“After those months, Clay staged a revolt. We all escaped. The ship was on fire. Things were exploding all around us. You were seriously injured. In the process of trying to get to a shuttle, Tommy and Quinn were taken, again. It wasn’t pretty. Amazing they lived through it. We carried you onto the shuttle. The idea was to get you help here and go back for them. They couldn’t be saved while you were so hurt.”
I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have worried about me.” Was I the reason they were dead?
Keith pointed a finger at me. “You are our wife. You have always come first, and you always will. That’s how it is. Tommy and Quinn would not have wanted it any other way. The last thing Tommy said to me was to get you off the ship. That’s what we did. I don’t regret that, and you can’t feel guilty about it.”
“What it comes down to, honey,” Clay put his hand on my hip, “Tommy and Quinn were executed on the Sandler homeland. One month ago. We’d just landed here when the news came through. Firing squad. Very old-Earth style. They’re gone. My father had his people drag his sons’ bodies through the streets to show what happens to traitors, even if they’re his own family.”
“Clay.” Keith raised his voice. “Enough. She didn’t need that image.”
Oh, but I did. I sat up slowly. Grief was a funny emotion, and it was odd that I could examine it even as I experienced it, as though I was separate from the emotion while it took hold at the same time. I’d grieved many things in my life, but not people. Maybe I had sort of, at one time, grieved myself. The girl I’d thought I would be died on the floor of the Sisterhood of the Universe, and from her ashes, I had risen. I wasn’t perfect, but I was here.
Quinn and Tommy weren’t anymore.
Tommy, the oldest Sandler brother, with his blondish-brownish hair, lighter on the tips, and his serious blue eyes. He’d given up everything to save his family and never regretted it. He railed against anything that was wrong in his life. He yelled. He argued. He laughed. He loved me so sweetly and made my body sing when we were alone at night. He’d resisted our love the longest, not out of disinterest but because of fear. He hadn’t known how he could take care of me. Tommy had a sweet, mushy core of emotion he held away from everyone but me. His brothers didn’t even see it. How could his light have gone out?
Quinn. He blamed himself for everything. If there was something wrong in the universe, Quinn would come up with a way that he was responsible, how it was actually his fault. He was a genius. Abused by his father arguably worse than his brothers had been, he’d made huge mistakes. Sometimes he forgot his humanity. Or maybe he knew it better than the rest of us. I never could figure that out. Loving Quinn wasn’t always easy. Sometimes he made me want to throw things. Yet, he was always worth it. I’d wanted to know who he would be five years from now. Ten. Twenty. How he would change.
They were gone. The floor was cold, and so was I.
I stumbled getting up but managed it just the same. My husbands darted upward. Clay and Keith were wrecked. I could see it now. Not only had they lost their brothers, but they’d almost lost me. They’d waited—day after day—knowing that if I lived, they’d have to tell me what they just did. I had just taken hell and somehow made it darker.
“My apologies.”
Clay laced our fingers together. “Paloma, don’t you dare. Keith was serious. You don’t get to make this your fault. You’re barely awake. You’ve lost ten pounds at least. We don’t know yet the ramifications of everything that was done to you on that ship. No one is angry with you.”
I was.
I was very angry with me.
But then of course Clay wouldn’t be. Clay forgave everyone their flaws. He was the most romantic out of all my husbands and the most likely to push through an argument to win when he knew he was right, no matter the cost. He dreamed big, and he was, for the most part, our optimist. When Clay went dark, it was a terrible day. He never stayed that way very long. He was funny. When it came down to it, he was the peacemaker in the family. He was strong. Sure. Smart. Kind.
Keith would never blame me for anything either. He’d taken care of Quinn, probably since birth. When Quinn struggled with his emotions and grasping everyone else’s, Keith understood them instantly. He saw us all better than we did ourselves. He loved hard, fiercely. Once he loved you, he always did. He was a genius but quieter about it than Quinn had been. Keith liked sunsets. I was the only person who knew that. He couldn’t get enough of them.
