fact that my coat, hat, and gloves were still wet only made it worse. In the seconds I’d been standing here, I was already covered with snow. I had no idea where I was and I was low on money.

Helpless.

Alone.

Goddammit.