HELEN
Buzz.
Buzz.
Buzz.
That’s all I’d heard for days now. I should have turned it off. I should have thrown it away. After all, I left the mansion dead set on not speaking to anyone, and yet here I was listening to my phone vibrate around the glass of my coffee table as I sat in my boy-short underwear and a white tank-top fixing my old robot vacuum—
“Child’s play,” I muttered to myself when it came back to life. Setting it on the ground, I watched it clean up Oreo crumbs that had dropped. I looked around my apartment for anything else to fix, but there wasn’t anything. If it had a circuit board in here anywhere, I’d already fixed, updated, or replaced it over the last few days.
“I could clean up.” My eyes looked to the kitchen to see the crime I’d committed against it for even attempting to cook in the first damn place. “I’ll leave that to the professionals,” I muttered to myself as I shifted over on my side. Tilting my head, I stared out at the city lights.
“I should go out.” But where? A club? A bar? Those weren’t my scenes, and I didn’t see how forcing myself into a building with drunks hoping to get drunk myself was going to do anything other than annoy me. I could see my sorry self in the reflection of the glass. My hair was a complete mess. I had been in my pajamas for hours. I looked pitiful. “Go out. Call a friend. Do something.”
But I didn’t want to go out.
The only friends I had… were my family.
And the only thing I could think of doing was going back to the mansion and working on Cain.
“You’re pitiful,” I said to my reflection, which only made me frown. The sight bothered me, so I reminded myself, “It’s not your fault though. They made you pitiful.”
They. My family. The Callahans. They made me like this. My best friend killed my biological father, trashed his name. Then their drugs killed my mother, which was the reason I was an orphan. Everything, just like with computers, was a series of cause and effect. Input equals output. Since I was young, I could see it. It was logical. It was dependable. You put one and one together, you got two. A series of zeros and ones, you got code. Giant puzzle pieces that just needed to be set together. The complete opposite of people. People were messy and complicated and…
“Pitiful,” I said again. I was exactly this, often by my own craziness or my family’s. I tried to spend most of my time with computers. Input was computers and family; therefore, my output was that nothing else mattered but computers and family. Without either of those things, I felt useless.
“So why am I so upset?” I asked myself.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Buzz.
My phone went off again. I wanted to answer, but I didn’t. And I didn’t understand myself for that. I wanted to go home.
Home to the people who destroyed your real parents? But they had no way of knowing their actions would lead to me.
So forgive them? Yes.
They don’t want forgiveness, though. Because they’re happy they have me.
So how do you forgive people who don’t want forgiveness? Who don’t think they did anything wrong? I don’t know.
I didn’t have an answer. I was at war with myself. My heart wanted to go, and yet my head kept stopping me, because I couldn’t think of an answer.
The scientific rule of Occam's razor states that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily, which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories are preferable to the more complex, or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities…basically in layman’s terms, the simplest answer is usually the right answer.
My problem was that the Callahan family is the reason my biological parents are dead, and yet I want to go back to the Callahan family. Applying Occam's razor to my problem, then the simplest answer is that…
“I don’t care about my biological parents,” I whispered to myself, and yet I couldn’t help but look away from myself. “That is a bad answer.”
But it didn’t feel like the wrong answer. I knew I wasn’t a good person. I’d come to terms with that, which was how I was able to get Ethan the information he needed, knowing what he’d do to the people I found. But for me to be this black-hearted? My biological parents loved me. I was sure of that, and I’d betrayed them by not even having the decency to leave the Callahans.
Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome?
I froze for a long time, going over that again and again in my head. And then I sat up quickly, dashed into my kitchen for my tablet, which was covered in poorly chopped onions. I slid the onions off of the screen and used my shirt to clean it off, because obviously I’m a savage. I held it up as if it were the newborn Christ. “Treating Stockholm syndrome,” I said to it. The few seconds it took to search felt like hours.
“Recovering from Stockholm syndrome ordinarily involves ‘psychiatric or psychological counseling,’ with an end goal of making patients realize that their actions and feelings stemmed from inherent human survival techniques. Counseling aims to reinstate normalcy into the lives of recovering victims and to make sure that they can function in a way that is not out of fear or in the sole interest of survival.” It read back to me. “Would you like to see more from this article?”
“Interesting,” I muttered, grabbing the bag of croutons off the counter and moving back to the living room.
“Not really. You don’t have Stockholm syndrome.”
