Intersections Read online

  In the kitchen, Luka had finished cooking. "It's ready. You said you were hungry. There's toast. Coffee. Bacon. Eggs. I can make oatmeal if you want it."

  "Oh, wow. No, thank you, that should all be more than enough."

  An involuntary groan leaked out of her, followed by a rush of saliva that usually signaled the rapid expelling of her stomach's contents. Food and puke had been inextricably linked in Tori's mind since early adolescence. Right now, all she could think about was digging into a platter of steaming, fluffy eggs covered in cheese the way Luka was making them. Downing a mug of coffee. Toast. Bacon, oh, Jesus fuck, bacon. She hadn't eaten bacon in years.

  Luka had just handed her a mug of steaming black coffee when a form loomed in the doorway. Taller even than Luka. Shoulders broader. Same head of shaggy black hair falling to his upper back, same wild eyebrows and square jawline. This brother's eyes were the dark shade of brown she'd expected Luka's to be.

  "This is Micah," Luka said without looking at the other man, not even a glance.

  "I'm Tori. This is...my baby," she said with a second's hesitation. "She doesn't have a name yet."

  Micah wore a pair of faded jeans riding low on his hips and an open flannel shirt that exposed the thick thatch of black hair on his chest and belly. His muscles rippled beneath it. He swung his head around, and Tori swore his nostrils flared.

  "Why doesn't it have a name yet?"

  It wasn't the oddest question to ask. She might have led with "who are you and how did you get here?" but maybe they had dozens of strangers show up on their doorstep in the middle of the night. Who knew?

  "I haven't decided."

  The big man strode across the kitchen with two long steps, bending over her before Tori could do anything. He hunched low to look into the baby's face. Tori caught a whiff of him -- the scent of pine needles, undercut with something less fresh. It reminded her uncomfortably that she smelled gross and the kid probably even worse.

  "She looks like a Katherine."

  "I'm definitely not naming her Katherine. Kathy was my mother." Tori paused. "How did you know that?"

  Micah straightened to fix her with a steady stare from those solid dark eyes. "How does anyone know anything?"

  Before she could reply, not even sure what she might have said to that, he'd turned on his heel and stalked across the room to stare over his brother's shoulder. With both of them facing away from her, it would've been difficult to tell them apart if she hadn't already known which was which. As though on cue, another brother came into the kitchen, followed on the heels by the fourth.

  Jackson, Declan, Micah and Luka, last name yet unknown. Not quadruplets, because the age differences were apparent even if the resemblances between them were so close it was difficult to tell them apart. Dressed almost identically, it was almost like a parody. Four huge men with wild hair and muscles on top of their muscles, looking like something out of a gay porn movie about lumberjacks. They probably all had rippling abs and sculpted butt cheeks.

  Only Luka had bright green eyes. She saw that clearly enough as one by one the other brothers bent to study the baby in her arms. Only Micah had offered an opinion about the name. Declan had touched the baby's head briefly with his fingertips, so quickly Tori hadn't had time to protest or worry. Jackson, the oldest, had stared at her without so much as the hint of a smile and said nothing.

  "You go ahead into the dining room with Mother," Luka told her as he lifted a big tray laden with platters.

  "I can help --"

  "Go," Luka said.

  In the dining room, Tori found the old woman in the same place she'd been ever since Tori first got here, and in a moment she understood why. She hadn't noticed, before, that Mother was in a wheelchair. An antique by the look of it, with a high wicker back that had looked like one of the dining room chairs until she rolled back a foot or so from the table as the boys came in. She was moving the planchette again. Slow circles, around and around. Every so often it would pause, perhaps to showcase a letter or spell out a word, but since the old woman wasn't looking down, Tori had no idea how she could possibly be figuring out any kind of message.

  Tori took the chair at the foot of the table, not sure if she'd be putting someone out of their usual place. None of the men seemed to mind. The brothers filled in the spaces quickly and began serving themselves without fanfare. They piled their plates high with food and dug in, falling on the food with wolfish intensity.

  Luka placed a dish in front of his mother, who barely pushed aside the Ouija board to make room for it. She gave the plate a baleful glance without lifting her fingers from the planchette. Tori paused, watching, as the plastic piece moved slowly toward the right.

  NO

  Tori's own plate had a scant portion of eggs and a single slice of bacon. Before leaving the hospital with her baby, she hadn't put more than a few bites of food in her stomach in...well, years, she had to admit. It had been years. This ravenous appetite, unquenchable and undeniable, wasn’t going to be satisfied with a few bites of egg and bacon, but she'd have to start slow or else she’d just sick it all up.

  She had to maintain her strength for Little Bit. Make sure her milk would come in hard enough to feed the baby. She couldn't be feeling lightheaded or nauseated from hunger all the time, not with the infant to take care of. For the first time in as long as Tori could remember, the idea of consuming food was nothing to fear but something to accept, embrace. It was necessity.

  The sudden rap of a fork against one of the china plates rung out. Heads turned at once. All of the men put their forks down. Heads hung, too.

  "Manners!" cried the old lady from her end of the table. "You were not raised in a barn! And we have a guest. Comport yourselves like the men I raised you to be, not like beasts."

  "Sorry, Mother." One by one, her giant sons mumbled variations of that.

  Mother gave a flick of a glance at the fork in Tori's hand. "Children without manners are a wound in a mother's side. Yours must have been wounded more than once or twice."

  Tori deliberately put the bite of eggs in her mouth to chew. She couldn't wait any longer. Her stomach had become shriveled and vacant, her hands on the verge of shaking. She had to eat.

  "My mother," she said around a full mouth of eggs and bacon, "usually said I was an unruly heathen who was going straight to hell."

  She hadn't realized how much noise all those men were making even without saying a word, until the room fell so silent she heard her own stomach growling. She looked up to find them all staring at her. Declan, Micah, and Jackson with narrowed eyes. Luka pressed his lips together as though to hold back a smile.

  Mother herself let out a low, rasping cackle and clapped her hands. "My, my, a slap would do that smart mouth some good, but I'm too far away and too old to make the effort. How refreshing it is to have another female at this table, I must say. Another two, in fact."

  She waved a hand with a frown at her sons. "Eat."

  Again, they all fell on their plates, but the gobbling and snorting was held in check. Nobody ate with their pinkies up or anything weird like that, but the atmosphere around the table definitely had become more genteel. Luka stood to pour everyone fresh mugs of coffee from the pot he brought in from the kitchen while Declan passed the cream and sugar. Nobody said much, but with every mouth except Mother's almost consistently full, Tori supposed that was part of having good manners.

  Tori ate as much as she could without overstuffing herself, then sat back with her sleeping daughter against her shoulder. "That was delicious. Thank you so much."

  Mother had barely touched her food. "You have some color coming back into your cheeks, but you're still far too pale. Eat more."

  "There's not enough left for us both, and you've eaten nothing," Tori said and went quiet at Mother's imperious gesture.

  "I'm an old lady with a finicky appetite. You have a child, you've just given birth, you're still bleeding. I can smell it," Mother said. "You need nourishment, and as a gue