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“No, I got it. Thanks, though.”
Reaching out to them was something I needed to do. If I wanted to work for them, I had to be man enough to ask.
We drove along the deserted freeway, the sound of the music from the radio and the wind the only sound for a while. That was how it was with Jack and me; we never needed to fill the silence. If it was quiet, we were cont
ent with it being so.
We could also talk to each other about anything, and there wasn’t any big decision I’d made in my life that I didn’t discuss with him, not that there had been many yet. He wasn’t just my brother; he was my best friend.
Jack reached for the volume button on the radio and turned it down a notch. “You gotta watch out for Cassie while I’m gone, okay?”
Déjà vu hit me, making me ask, “Watch out for her how?”
“Just make sure she’s okay and stuff. Check in with her. Don’t fucking let her walk anywhere alone at night,” he added, his voice turning bitter.
“Jack, I’m not her bodyguard.”
He shot me a murderous glare. “I know. She keeps telling me I’m crazy, but I’ll never fucking forget what that guy did to her. Or to you. I can’t stomach something like that happening again.”
“It won’t,” I said, trying to reassure him, but that particular topic was a lost cause.
“It can’t.”
“Don’t worry. Just because you’re gone doesn’t mean that I’m never going to talk to Cassie again. Hell, she’s the only person I do want to talk to.”
“The only person?” Jack’s anger bled out as quickly as it had come, and amusement glinted in his eyes when he cut them at me.
“Well, her and Melissa, okay? We hung out with them all semester. Why would that change?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m just saying don’t go crazy or anything, but make sure you make time for Cassie. She loves you. And I’d feel much better if I knew you were around.”
I scoffed. “Of course I’ll be around. I’ll be so around they’ll think I moved in,” I said, hoping to get a rise out of him.
“Watch it, little brother. I’ll still find someone to kick your ass if I can’t do it myself,” he shot back, but I didn’t believe him.
Not one bit.
New Digs
Jack followed the GPS’s directions, and a few hours later pulled the Bronco to a stop in front of a two-story house. It looked brand-new, and a hell of a lot nicer than our house back home. Not that Gran and Gramps’s place wasn’t nice, it was, but it was just a lot older and smaller than this one.
“This the place?” I asked through my shock. I had wrongly assumed that he’d be staying in some shithole with his teammates, and this was anything but.
“Apparently,” Jack said with a shrug before cutting the engine.
I gathered the mountain of empty fast-food wrappers we’d accumulated during the drive in my arms and walked them to the trash cans on the side of the garage.
“Looks really nice,” I said as I walked back toward the truck.
Jack scratched his head. “It does.”
The front door opened and three bare-chested muscular guys in baseball caps walked out, each holding a beer.
“Hey! You must be Jack,” the tallest one shouted, and Jack dropped his duffel to the ground before walking up the pathway to meet them.
“Yep,” he said, reaching out to shake hands. “This is my brother, Dean.” He indicated me with a nod.
“I’m Tyler, and this is Nick and Spencer. We’re glad you’re here, man. We’ve heard a lot about you,” Tyler said before walking over to me and extending his hand, and I gripped it tightly. “Nice to meet you, Dean.”