My head snapped up at his voice, and even though I saw him, I couldn’t help but throw the table at him and scream, “MOTHERFUCK! Jesus fuck ah! WYATT!!”
“Sorry!” He couldn’t help but laugh at me before raising his arms up. In one of them he had a Chi-burger bag. He was wearing a black jacket over his dark grey suit. “Can I come in?”
“You’re already in!” My heart still racing, I had to hold the arm of my couch to yell at him. “How the hell did you even get in?!”
He took his cell phone out of his back pocket and showed me. “You put the app on my phone. I turned off the alarm because I wasn’t sure if you were sleeping and didn’t want to scare you.”
“Well you fucking failed!” I snapped, taking a deep breath. “What is wrong with you! Just because I put the damn app on your phone doesn’t mean come over whenever you damn well want. At least call first!”
“I’ve been calling you for days.”
And I paused, remembering why I was even in my apartment to begin with. Reaching up and rubbing my nose, I couldn’t find the words, and so I went with the first thing that went through my mind. “Wyatt, I’m not answering my phone because I don’t want to talk to you. I’m here because I don’t want to see you. If you can’t be ashamed of what you did, can’t you at least respect that?”
“You’re right…but do you mind getting me a first aid kit first?” He asked, and it was only then that I noticed the grimace on his face. He was smiling through pain. Before I could ask what happened, he moved around my couch, putting the burgers on the coffee table. Then he proceeded to take off his coat and suit jacket. Only then could I see the dampness on his shirt. The blood had soaked through his shirt.
It took a second for my brain to process what I was seeing. When it did, panic set in.
“WYATT!” I hollered, rushing toward him. “What the hell happened? You’re bleeding, fucking shot? Someone shot you!”
“The one day I don’t wear one of those damn bulletproof suits. I swear I have the worst fucking luck!” He laughed and then whined as he took off his shirt.
“This isn’t fucking funny! You’ve been shot!”
“I know.”
“You’re bleeding!”
“I know that—”
“Then why the fuck are you here and not with a goddamn doctor!”
“BECAUSE I CAN’T AFFORD IT!” he hollered back at me, as if I were the problem. I wanted to smack him, and it must have been clear on my face because he sighed. “Everyone is watching me, Helen. Waiting for me to screw up. Waiting for me to prove that I am the idiot brother. I cannot call for a doctor or anyone else. I can’t afford to look weak right now. I made a mistake, no one else can know that.”
“I’m still waiting for you to apologize.” I crossed my arms.
His mouth dropped open slightly. “Helen, I’m bleeding. There is still a bullet in me. Can we deal with that first—”
“You somehow managed to get a burger with a bullet in you, and you’re still bleeding. I’m sure you can muster up an apology.”
He glared down at me. “I’m sorry for yelling at you, Helen. May I please have the first aid kit before I bleed out and die in your living room?”
That wasn’t the apology I wanted, and I’m sure he knew that. Saying nothing else, I moved around him toward the closet, opening the door and taking out the big first aid kit he’d given me as a house-warming present when I moved in here. His excuse was that I would need it because I often cut my damn hands on the parts I was working on or…attempting to cook. “How symbolic of you to buy a present for me that only you end up using.”
“I’m hurt, Helen, be nice.” He pouted when I came back to him. Kneeling in front of him, I unzipped everything carefully, and as I did, a thought popped into my head.
“You didn’t shoot yourself on purpose to make me sympathetic to you? Did you?”
He huffed as if he was hurt I even asked. Tilting his face to the side, he gave me a look I was quite familiar with. “Yes, Helen, I was so upset you weren’t answering my calls that I shot myself in the shoulder in the middle of the night, bought your favorite burger, and came over to get you to help take the bullet out. Seriously? Do I look like Ethan to you? Like hell, I’d shoot myself.”
“Stranger things have happened,” I muttered, putting on the gloves before taking out the forceps and the alcohol. “Lie back.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?” He questioned, surprised.
“I’ve watched enough episodes of ER and Grey’s Anatomy—”
“Give me that!” He moved to take the forceps.
“Kidding! Just kidding,” I said, pushing him back on my own.
He grimaced before yelling. “Fucking shit!”
“So being shot hurts, who would have guessed.” I pressed gently on the wound around his upper shoulder.
“Your sarcasm has been noted, Helen,” he grumbled, closing his eyes, and I wished I could do the same. If only he knew that sarcasm was the only thing keeping me from staring at his perfectly sculpted body. It was marble. I wanted…dreamt of running my hands over it a dozen times and of course here was my chance, but it was because of bullets and blood.