He took my other hand. We just stood there for a moment.
Tommy and Quinn were dead. I swallowed. Tommy and Quinn were dead. It didn’t matter how many times I thought it, somehow it just didn’t sit.
“I wasn’t lying. I’m sorry to harp. But I can still feel them inside of me.”
Keith nodded. “I know. I can, too. That’s love, right? We always love them. For me, I love them as my brothers. For you, you love them the way you love me, the way I love you. That’s the thing about love. It doesn’t require them to have a pulse for us to keep doing it. I get it, Paloma. I can’t stand this. I was born two minutes before Quinn. I’ve hardly breathed air without him. And Tommy…” His voice broke, and it killed me.
I let out the sob I’d been holding back. To the left of me, Diana let out one of her own, throwing herself into the arms of Lewis and Cash, who both held her. I didn’t know which was which, and right then, I didn’t care to learn. Clay pushed against both Keith and me. He held us tight. “I’ve got you. I swear I do. I will figure out… somewhere, somehow where we can go and nothing can get to us again. Okay? Little brother? Paloma, love? Please believe me. I can’t make this right. I can’t fix it. But I will find us a place.”
Ari cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry, guys. I loved them, too. This is my fault. They kidnapped me, and the drugs… I don’t remember telling them things. I know I must have.”
“No,” Keith cried out to Ari. “This isn’t on you. This is on my father. Lay the blame for all of it on him, right where it belongs. What he did to you, his nephew, it gets to be part of the overwhelming responsibility right on his shoulders.”
“I miss them.” Ari looked away. “I always will.”
That was true. Ari was Tommy’s best friend and their first cousin. There wasn’t a person in this room who didn’t know loss. And yet, it did nothing to temper my tears. My knees gave out, and Clay caught me. In my grief, I was being selfish. Not forever, I promised myself. I would be there for Clay and Keith. They needed me. We had to survive this. Somehow.
Tommy and Quinn were dead.
Tommy McQueen
* * *
“Quinn? Still breathing, little brother?”
The drip of the water in the dungeon hell that had been my home for two months should have become background noise by now. It hadn’t. Drip. Drip. Drip. I wanted to scream. I was always cold, dirty, and the cough that had been a minor annoyance was becoming more pronounced.
I could get out of here. All I had to do was give my father what he wanted. I’d rather die. And he knew it. So, we stayed like this. Maybe forever. Or until the cough killed me. Which might not be too far in the future.
Quinn groaned in his cell. “What are you going to do if one morning I am not and I don’t answer?”
I should’ve said something snide. Make Quinn laugh. Instead, I choked on a sob. Fuck, I never cried except occasionally in the presence of Paloma because she never judged. “I’ll pretty much die, kid. You’re my brother. You and Keith were the babies. I can’t tell you what it was like after mom left… how I worried I couldn’t take care of you.”
My brother made a sound that told me he might be crying, too. “You were four. It wasn’t on you.”
“It was.” I leaned my head against the rock. “You could give in to Dad. I won’t judge. I’d even like it. Go get healthy above ground. I’d like you to do that. Please don’t die down here. Tell him whatever, and then go find our love. Let her make you warm again. Live your days like that. I like that image.
Do that, Quinn. Please.”
Fuck, I was losing my mind. I couldn’t seem to stop speaking. I needed my family to be okay. I loved them. They were why I did everything. I made everyone okay. Quinn had to get out of here.
“Tommy.” Quinn crawled toward the bars of his cell. I wasn’t sure how many more beatings either of us could take. My father wasn’t wasting med machines on getting us fixed up. “I didn’t want to tell you this.”
If Quinn wanted to keep something to himself, it couldn’t be good. “Tell me what?”
“They think we’re dead. Dad released some footage that is so real it would take a genius to pick apart, showing us shot and dragged through the streets. Their traitor in the resistance reported that Keith and Clay know. They think we’re dead. They believe it.”
