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Okay, good news. I didn’t sleep with him.
I expect myself to settle, to fall into the embrace of relief and breathe again. I mean, I should be happy nothing happened between us. Thrilled, even.
But for some reason, I just feel even sicker.
“You don’t need to feel bad or guilty, okay?” Ansel insists.
His brown eyes are worried, and I get sucked so deep into them that I forget to answer.
“Okay?” he asks again.
“Okay.” I nod to ease his discomfort. “You didn’t have to give me your bed.”
He shrugs. “It’s the only one in the house. I never got around to putting anything in the other bedrooms.”
I manage a half smile.
“Now, let’s just enjoy our breakfast, and when you’re ready to go home, I’ll give Hank a ring.”
“Okay,” I repeat and lift a piece of bacon to my mouth for a bite.
“But I should make it clear,” he continues with a secret smirk, “if you start going on and on about how awesome you think my brother is again, I might as well just give Hank a call now.”
An abrupt laugh escapes my throat, and a bite of bacon shoots out of my mouth and onto the table. “Oh my god, I didn’t mean to do that.” I cover my mouth with my hand about two seconds too late, and it only makes me laugh harder.
“Well, shit,” Ansel mutters through an amused chuckle. “You don’t have to spit your food out over it. I mean, I guess I can at least listen to what you thought of the concert…”
I giggle-snort. “Just eat your breakfast and forget that ever happened.”
“Okay, but before I do that, there’s something I need to do…” He grins and grabs a fresh paper towel from the kitchen counter.
Two seconds later, that damn paper towel is tucked into my sweater like a bib.
“There.” The handsome jerk grins. “Perfect.”
And in an instant, I go from anxious and confused to smiling and laughing my ass off.
All because of him.
God, what is this man doing to me?
Ansel
“Look who finally decided to show up! And only twenty minutes late!” Bram bellows from inside my mom’s house the second I open the front door. He can’t even see me, but already, he’s laying into me. “Come inside, sweetheart, and grace us with your presence!”
I laugh even though I’m the butt of the joke.
In my defense, I didn’t mean to be late, but my mom and Neil’s house is an hour outside of the city, and I had a meeting with my accountant that lasted longer than I expected.
I take my boots off just inside the door—a rule of my mother’s—and pad across the hardwood floor of the entryway in my socks as I make my way inside the house.
“Ansel.” My mother’s gentle voice is music to my ears, and I smile when I find her standing in the kitchen, setting a pot roast on a serving platter.
“Hey, Mom.”
“It’s so good to see you.” A smile lights up her face, and faint laugh lines make their appearance around her mouth. She steps toward me and wraps me up in a tight hug. “We’re just about ready to eat.”
“Pretty sure you mean, we are ready to eat, but we’ve been waiting on Ansel to get here,” Bram chimes in, and our mom scowls toward him. “Guy gets his sight back, starts to paint again, has one successful show, and forgets all about the little people.”
“Stop being so ornery, Abraham.”
“Yeah, Abraham,” I tease. “Stop being such a prick around your mother.”
“Ansel. Behave.”
Thirty-four-years old and Della never hesitates to knock me or Bram into line.
The thought of it makes me smile. Even when you’re an adult, a grown-ass fucking man, you can still count on your mom to put you in your place.
She may have a kind, sweet face and the voice of an angel, but if someone pisses her off, she’ll go from zero to rage in five seconds flat.
She also runs a tight ship, and I have no doubt raising two rowdy, asshole boys only contributed to that.
My stepdad Neil walks into the kitchen and gives me a hearty pat on the shoulder. “Good to see you, son.”
“You too, Neil.”
Neil Wallace has been my stepdad since I was ten years old.
My mom and dad went through a messy fucking divorce when Bram was seven and I was nine, and thankfully, she met Neil about a year later.
He is the complete opposite of my dad.
Where Cal Bray is a self-involved, work-focused, money-hungry CEO and mostly absent from our lives, Neil is loving and family-oriented and supportive and would do anything for me, Bram, and my mom.
The last time I spoke to my dad was about three years ago, and our conversation was short and distant and reaffirmed the status of our relationship—we don’t have one. And before that, it had been over two years since we’d spoken, and his urge to contact me stemmed from the accident.