“This is going to hurt. You sure you don’t want anything for the pain?”
“I’m already buzzed, go ahead,” he said softly and put his arm over his face and inhaled, though he stopped because of the pain.
“Okay.”
“URGH!” He hissed through clenched teeth as I poured alcohol over the wound.
“What happened?” I questioned, pressing my hands on his skin, again hoping to distract him.
“The Governor got a little emotional when I told him I had his wife killed.”
My head snapped up like a rocket, only he hadn’t shifted. I sighed, shaking my head. “Brilliant, now I’m going to be stuck working on the winter ball with Fatimah Gupta—”
“She’s most likely dead, too—ah fuck-Jesus-cunt-damn careful, Helen!” He looked at me as I tried to dig the bullet out.
“So you killed the governor’s and the mayor’s wives tonight, that won’t be a mess at all,” I muttered, though internally I was happy as I got a good grip on the bullet. It wasn’t too deep, and the bullet wasn’t strong…nor did it shatter. For a man with no luck, he sure had some fucking luck.
“I found out that the Chicago PD stole product from us. Those assholes only have those positions because we gave them the positions. In return for that power, they protect our interests. If they fail, they have to be punished.”
“That makes sense,” I said as I leaned in closer. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t wear a bulletproof vest, at least when going around seeking vengeance.”
He didn’t answer that question and instead asked a question of his own. “Ethan wouldn’t have made such a dumb ass mistake, would he?”
Taking the bullet out, I glanced back up to him. “I will never understand why you and Ethan have this damned complex with each other.”
“What?”
“It’s out. What else do I need to do?” I asked, putting the bullet to the side on one of the open plastic seals near the first aid kit.
“I got this part.” He said sat up, pressing a bandage to his shoulder. “What do you mean? Ethan doesn’t have a complex toward—”
“Are you insane?” He really didn’t see it…what am I talking about? Wyatt was the king of obvious. “Wyatt, he let himself get shot, let Boston spiral into chaos because of you. He did that because—”
“He wanted me home. I get that. Everyone wanted me home. Even you.”
Idiot. Goddamn sexy idiot. “When you came back in the brief moment before Ivy died, Ethan was happy. He was annoyed about Gabriel. But he was happy. All he has ever wanted was for the two of you to be working side by side. He’s always wanted to be the best older brother, so you could count on him. But the better he was, the more you resented him. And that pissed him off because he couldn’t fail for you—for the same reason you couldn’t let anyone see you’re hurt. Everyone is always watching this family, especially the Ceann Na Conairte. If he slipped up, people would think he is weak and they’d hurt you or the rest of the family. He had to be strong to protect everyone, and you hated him for being strong. He’s always been stuck in this no-win situation because of you. Add that, on top of the fact that you two have vastly different personalities, he can’t speak to you without you misunderstanding his words or thoughts. He honestly just wants your attention and company, because he’s lonely.”
“Woah! Whose side are you on? You’re my best friend, not his.” He stared at me wide-eyed. “When did you become the Ethan-whisperer?”
“You’re so childish.” I shook my head, standing up. “I know Ethan because I speak to Ethan. He even comes to hear me lecture sometimes.”
“He does what now? And why haven’t I gotten any invitations to these lectures?” He questioned as he started to stitch his own damn shoulder. The man was made out of something outside this world.
“You weren’t invited because you were in Boston,” I said, heading to the kitchen to wash my hands and get a clean towel, along with a bowl of warm water.
“Yeah, sure you would have. Then you would have made jokes about it for the rest of day and left before you had to meet family.” When I didn’t hear his reply, I turned back around worried maybe he’d passed out from blood loss or something. But instead, he was just staring at me. “What?”
“Have I always been such a shitty person to you?”
There were a great many things to hate about Wyatt Callahan, but what really irritated me was his ability to look so innocent and sincere even with blood all over his shoulder, and confessing to murder. It was sick how he’d mastered that look.
“Wyatt, you killed my father,” I reminded him. I moved to sit next to him, taking the clean towel out of the bowl of warm water.
“Your father is Declan Callahan, and he’s alive and well,” he muttered and looked away from me, cleaning his hands in the bowl between us.
“Do you have any shame?”
