The Rules of Engagement (Mercer #2)

RoE Chapter Two

The loft was dark when I unlocked the front door and let myself in.  It was a little awkward trying to get the key in the door and the door open with a six year old in my arms, but somehow I managed.  

Thirty seconds was all it took for Ryan to fall back to sleep once the car was on the road.  A minute later he’d gone back to snoring like a freight train.  I still marvelled over how such a noise could come from such a tiny body.

I flicked the light switch by the door and the living room and kitchen flooded with light.  My shoes click clacked on the hard wood floors as I crossed the open space, and I was just debating whether to dump Ryan on the sofa or put him to bed when Mycha appeared, having come from down the hall.

“Heard you come in,” he said, taking Ryan from my arms.  “How did it go?”

At six foot even, I had to crane my neck to meet his pale green gaze.  His short dark brown hair was standing on end; he had yet to win a battle with it.  When he was younger it had been long enough to curl and had been unruly at the best of times.  Now, with it only a couple of inches, it stood straight up like he’d gone and licked one of the electrical sockets.

But what had me catching my breath every once in a while when I looked at Mycha wasn’t his misbehaving hair, or the fact he’d outgrown me by far in the last four years.  No, it was how much he looked like Kalen that had my heart clenching painfully and my throat threatening to close over whenever the startling resemblance caught me unawares.  

Mycha was twenty, the same age Kalen had been when he’d died.  The two could have easily passed as twins if they’d been standing next to each other right now.  Same height, same build.  Mycha had really filled out, his shoulders broad, his arms and torso defined, his legs long and sturdy.  They shared the same bone structure in their faces; both boys had straight, aristocratic noses, strong angular jaws, and defined cheek bones.  

The only major things that separated them were their eyes and hair.  While Mycha’s eyes were the palest of greens, Kalen’s had been the brightest of blues, and Kalen had been spared Mycha’s unruly dark brown hair, instead having had straight black hair. 

Working past the ache in my chest and the lump in my throat, I forced a smile.

“Do you mean how did it go before my instructor told me I couldn’t possibly hurt him, or how did it go after I kneed him in the groin and sent him straight to his knees?”

Mycha let out a bark of laughter, then stopped abruptly before he woke Ryan.  Lowering his voice, he said, “I’m guessing you’re not his favourite student then.  Did he make you leave the class in a last ditch effort to salvage his pride?”

He started for the hall, and I trailed after him, frowning in thought.

“No actually, he took it rather well.  Or, at least, he was more concerned with his throat than his crotch.”

We reached the first door on the right and Mycha pushed it open with his booted foot.  Ryan shared a room with his sister Lucky.  It was nothing special, but it was a definite step up from the last place we’d lived in.  For starters, they each had their own bed as opposed a ratty mattress on the ground.

Large enough for a single bed on each side of the room as well as a bureau either side of the door, there was just enough spare space in the middle to prevent an all out war between the two of them every time they sat down to play.  I’d even gone to great lengths to stick duct tape to the carpet, creating a clear line down the centre, declaring the left side Ryan’s space, and the right side Lucky’s space.  

Since then, I’d only had to give about three thousand lectures on respecting each other’s personal space; Ryan had a tendency to throw his toys on Lucky’s side just so he could step over the tape to retrieve them and annoy her in the process, and Lucky had taken to hanging her pictures on the wall over Ryan’s bed, crying whenever he tore them down and screwed them up.