“Twelve. I could not see a thing, but I was confident you were giving off kiss-me vibes, so I went for it.” I rub my noggin. “Ended up with a bulge on my head instead of in my pants.”
Melody throws her head back and laughs. “I thought the same thing…” Her nose screws up. “The kiss-me vibes, not the bulging seams. That must have been why we knocked heads. We were both coming in for landing at the same time.”
“You wanted to kiss me back then?” Nothing but shock reflects from my eyes.
“Yes, BJ. God, yes. I have wanted to kiss you since the day you risked death to kiss my cheek in front of my father.” Her eyes shine with happiness when the memory filters through her head. “I tried a few times, but we were either interrupted, or Madden and Phoenix had me convinced I would get cooties.”
Even pissed about my brothers’ interference, I laugh. “They had me convinced of the same thing, too.” I step even closer to her, making us one. “I guess we have the same cooties now, so it won’t matter how often we kiss.”
“I guess we do.”
She smiles up at me, her lips only sliding over her teeth when I arrow my mouth toward hers. I pull her closer with an arm around her back before sealing my mouth over hers. She opens up immediately for me, moaning when our tongues tangle.
This kiss proves our first kiss was merely a preview on how perfect they’ll be if we keep practicing them. It’s a deep, soul-encompassing embrace full of open rawness and compatibility, both sweet and sexy with plenty of tongue and even more passion. It turns what should be a simple embrace into something much more voracious. Just like last night, hands wander, teeth collide, and we land on the bed with a thud. Except this time, Melody groans in pain when my erection digs into the fly in her pants instead of moaning in pleasure.
“Sorry. Still sore?”
It kills her to do, but she jerks up her chin.
Before I can assure her I’m happy to wait until however long it takes for her to heal, a second wave of boot-stomping sounds up the hall. This one arrives with a shouted voice I’m all too familiar with. It’s Melody’s dad.
Fuck.
I dive up from my bed, only just unpinning Melody from it when her father barges through my reinforced door, the flimsy chair I lodged under the door handle no match for his big burly frame. He startles when he realizes I’m naked, but with his panic higher than his sorrow for bursting into my room unannounced, his expression remains neutral. “Get dressed. Melody is missing. I thought she took Socks for a walk, but I checked all the outbuildings, they’re empty…” His words trail off when Melody shyly waves at him from the corner of my room.
Unlike me, she’s dressed, but she doesn’t need to be covering her private parts with her hands like me for her father to understand the motivation behind her disappearance. My room reeks of steamy sex, not to mention the lusty glint in Melody’s wide eyes. Even a senile man would understand what was happening here.
“Daddy!” Years of boot-camp training ensures Melody wedges herself between her father and me before his fists can rain down on me, but no amount of endurance stops his scorn.
“She’s seventeen!” he roars like I’m unaware her birthday is coming up next month. “But even if she wasn’t, you’re supposed to be protecting her. Not… not…”
He glares at me like he wants me to fill in the gaps. I keep my mouth shut. I’m not stupid. He’ll kill me if I spell out what we did.
When my silence doubles the width of the vein in his neck, I stammer out, “I love her.”
“No!” His one word is so violent, you’d swear he spoke ten dozen words. “You can’t love and protect her. It isn’t possible.”
Melody cranks her neck back to read my lips when her father’s words are spoken too fast for her to get the gist of what he’s saying. “Yes, it is. You love Wren, and you protect her.”
“Now. I didn’t back then.” His words physically shunt Melody. She didn’t hear what he said, but the hurt in his voice was felt more than heard. “I failed because I became slack.” His tone exposes he truly believes he’s at fault for the maniacs who brutalized and tormented his family all those years ago. “She was hurt because of me.” His wide, tormented eyes lower to his daughter, who looks very much like her mother. “I won’t let the same thing happen to you.”
When he grips the top of Melody’s arm to drag her out of my room, Melody slings her head back my way. “I am sorry,” she mouths, her lips quivering.
“It is okay,” I sign back. “I love you.”
I only see her sign, “I love,” before she’s yanked into the crowded corridor filled with the frozen bodies of most of my family.
When the back porch screen door slams shut a few seconds later, I rake my fingers through my hair. It exposes me to my brothers and mother who are stunned into silence in the hallway, but I don’t care. Nothing will beat the embarrassment Melody is about to face when she’s forced to explain to her mother why she was dragged out of my home at eleven in the morning, and I’m not going to mention the words her father shouts while bridging the gap between our properties.
11
BRANDON
“W hat’s the go?” Joey nudges his head to Mr. Gregg standing guard in the corner of the room. Although he’s deep in conversation with my mother, his narrowed gaze is rapt on me. It’s been that way all afternoon. He is pissed he’s here, but no amount of muscle was going to stop Wren from visiting Joey before his operation this afternoon. Anywhere Wren goes, Mr. Gregg follows. Mercifully, that logic also applies to his daughter.
Melody sits on the younger generation side of Joey’s hospital room, but she’s kept her distance, untrusting that her dad won’t restart the fight he didn’t get to finish this morning. Her wet hair reveals she has showered and changed since I last saw her, but the hot water did little to remove the tearstains on her cheeks. They’re even more vibrant than the ones her face was wearing this morning.
I’d give anything to block her ears and count to ten like I did when she was upset when we were kids, but my brother’s hospital room when he’s minutes from going into life-saving surgery isn’t the right place, so instead, I continue stalking her from afar.