“I haven’t checked recently, but I do have spicy mayo.” He lifted the burger bag for me. Because I was closer now I could smell it and... “Mr. Chi opened up just to make this for us. You shouldn’t let it go to waste. It would be rude.”
“Said the motherfucking king of rudeness,” I snapped at him, taking the damn bag away from him and throwing it back on to the table.
“King of rudeness, king of selfishness, temporary king of Chicago, I’m one hell of a guy, aren’t I?”
“At least you know who you are.” I muttered, cleaning his shoulder. I was also pretty insane, too. “If I was like everyone else in this family, I should be plotting revenge on you for what you did.”
“Do you hate me that much?” he asked, his brown-green eyes staring directly in mine. “What I did to you was wrong on its face, yes. Did I cheat you out of a choice? Yes. But if you could so easily think to kill me because I killed your biological father, shouldn’t you be able to understand me? If you can understand the need to get revenge for the people you love. If you could understand Ethan. Why can’t you understand me? Back then I remembered seeing you cry until you were red in the face about how you didn’t want to leave. I remember talking to you on the phone and listening to you pretend you were doing fine, when you weren’t. I didn’t do it because I wanted to. I didn’t do it just because I missed you, though I did very much. I did it because you weren’t happy. If you had been happy to leave, if you hadn’t sounded so sad, if you hadn’t cried as hard, maybe I would have accepted it and simply been happy my best friend was so happy. He tried to take you away from me, Helen. From all of us. In my mind, he was kidnapping you! So, I can’t apologize. I’d do it again! Sorry if that makes me a selfish bastard!”
I want to kiss him. He was so close. So, damn close, and he was saying this as if it was what I’d always wanted to hear from him.
And just like that, he got up and moved to my wine cooler. Taking a quick deep breath and saying a silent prayer that he didn’t notice my love-sick puppy dog eyes, I tried to keep my focus. “You really shouldn’t be drinking.”
“Which one of us has the medical degree? That’s right, me. And this doctor prescribes drinking with burgers!” Taking out two bottles, he glanced over my kitchen and then to me, grinning. “So who died here?”
“Shut up. You can barely cook yourself!”
He just laughed as he came back over. “Let’s eat, and you can save your anger for tomorrow.”
“It’s 11:49 pm.”
“Eleven minutes should be enough, don’t you think. Anger isn’t good for the heart, Helen.”
No, you aren’t good for the heart, Wyatt! I ignored him as I walked back to the kitchen, dumping the cleaning water and washing my hands again before grabbing wine and drinking straight from the bottle.
Damn him.
WYATT
She sat back across from me, quietly eating her fries. The silence between us bothered me. I’d hope the wine would help both of us speak honestly and get past this rough patch, but she seemed dead set on not speaking to me.
“I still can’t believe I got shot by the Governor,” I said softly, trying to fill the silence. “With the way the man was acting, you’d think he really loved his wife. He’s cheated on her so many times, I’ve lost track.”
“They were in an open relationship. It wasn’t public knowledge, but a lot of people knew.” She stuffed a few fries in her mouth.
“How can anyone think that’s fine?”
She gave me a look.
“What?”
“Wyatt, you screw women up and down all the time—”
“I’ve never cheated on any of the women I’ve dated, thank you very much. Loyalty is important, and if she’s mine and I’m hers, the only person she or I would be with is each other. If I’m not in a relationship, then I have every right to screw anyone who is willing to screw me. That’s pretty straightforward and reasonable to me.”
“People are complex, Wyatt. We don’t make sense. The law judges by a ‘reasonable human being’ standard, forgetting that our emotions make even the simplest things unreasonable. What we love, what we hate, what we think we should love or hate, determines everything around us. Sometimes people love who they love, and it competes with other things. It doesn’t mean they don’t love them.”
I eyed her carefully, the wine bottle paused at my lips. “So, if a man cheated on you—”
“I’d shred him alive. Then call my dad and watch him beat the shit out of his shredded body,” she shot back with no hesitation. I couldn’t help but laugh, and she laughed with me. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could relax. Her laugh always did that. It was always carefree even though I knew she had so much on her mind.
“See, even you don’t believe in that open relationship thing.”
“It might work for some people,” she tried to defend it before drinking straight from her own bottle.
I snorted at that. “Sure, okay. And Ethan’s favorite color is pink glitter.”
“If it’s not, it should be. He could pull it off.” She giggled, obviously drunk…the lightweight. Her eyes began to close, and I could see she was tilting. I put my drink down, reaching over to hold her head steady before she fell over. She nuzzled into my hand as if I were her damn pillow.
