Revealing My Secret Identities! My Bros Are Speechless! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Four Flights

Lou and her new brothers carry her trunks up four flights, and Lena hides who she is. Morning brings the stock drop and Lexi stepping out of an SUV in Lena's jacket.

Six weeks.

They had known for six weeks, and they had let me blow out candles at my own birthday dinner.

I read Done, boss again and found I was gripping the laptop so hard my thumbs hurt.

Somebody knocked on the closet door twice, softly.

"It's open," I said.

A big man in a faded work shirt stood in the doorway with his cap in both hands.

His neck was sunburned, and his boots had been scrubbed clean for this.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Lou."

I stood up and put my laptop behind my back.

"I'm Lena."

"I know," he said. "I mean, I know that's what they called you. We can sort out the rest later."

He looked at the mattress, then at the bulb, and his face went red.

"This was supposed to be better. The landlord's been promising to paint it since the spring. I only had a day's notice."

"It's fine," I said.

It was not fine, and we both knew it.

He nodded and turned the cap around once in his hands.

"You hungry?"

I had not eaten since the envelope.

"Yes."

"Good. Sean's burned the garlic, but there's plenty of it."

Two young men were arguing in the hall.

The first, tall and heavy through the shoulders, had hauled my other two trunks up the last flight and set them down without a sound.

The other, lean and grinning, was hugging the one I had left on the landing.

"This one weighs more than Cal," he said.

"It does not," said the big one.

"What's in it, a body?"

"Books," I said.

They both stopped talking.

The lean one set the trunk down very gently.

"I'm Sean," he said. "That's Cal, he doesn't talk much until he's had a sandwich. We're the brothers. It's a lot, I know. Say the word and we'll go stand in the stairwell."

"Please don't," I said.

He grinned.

Cal looked at me, then at the trunks, then at his father.

"You gave her my room?"

"Your room has a window," Lou said.

"That's the point. This one's a closet."

"Cal."

"I'm just saying a closet has no window."

"I've never had a closet that was mine," I said.

That was true, and a strange thing to say, and Cal stopped talking and went to find me a lamp.

Supper was spaghetti with too much garlic, eaten at a table with one short leg.

Sean kept a folded napkin under it and nobody mentioned it.

Lou asked me nothing about the Thornquists.

Cal asked if I wanted the end piece of bread, and when I said yes he looked very pleased.

Sean asked what I did all day.

"Computer work," I said.

"Like a job?"

"Like a freelance thing. It pays okay."

"That's very vague," Sean said.

"It's very boring."

"I'm a line cook. I can handle boring."

"I'll tell you everything when I'm ready," I said, and heard how rude it came out. "Sorry. It's been a long day."

Lou put down his fork.

"You don't owe us a story, kid," he said. "Eat."

I ate.

When I washed my plate, Cal took the sponge out of my hand and said I was a guest, and then frowned at the word.

"You're not a guest," he said. "I meant, sit down."

I sat down.

At nine o'clock Sean carried a space heater into the closet and plugged it in.

At ten, Cal mounted a clip lamp on a nail beside the mattress and checked it twice.

At eleven, my laptop pinged under the blanket.

Lantern's ad dashboard was bleeding red.

Thornquist Holdings had been off our network for five hours, and its online sales had dropped by a fifth.

I lay in the dark and listened to the three of them whispering in the kitchen, trying not to wake me.

Sean said, "Did she say books?"

Cal said, "Yeah."

Lou said, "Leave her alone, boys."

I fell asleep with the lamp on.

In the morning Sean was at the table with his phone held out in front of him.

"Cal, look at this. Some big hotel company in Manhattan lost ten million dollars overnight. Everybody on the app's losing their minds."

Cal didn't look up from his coffee.

"Rich people fight with each other," he said. "Not our business."

"It's a dumb business," Sean said. "They have a ton of money and they still can't keep it."

I put cereal in a bowl very carefully.

"Ten million," Lou said slowly. "That's a lot of roofs."

I did not say anything, which was one more thing I was bad at.

A horn blew outside, long and loud.

Sean went to the window.

"Whoa," he said. "There's a black SUV double-parked in front of the laundromat."

A car door opened.

Someone small stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up at our building.

She was wearing a cream jacket I knew by heart.

It was my jacket.

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