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1
Daisy
No guns at the dinner table. That's my one rule. Call me old fashioned, I don't know. It's just what I've always said to the boys. I don't care about phones, I don't care if they're texting, I don't care if they're wearing a hat at the table-I just don't want guns while I'm serving them a brisket I slow-cooked for nine and a half fucking hours.
Julian makes us say grace (as though the Lord is listening to him and like He'd actually bless us) and then comes the silence of eating that makes the cook happy.
The volume starts to rise again after a couple of minutes-they're total animals when it comes to food, these Lost Boys of mine. I call them that because that's what they are. You can't really be around my brother for too long without meandering off the garden path, and all of these boys have well and truly strayed. None of these boys are boys, by the way-not in age, not in attitude. Each of them has their own unique set of pros and cons, red flags, warrants and no-fly statuses, and together they comprise the inner sanctum of my brother's outfit.
"Oi, Daisyface." My brother nods his chin at me. "How'd you do in your Immunopathology exam?"
"Immunopharmacology," I correct him and he rolls his eyes.
"Did you pass or not?"
"Course she passed," Kekoa tells him proudly. I don't have a dad anymore but when I did, Aleki Kekoa was his best friend.
"First class?" Julian asks.
I frown at him, offended. "Obviously."
My brother tosses me a little wink as he pours himself more wine. "What's next on the curriculum?"
I shrug. "I think we're about to move on to a block on Disease and Therapeutics." Second year med student at Imperial College.
Jules swats his hand. "You don't need to know about that sh-"
"Take it back!" Declan Ellis yells suddenly as he jumps back from the table, staring down darkly at TK, who's seated next to me.
I frown between them. I've no idea what's going on, I wasn't paying attention.
"Nope." Teeks grins.
Declan reaches around from behind him and pulls out his Star Model BM. He likes it, I don't. Too heavy in the hand, too much lag on the recoil.
"Decks." Julian rolls his eyes. "Put the gun away."
He's a bit drunk at the minute, Decks-I can see it on him because when he's drunk or hungover, one of his eyes goes a bit squinty.
I glance at TK and I can already tell he's not going to oblige Declan-whatever it is, he thinks it's too funny to take back. He's got this smarmy, shit-eating grin that riles Decks right up because he's being disrespectful and Declan is, technically, higher in the food chain. He's my brother's right hand.
"Take it fucking back." Declan repositions the gun, now pointed squarely at TK's face.
"No." Teeks shrugs, indifferent.
"Take what back?" I frown.
"Nothing." Declan glances at me quickly, but TK and Booker start laughing.
Best friends, huge idiots.
Declan cocks the gun.
"Declan, don't be stupid." I roll my eyes.
"I'm not being stupid, he's being stupid."
I exchange a long-suffering look with Miguel Del Olmo, my bodyguard since I was fourteen.
"I'm not being stupid." TK shrugs. "It's true."
"No it's fucking not."
"What's not true?" Julian frowns.
Declan's eyes pinch as he silently dares the youngest member of their crew to speak out of turn.
A cheeky smile spreads over TK's face. "That Decks has a permanent boner for Dais."
And then . . .
Gunshot.
I blink a few times, glance down at myself. A very old, very valuable white T-shirt in mint condition not five seconds ago is now sullied with a drop of Californian blood.
TK lets out a small sound of muffled pain-just barely audible-as he'd never give Decks the satisfaction of agony.
"Un-fucking-believable." I slam my balled-up fists down on the table. "What is my one rule?" I bellow at the entire room.
The room goes very still. No one answers.
"WHAT IS MY ONE RULE?"
Some variant of "no guns at the dinner table" is mumbled by everyone present, including my brother and poor TK (who, by the way, isn't dying).
"This is a four-thousand-pound shirt."
Smokeshow squints over at me. "Might have overpaid for that one, Dais."
"Oh, did I?" I glare at him. "Did I overpay for this Beatles 'Butcher Cover' Original Promo shirt from 1966?" I cock an eyebrow at him. "On eBay last week, I watched you buy a Hot Cheeto shaped like a gun for five hundred and sixty pounds."