“I take it you forgive me now.”
“Don’t care what you do, I’m going to always resent you, Wyatt.” She had the nerve to mumble that as I held her head. “You ruined my chance.”
My eyebrows frowned together, not understanding her. “What do you mean?”
She lifted her head up and tried to glare at me, but her eyes weren’t staying open. “The rule of Occam's razor says that the simplest answer is usually the right answer. Why did I get upset and leave after finding out the truth even though you are right? I was happy to be done with him. Happy that he was gone, that no one was taking me away.”
“I don’t know—”
“Because you’re blind, Wyatt. You’re always blind to those who love you.” She started to cry, and I started to panic, not sure what to say to her. “I’m a bold person! If I want… If I want something I go…go after it! So I knowww… if I had gone away for a few yearsss and… come back, then you won’t only seeee me as yourrr… best friend…. or…or cousin.”
“Helen, what the are you trying to say?”
Her words were slurring. Wiping her face, she came around the coffee table, knelt down right in front of me.
“I love you.”
Just like that my heart stopped. I was sure. Staring at her, I felt as if I was falling…like the ground had opened up underneath me and I was falling. Maybe it was because I drank too much. Maybe because I was idiot, I could feel my body heating up.
What the hell is wrong with you, Wyatt?
“Helen, you’re drunk—”
Before I could finish speaking, her lips were on mine. Never in my life have I ever frozen up in front a woman, for any reason. But with her, now, it was if my brain had lost all communication with my nervous system. All I could do is just sit there.
“You’re disgusted, right?” she whispered and pulled away from me. “You wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t grown up together, and we grew up together because you brought me back home. So, I’m going to resent you. It’s not fair, I know. But like I said, people are complex. We don’t make sense…I don’t make sense. So, can you go home now? I want to be by myself.”
Maybe I’m dreaming? Maybe I’ve lost my goddamn mind. No, it’s the wine. That was the reason I was getting hard even though I didn’t mean to. The longer I stared at her, the more I noticed her. How curls fell on her face and down over her bare shoulder. The strap of her tank top had fallen down. Her shorts so high I could see all the way up her thigh. Her lips so soft…I wanted to…
My throat closed, and all I could see was danger.
Wyatt what the fuck are you thinking! She’s your cousin!
“Thanks for helping me, Helen. I’m going to head home.” I got up and quickly grabbed my shirt and jacket, nearly tripping on my way out.
Pressing the elevator button at least a dozen times in the span of a second, I just wanted to run. The pain in my shoulder was completely gone and replaced with a new pain. I tried to push the thoughts out of my head as I got onto the elevator, but they came anyway.
I could taste the wine on her lips. I thought and licked my lips. The moment I did, I wanted to slap myself. She’s my fucking cousin! Adopted cousin? We weren’t biologically related.
Why the hell am I making distinctions now?
“Where to, sir—”
“Home now!” I snapped at him when I got into the car.
Sitting in the backseat, I rubbed the bridge of my nose. I silently prayed for my cock to come back to its senses. Instead, I found myself still thinking.
She’s actually my adopted second cousin. Uncle Declan was my father’s cousin. Marrying your first cousin is legal in twenty-five states. Some lists claim that twenty-six states allow cousin marriage... No states ban marriages between second cousins. Why the hell do I know this?
Why the hell am I even thinking this?
Helen is my best friend. She is my cousin. Nothing else.
“Sir, we’re here.”
I glanced out the window at the mansion for a moment before getting out. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t speak. I just walked past our butler, O’Phelan, the maids and made a bee-line into my room, fearing someone would ask me what happened. I was right outside my room. So close to putting this night behind me when a familiar red head suddenly appeared beside me.
“Good evening, sir. I was just about to leave dinner in your room,” she said softly, her blue eyes met mine.
It was far too late for dinner. And the odds of her just so happening to bring it when I got back were slim to none. But I opened the door for her anyway.
Helen is my best friend. She is my cousin. Nothing else.
“Do you need anything else, sir?” She asked when she put the tray down in the corner of my room.
“What do you think I need?” I asked back, and with that she slowly unbuttoned her blouse. I didn’t have time for slowly.
Closing the distance between us, I ripped the blouse off her, kissing her lips before lifting her up, her thighs wrapping around my waist. And I pushed down the nagging feeling I had in the pit of my stomach.