Page 149 of Fight or Flight
Xave nods. “Whatever is going on is obviously bigger than what’s been happening here at school. They wouldn’t have installed key logs on our doors and put in all these rules about guests and curfews if there wasn’t a legit threat. And things at the main house have been tense for months. You don’t see it, but Jordan and the boys are stressed the fuck out. Something is going on, and I have a feeling they’re not getting all the info either.”
Since Xave lives at the main house with the leaders and a select few trusted seniors, he’s privy to a lot of information that we aren’t, and he sees the leaders in their natural habitat, so to speak, so he’d have a much better idea of what’s going on with them.
And his instincts are always on point, so if he says there’s more to this than we know, I’m going to believe him until I see proof that says otherwise.
“So how about we put on our customer service faces so people don’t start talking shit about us, and you can rage out when the meeting is over,” he says, giving Killian a pointed look.
Xave might be just as unhinged and volatile as Killian, Jax, and me, but he’s always fallen into a big brother role when the four of us are together, and it’s been that way since we were kids.
There’s a reason Xave’s been toying with the idea of staying at Silvercrest for another year and picking up extra classes to get a double major, and it has nothing to do with him wanting to expand his knowledge horizons and everything to do with ourdads not trusting Killian, Jax and me to represent the family without a chaperone to keep us in line.
Even if having him as our chaperone is the equivalent of letting the inmates run the asylum.
“This is my customer service face,” Killian says dryly, his expression as stony as a rock quarry.
A prickle of awareness dances over the back of my neck, and I swing my gaze to the door just as Shane and a group of his friends walk into the dining room.
I’m not subtle as I watch him walk across the hall and slide into a seat near the front of the room like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
It’s been almost a week since the night I brought him home from The Crypt, and he’s been shifting between hot and cold and throwing mixed signals at me like it’s his part-time job ever since.
Sometimes I catch him staring at me like I’m some sort of code he’s trying to decipher, and other times he does everything in his power to avoid looking at me—and really couldn’t be more obvious about it if he tried. Then there are the times I catch him staring at me almost wistfully and with naked hunger in his eyes before he quickly looks away and pretends I don’t exist again.
I have no idea what’s going on with him, but something changed after that night, and I’d probably be annoyed if I gave a shit about that sort of thing, but I don’t.
Shane is mine, and he can freak out or have an existential crisis or decide that I’m the devil incarnate. It won’t change a thing.
One thing not a lot of people know about me is that I can be incredibly patient when I want to be. If something is worth waiting for, then I can wait until the cows come home or hell freezes over or whatever other idiom people like to use.
And it’s not like I don’t love a challenge, so this hot-and-cold routine isn’t the turnoff he probably thinks it is. And it won’t discourage me either, because the best way to make me want something is to tell me I can’t have it.
If Shane wants to play hard to get, then I’m perfectly happy to go along with that because the endgame is the same. Shane is mine, and he’ll either willingly accept that, or I’ll make him.
“What do you think about that?” Killian’s voice breaks into my thoughts, and I pull my attention from Shane and his very obvious efforts to look like he’s the carefree and chill guy he shows the world.
“Sounds plausible,” Xave says as Jax nods.
“What he said.” I tick my chin in Xave’s direction when Killian glances at me.
“Could you at least pretend to listen while you eye fuck the fourth member of our leadership team?” Killian asks dryly.
“I could, but then you’d have nothing to bitch and complain about,” I say sweetly.
He shoots me a flat look. “Do we need to have an intervention?”
“No.”
“Really?” he looks between me and Shane. “Because it seems like whatever the fuck is going on between you two is going to be a problem for us.”
“There isn’t going to be a problem.” I flick my gaze to Jax. “Shut up.”
“Did I say anything?” He arches one eyebrow at me.
“That was a preemptive shut up,” I tell him.
“Someone’s awfully defensive over something that’s not a big deal and isn’t going to cause any problems,” Killian says, his tone light.
I haven’t told either Killian or Xave that Shane and I have been hooking up, but they’re not idiots. They know something isgoing on, and they’ll be dicks about it because that’s what we do, but they won’t actually confront me about it unless it becomes a real problem.