Smokeshow looks over at his best friend, Happy, who is conversely scowling at him. Smoke shrugs like he can't help it. "It looked like my gun."
Julian catches my eye and nods his chin at TK. "Help him."
I roll my eyes, pointing to Declan. "Get my kit."
He nods a bit sheepishly.
Miguel helps Teeks into the kitchen, sitting him down at the breakfast table.
It's a big house. My dad bought out an entire cul-de-sac in Knightsbridge, turned it into a sort of headquarters. The Compound, they call it.
Miguel tosses Declan an unimpressed look as he carries over my medical kit, lips pursed.
"Sorry about your shirt." He flashes me a sorry look, leans in towards me, closer than he probably should. "I'll get it dry cleaned."
I nod at him once, try to give him a bit of a smile that straddles the line of being a forgiving matriarch and not wanting to condone his stupid behaviour.
TK cocks his eyebrow at the proximity Declan (doesn't) place between us and Decks flips him off as he leaves the room.
I give TK a look. "Why would you say that?"
"Because it's true."
Miguel tilts his head, concedes tacitly with his eyes. Not a massive chatterbox, my Miguel. A constant presence and a zingy one-liner is what he's known for. He and I have spent years crafting the perfect balance of him being nearby without hovering . . . he's very aware that I'm never alone. And I'm aware that, by consequence of, he never is either. There's not always that much to say to him either, he sees it all anyway.
"Either way-" I wipe away the blood around the wound with some isopropyl prep pads. "Do you really think it wise to poke the bear?"
"He's not a bear." TK rolls his eyes. "He's a puppy with an inferiority complex and a small dick."
I toss him a look. "Not that small . . ."
TK starts laughing. "Go on then, be honest, who's better in the sack: me or him?"
Declan, 100 per cent. Completely, undeniably, very good, highly recommend. I was so cross when Julian stopped it. A few years ago right after my ex-boyfriend and I broke up, and it was big and traumatic and I was young. Julian found out I'd been sleeping with Declan, who was not so young and who definitely thought I was twenty, though I was not, and I think Julian told him he had to help him with a job or he'd go to the feds and I don't know what happened on that job but Declan was around forever after that.
Teeks . . . look. It was a brief thing that coincided with Julian trying to woo him and Booker out of the valley. We don't talk about it, but I think I was the deal-sweetener. My brother does his down-and-out best to exclude me from as much of his work as humanly possible, but he brought me to California with him on that trip and we spent the vast majority of it wining and dining TK and Booker.
They're the youngest guys who work for Jules by a mile. TK's twenty-six, Booker's twenty-seven. Friends from college. Tech boys who graduated top of their class from Stanford. The Silicon Baddies is what we call them. Jules found them on the dark web when they were tracking down the home addresses of people viewing pornography of "questionable legality" and sending it to the FBI. We liked their style. Jules is a fan of a saviour complex, he has one himself. Me? I like anyone who sees something askew and tries to fix it as best they can.
They're fun boys, and TK's got a face on him; sweet and younger than he actually is. Good kisser, great eyes, so-so in bed. I don't have the heart to tell him, though. I can't.
I stab his arm with some lidocaine.
"I don't know." I shrug coyly. "You might have to jog my memory." It's a shallow offer but he looks pleased all the same, chin in the air and everything.
"Maybe I will." It's a bullshit acceptance.
He won't, we both know that-not anymore, anyway, because-
Someone clears their throat from the doorway behind me.
I glance over my shoulder.
Christian Hemmes leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, eyes pinched.
"Should I go, then?" he asks, brow cocked, hands shoved in his pockets.
I turn away quickly, my cheeks on fire (I don't know why). I blink a few times, refocusing my eyes on the task in front of me, ignoring Miguel's exaggerated eye roll that seems to me like a betrayal of our forced friendship.
TK holds my gaze, smirks knowingly, but they don't know anything . . . They don't even know the half of it.
Christian Hemmes walks over to us, stands behind me and subtly squeezes my arse as he inspects the bullet wound for himself.
"What happened here?"