I wouldn’t have fathomed that I could get any colder. But I did. If my brothers thought we were dead, they weren’t coming. I couldn’t blame them. I’d stay far from here too if I didn’t have a reason to come. “And Paloma?”
I didn’t know why I asked. It just seemed odd that Quinn had left her out of the description. Almost purposefully. And when it came to Quinn, most decisions were.
“She’s still in the med machine.” My brother put his head down on his knees and outright cried. Loud, sobbing sounds so unlike Quinn that for a moment I froze, unable to think, unable to breathe.
Quinn knew what I knew. If Paloma was still in the med machine all these months later, then the situation was dire. Almost no one came out of it alive after all this time. Eventually, someone, maybe Ari, would turn it off. They would let her die.
I put my head down and let my silent tears fall. If her star had gone out, how was the world still spinning? Didn’t the universe feel the lack of her? Didn’t the universe understand she was why the planets rotated, the suns shone, and the moons came out at night?
2
Space Food
One year ago
Two Days from the Meetup, Earth Standard Time
I chopped vegetables. Before we’d left Earth, I’d stocked up on them. The food my husbands kept stocked when they space traveled left much to be desired. If I did nothing else on this voyage to take away Sandler space from Garrison Sandler, I would keep us better fed. Cooking was my joy in life, and I was going to use it to be as helpful as I could. Unless I got in the way.
Then I’d stop. No, I had to stop thinking of myself that way. I wasn’t in the way. I was their wife. They wanted me here, whether I cooked or not.
“Hey, hot stuff.” Keith came in the room and goosed me right on the behind. I yelped and dropped the knife. He jumped and narrowly avoided getting struck with the knife.
“Keith.” I poked him in the chest. “Thank the universe it didn’t get you. That could have taken off your toe, and then you’d spend the night in the med machine. Don’t sneak up on me.”
He grinned like the whole thing hadn’t happened. “But your ass was right there, wife. And I just had to squeeze it.”
I never would have imagined I’d liked this kind of teasing, except I did. A lot. “Well, who am I to deny you the chance to pinch my tushy whenever you want?”
“Seriously. We’re married. I get to touch.” He winked. “That’s a fringe benefit. Besides, you know you love it.”
I did. I picked up the knife and set it in the sink. I tried to minimize my water usage on the shuttle. Everything drew power, and we might need reserves in battle. I hadn’t told anyone I was doing that, but I was.
“Did you just come out here to do that?” I was perfectly fine if the answer was yes.
“No.” He leaned on the counter. “I came out here because Quinn said you were afraid last night.”
I sighed. They did regularly talk about me, and it was just going to be that way. I supposed I could have asked Quinn and Tommy to keep that to themselves, but why bother? I didn’t want secrets between us.
“I was, and I still am, but I’m distracting myself. I might make weeks’ worth of food today, but I’ll get through it.”
He stroked a finger down the side of my face. “Why didn’t you wake me? I would have made you feel better. We were in bed together, and I fell asleep like an old person the second my head hit the pillow.”
Keith had been installing new systems in every ship going with us to Sandler space. Then he’d had to teach all the captains how to use them. We were all going to be better at phasing in and out of view. Our ships refracted light differently. He’d also set it up so we could communicate by bouncing off Sandler communications. They wouldn’t even know we were doing it. My genius husbands didn’t seem to ever see a task they couldn’t tackle.
I couldn’t blame him for being tired. “As your wife, part of how I love you, is letting you rest whenever you need it.”
He tugged me to him. I probably smelled like Mars’ onions. He didn’t seem to care. “There are lots of ways to rest. Lots of ways to take our minds off things. Cooking is great.” I knew the look in Keith’s eyes. He wanted me. And, by the universe, I wanted him, too. I really did. “But I could have done all sorts of things to you.” He kissed my neck, and I shivered with anticipation. “Taken your mind off any worry. You would have slept afterwards, and then you wouldn’t be so wired today that you had to make weeks’ worth of food to get through the long hours leading up to a battle.”
