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"So?" she asked, brows drawn together.
"So, the last time I brought a nice girl home, you scared her off by telling her that I was a fucking enforcer after, I might add, demanding I bring a date in the first place."
She rolled her eyes at that. "That doesn't mean that I don't like nice girls. It meant that one was boring and couldn't handle the truth."
"Dusty used to be a kindergarten teacher. Not a biker like Lea or a phone sex operator like Fee."
"Kindergarten teacher, huh? She must want kids. Your dad will love hearing that."
"Jesus Christ, don't start planning our wedding," I snorted, shaking my head.
"Look, she's agoraphobic and, from what I hear, involved with some unsavory guys. That's interesting enough for me."
"Well, for the record, it warms my fucking heart that you approve of a woman I am not currently and will not be dating."
"Who aren't you dating?" Lea's voice asked suddenly, making me jerk and look toward the doorway where I found her standing in skinny black jeans and a white sweater, her long dark hair pulled away from her striking face.
My brother had done well for himself. Better than he probably deserved. Luckily, the fuck knew that and treated her accordingly.
"The pretty shy neighbor girl," my mother supplied, winking at her.
"Oh her. I lost fifty on that. Thanks for not closing," Lea said, giving me a wicked smile.
"First, she's not shy. She's agoraphobic. Second, stop fucking betting on my romantic life and you won't lose money."
"Fee is still in," Shane said, walking up behind Lea and wrapping his arms around her middle, leaning down so his chin rested on her head. "Apparently, as she lectured me for about an hour when I told her about the bet, we were all idiots for betting so close. Guess 'cause of her old issues, she understands this Dusty girls' deal better than us."
My brother Hunter's (the only one of us who didn't still enforce) wife, Fiona, had a truly fucked up childhood that left her unable to be in her apartment alone at night when Hunt first met her. As such, she either went out and drank the pain away or stayed in and etched it into her skin. She slowly recovered and had Hunt tattoo over all her old self-harm scars, wanting to erase them, move on from them. But I could definitely see how she could understand Dusty better than the rest of us.
"Yet she still bet on it," I said, annoyed for no good reason. We bet on fucking everything.
"Maybe she thought two shut-ins like you and her would work out fucking perfectly," Shane laughed.
"Jesus Christ. I'm gonna need another of these to deal with you all tonight," I said, going back to the decanters and pouring myself another. I was going to need five of them to deal, to be honest.
My family, while they loved each other, really, really liked torturing one another when they got some kind of dirt on them.
I was the one they just so happened to have dirt on that month. I was praying like fuck Mark got his car keyed by some chick or Eli went batshit crazy again sometime soon so they would lay off me.
Until then, I had to grin and bear it.
That task was made infinitely better when Fee and Hunt came in with three ecstatic girls wanting to know what Santa brought them to Grandma and Grandpa's house.
That was until after dinner when the kids ran off to play with their new stuff, leaving all of us adults a little drunk around the table having coffee.
Then I was a prime target again.
"Seriously, you pull a save-her-life and still haven't gotten anywhere?" Mark asked, smirking.
"Wasn't saving her life to get into her pants, man," I said, reaching for my coffee and taking a long swig.
"No, but it might have been a good segue in that direction," he added with a chuckle.
"What's the problem, Mark, you're not getting enough tail so you have to live vicariously through me?"
"The tail I get is not under discussion right now. We're talking about your lack of tail. Quite frankly, we're..." he started, trying like hell to say it with a straight face and failing epically, "we're worried about you, bro."
I laughed a little humorlessly at that.
"Just resign yourselves to losing your fifty bucks and move on."
With that, the conversation at least did.
Everyone turned their attention to asking Shane and Lea about grand babies and nieces and nephews, saving me some sanity until at around ten that night, we all finally shuffled out and headed home.
As I walked down my hall toward my apartment, my focus was mostly on Dusty's door, thinking back to the sad, envious way she had looked at me when I had talked about my Christmas with my family. It was something that I was so used to that I didn't even think twice about anymore. All my family gatherings were loud, wild, hectic, overwhelming.