I breathe out, annoyed. "Declan."
"Shot you?" He blinks, a bit surprised.
TK nods.
"Why?"
I glance between the two of them. "Teeks was being antagonistic."
Miguel squints, assessing the validity of my statement.
"Thought they weren't meant to have guns at the dinner table?" Christian folds his arms over his chest.
"Pass me the eight-inch forceps," I tell him. "And they're not."
Christian hands me a pair of Mayo scissors and Miguel rolls his eyes.
I clear my throat, pick up the right tool, and start fishing around TK's arm as Miguel shines a light over me.
"This going to take a while?" Christian asks unceremoniously.
"Oh-my apologies." I look back at him. "Are we keeping you from something?"
"Yeah, actually."
He leans down over me, peering into the wound again with me, pressing himself up against me. "I had some plans for you."
My stomach falls down a flight of stairs.
"Oh." I swallow, then squint into the arm of my friend and spot the glimmer of a bullet lodged in his right humerus lesser tubercle. "I actually had some plans for you too but then you went and confused forceps with scissors and my libido evaporated entirely."
Miguel frowns, he doesn't like our arrangement-he hasn't said that in so many words, but Miguel has the poker face of a toddler.
"What are you smirking at?" Christian smacks TK over the head.
Teeks starts laughing but I give him a look. "Bad news." I peel off my latex glove and he groans. "It's pretty lodged in there."
"Fuck." He hangs his head.
"Take him to Merrick's." I nod at Miguel while I wrap TK's arm in gauze, tying it off above the wound. "Tell him I think it might have fractured the bone, or at least splintered it." I flash Teeks an apologetic smile. "Are you regretting signing your life away to my brother yet?"
"Nope." TK squashes a smile. "Time of my life."
I roll my eyes.
"Speaking of the time of one's life . . ." Christian tugs on my hand and I toss him a look. "Are we wrapping up here?"
"We are." I peer down at the dressed wound one more time. I press the bandage against TK's arm once more for good measure. "Don't poke the bear."
He grins up at me. "No promises."
"Good seeing you, bro-" Christian (semi-) affectionately smacks TK on the damaged arm and he winces. I roll my eyes and Miguel fights off a smile before giving me a nod and leaving me alone with Christian.
Alone with Christian. It's still a bit of a wonder for me, really-being alone with someone. I haven't been allowed to be alone with someone in years.
"You're a dick," I tell him as we're walking up the stairs.
He rolls his eyes. "He's fine."
But I feel a bit floaty because I think he did it because he's territorial with me. "We don't do jealous, remember?"
"I wasn't jealous." Christian frowns. "What's it to me if you fucked him once a few months ago?"
I glance back at him and find myself balancing not wanting to not be in control with not loving the indifference in his voice about someone else touching me.
"More than once." I keep walking up the stairs.
His eyes pinch and he stops for a minute before he keeps following me up. "Pretty hot, though, Baby Haites."
Baby Haites. What they call me.
"What is?" I stand at the top of the stairs, my hands on my hips.
"You." He stares over at me. "Being a doctor."
I give him a look. "I'm not a doctor."
"You're on your way." He gives me a tall look, almost as though he doesn't like it when I say disparaging things about myself, but if I let myself think that. "Soon you'll be a fully licensed doctor and driver."
I roll my eyes at him, walk away and ahead, try to chase after that stupid heart of mine that's riding off into the sunset with a boy who doesn't like me like that.
We're supposed to be cut and dry, Christian and I.
Just sex. Friends who do it. "Bang one out" as my brother so delicately puts it . . .
I wish it was like that, that's what I wanted from that first night. I've done it before, I'm capable of that-that's what TK was, that's what Declan was. It's not what Romeo was, but nothing ever will be what Romeo was, so it's not really fair to compare him to anyone else. Anyway, my point is I know how to have casual sex. Christian knows how to have casual sex. He and his best friends are gold medalists in casual sex, but something about that first night for us was so jarringly un-casual-
"Tell me," Christian said as he leaned in towards me late one Saturday at his club a few months ago. "Secret daydream, life goal . . . some shit like that."