“Well…”
He cut off what I was going to say by flipping me around. I faced the counter. “Paloma, I want you to do something for me. I want you to be quiet. Not make a sound. If you moan, if you so much as sigh, we will be interrupted. And I want to fuck you against this counter.”
His harsh words made me instantly hot. Keith was so sweet most of the time. This was for my benefit, I knew it. That only added to how intense this was. “Okay, Keith.”
He patted my ass again. “Good girl.” He tugged on my leggings, and they fell down to my ankles. “You have on Sandler red undies? Fuck me. I love, love, love you.”
I had to smile. Yes, when I’d put them on that morning, I had known that if any of them saw me in it, they would really like it. Whenever I wore anything representative of their family, as though I was the perfect Sandler wife, the look turned them on. I hadn’t known how much they all missed touches of their history since they’d left that life. Red meant Sandler. My putting them on gave that back to them.
Keith tugged the panties down, and they fell with the leggings. Somewhere in the mess of clothes was the scorpion inked on my leg. Another Sandler sign. I was one of them from bottom to the top. Their future was my own, and right then, the third brother pressed a finger inside of me. He moaned in my ear. I couldn’t make noise, but he could? Still, I’d told him I wouldn’t, and so I wouldn’t. The silence would be hard, and I wanted to see to it that it happened. I did like a challenge and to follow Keith’s orders in bed.
Or in the kitchen.
He found my clit and stroked it, gently. With me, that wonderful bundle of nerves, less was usually more. I needed friction, but too much floundering around on it and I lost the mood. Small circles. Oh yes, Keith knew how to touch me. He really did.
I bit my lip. I wouldn’t make a sound. Was it possible to come quietly? I’d never done so before. I guessed I would find out.
Keith squeezed my ass with his other hand. When he spoke, it was a whisper again. “I love your ass, Paloma.”
I didn’t know if we really needed to be quiet. His brothers were all very occupied. I didn’t care. It added to the mood. He pressed against my clit, and I had to struggle not to moan. Yes, he had this down. He knew how I liked it. He was still fully clothed, but I could feel his hardness now fully pressed against my rear end.
He did like my ass. I smiled at the thought but did it silently.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.” His words, the profanity when he so rarely used it, the harshness of his tone, what he was whispering, it all added to the sheer heat of this encounter. “I dream about you even when you’re lying next to me, and the nig
hts you’re not, I wake up hard and aching like a fucking teenager.”
Wow. I gasped. My body quivered. I was going to come soon. This was really not going to take a long time. “I will never not want you. Until my dying day, Paloma. And what I want is for you to come right frickin’ now.”
I did. My body fell forward, and it was a good thing I held onto the counter. Not making a noise was painful. I wanted to cry out, I wanted to say his name over and over. But I didn’t. I breathed through it, exploding around his fingers as he expertly brought me to completion. I’d done it. I’d not made a sound.
He bit down lightly on my neck. “Good girl.”
I felt remarkably better. Even beyond my orgasm. My head was clear. I turned around slowly. “I didn’t make a sound.”
Keith raised his eyebrows. “I know.”
“Can you?” I pushed at his chest. “Can you be silent and fuck me?” I deliberately used the same language. “Right here on the floor?”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Sure. We do that in this family. We challenge each other. I met yours. Can you meet mine? Can you be silent, Keith?”
I found out he could. Keith really did like to meet a challenge.
A year later, Earth Standard Time
The Resistance Base
* * *
I walked out of the med bay into the hall, flanked on both sides by my husbands. My head was in a fog. I couldn’t think. I could barely walk. My body ached.
“Clay. Keith,” a voice called, and we stopped walking. Or at least I did. I think. I kind of jerked into Clay. I might not have stopped moving if that hadn’t happened.
A man I didn’t know rushed toward us. He was tall, dark haired, and inked everywhere I could see.
“Jackson.”
Keith obviously knew him. He and Clay had been here a month. They would have met people.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s the worst possible time. I need to get her coded into the system or she won’t even be able to get through doors. I’m sorry.”