Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Shawn presses a hand to his head. He’s consumed way too much beer to think straight.
“Yeah. Well, I just did.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, confused.
“Outside. I just realized it’s her.”
“Who’s her?” Shawn slurs.
Hayes grabs him by the shoulders to shake him. “Focus, Shawn. The girl from last night. The one who chewed out Jacob.”
“The curvalicious blonde,” he says, eyes darting toward me.
My shoulders tense involuntarily at the suggestion that anyone would chew me out. That girl must have been drunk or not into dick. Or maybe just a man-hater. There are plenty of those around. The spark in her eyes got me hard. Her hips and breasts and thighs had got me thinking the filthiest of thoughts. And her sassy mouth just got me wondering what it’d be like to silence her with my cock.
Hayes taps Shawn’s face like he’s trying to bring him back from unconsciousness. “Fuck, dude. Where the fuck did you go? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah. The girl from last night. I was just imagining sinking my dick between those thick…”
“The fuck?” I growl. There’s an unspoken rule that we don’t double dip where girls are concerned unless we’re sharing. I guess I didn’t get as far as dipping, but I still made a move, and I don’t like the idea of my brother trying it on with a girl who turned me down. If she liked him, that would be the ultimate fucking rejection. The dude looks exactly like me, except for the tatts and the moody scowl.
“That’s Riley, Shawn.” Hayes turns to me. “Jacob, that girl is Riley.”
Realization hits me like a trickle of cold water running down my spine. I noticed something when I first laid eyes on her. Something familiar but uncertain.
She can’t be Riley, can she?
I try to remember Riley when she moved out of our house. I don’t think we were there when she left. I think it happened while we were at hockey practice, and when we got back to the house, her room was empty. I remember moving my things into her room, relieved to have the house back to ourselves. I didn’t enjoy the way her dad tried to step into our dead father’s shoes. I didn’t like that he did a better job as a masculine influence in our lives. It just made everything harder, the grief, the emptiness, the guilt, the relief.
“I asked her name, and she wouldn’t tell me,” Shawn says.
“When?” I bark. I’d done the same thing at The Red Devil, but she disappeared afterward.
“The pool.”
“She told me her name is Beth,” Hayes says frantically.
“Elizabeth was her middle name,” Shawn confirms. How does he remember that when he’s drunk and she’s nothing but a ghost-memory to me? Hayes seems relieved she didn’t deceive him entirely, clasping the back of his neck with his big hand, shaken up by this revelation.
Shawn uses the wall to stabilize himself. “Shit man, I was fantasizing about her ass… getting my dick between her…”
“Me, too.” Hayes rubs his hand over his face and stares at the ceiling as though praying for celestial forgiveness. “Fucking Jacob hit on her.”
I did. I hit on her.
“And she knows who we are. She knows we’re her stepbrothers.”
“Used to be,” I remind Hayes. “Used to be.”
“Semantics.” Hayes paces, knocking into a girl dragging our center, Collins, toward the stairs, but he’s oblivious. “I told Forester that she’s my girl.”
“Why?” Shawn snort-laughs because it’s so unlike Hayes to go around claiming strange women, especially in front of arrogant jock assholes.
“He was hitting on her in the most disgusting way.”
“Of course he was.” The guy has a bad rep for being too forceful. He has no finesse when it comes to seduction.
“She kissed me,” Hayes says, rubbing his hand over the lower part of his face as though he can erase what he’s just said with the swipe of his palm.
“She what?”
“On the corner of the mouth.” He points to the very edge of his lips. It’s a spot that’s half-cheek, half-lips, but that still counts as unbrotherly, right?
“Why?”
“To say thanks for rescuing her, I guess.”
“She kissed you, and she knows you’re her stepbrother.”
“Ex,” Shawn corrects.
“Semantics,” I repeat. “We used to have breakfast together dressed in our PJs. She used to cross the hall in just a towel.” We also had two Christmases together, opening presents when she still believed in Santa. I wanted to tell her he wasn’t real. I wanted to spoil her innocent joy because mine had been stolen years earlier and watching her have what I couldn’t get back was like a nail through my temple, thudding like this fucking headache.
“I need to find her,” Hayes says. “Where the fuck is Malik?”
“Why do you want Malik?” I ask.
“His sister is her best friend.”
I remember them together at the bar, but didn’t think much of it then.