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Fuck my life.
“You're needed at the garage next week, son.” I rolled my eyes as I walked through the door, my gaze swaying to the balding, portly figure rising from the couch.
“Fine,” I muttered, going straight to the fridge and grabbing a can of soda before taking a long swig. Didn’t want a break anyway.
My dad, who was actually my stepdad, drew up beside me and opened the fridge door I'd just closed, grabbing another can of beer. Our eyes met when he turned, and I half-raised a brow.
A beefy hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing. “This is my last one.”
I inclined my head in acknowledgement. Brett's hand clapped my back briefly before the weight of it disappeared and his heavy footsteps retreated down the hall.
Brett Renner married our mom when I was three and Owen six. He’d treated us like family from day one, even welcomed us into his home, this very trailer. It had seemed like a mansion back then. One of the biggest in the park with three bedrooms, a kitchen, diner. I could remember walking into my room—my own room—eyes wide as saucers, a huge smile splitting my face.
Brett had been a massive upgrade from both Owen’s dad, and mine. The former had knocked my mother up at sixteen, and they’d lived with his parents until he’d impregnated another girl two years later. Mom had packed up and left… with the guy she’d been seeing on the side. So, not quite the wounded party. Less than a year into that relationship, I came along. But my sperm donor hadn’t managed to hold her attention for much longer. Mom fell for Brett when she met him serving drinks in a bar, and it was bye-bye bio-Dad. He'd never looked for her, or me.
Things had been good here for a while. Brett ran a successful garage, Mom had waitressed at the local highway diner. O and I had made friends easily. Life had been stable for six years. Then, for reasons my mom never fully explained, she'd split. Took off for work one day and never came back. A postcard arrived a couple of weeks later saying she'd had to leave and she was sorry, but she wanted her boys to know how much she loved them. Really, Mom? If you love your boys, you fucking stay with them to tell them in person.
Her diner cronies had already spilled her sordid tale to Brett by that point. Poor guy had been terrified she might have been kidnapped or murdered, but nope. Old habits die hard with my mother. She'd been banging some rich guy behind Brett's back for months and they'd taken off. She was ready for another upgrade. This time without her kids.
So, here we were.
Brett drank like a fish and we butted heads at times, but he’d taken on two young kids who weren't biologically his, despite the fact we probably served as constant reminders of the woman who cheated on him. If that was true, he’d never let it show. Instead, he’d fed and clothed us, sat down to help with homework, changed our names to his, and put our names on his garage.
The guy had been more of a parent than any of the assholes who’d brought us into this world. And every time I thought about it, I choked. There wasn't much that got to me, but that did. I'd never told him, obviously. We were guys; we knew that shit without putting words to it. But, yeah… Brett Renner was more than a step-dad.
Brett's head popped out of his door, and my eyes zipped to his.
“Your brother home tonight?”
“Doubt it. He's at Gwen's.”
He nodded once. “I'm turning in. Lock up before you head to bed, son.”
“Sure,” I muttered with a two-fingered salute.
His lips curved into a warm smile before his door closed, clicking into place with a faint clunk.
Bringing the can to my lips, I tossed my head back. Thoughts of a stubborn-ass blonde filtered through my mind, clogging it up like spam.
Riley Mason.
I first saw her when she was eight years old. Leon and I spotted her, a little sprite of a thing, sitting on the grass outside her trailer, lacing up a pair of battered purple sneakers. She seemed fucking ethereal, even then, with her curly halo of straw blonde hair, tiny heart-shaped face with a light spattering of freckles dotting her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, and the softest sweet pink lips. Then she'd looked up. Clear green eyes stared right at me. I remember thinking she was a genuine angel.
She still looked like heaven—the curls had mellowed into loose waves, and her green eyes had darkened slightly—then she opened those pouty, plump lips, and all kinds of venom spewed out. That was probably what I liked most about her. She never blew smoke up my ass, and she didn't sit back and take my shit.
At nine, I'd been too preoccupied with video games and football to pay the new girl too much attention, but she’d snared Leon from that first look. He'd chased around after her ever since. By thirteen, I’d started to view her subtle curves and beautiful face differently, but at that point, Leon was crazy about her. I hadn't pursued her, but I'd never been able to resist her completely.
I'd spent the past few years provoking her, taunting her, anything to get a reaction. The spark of fire that flashed in her eyes whenever I pissed her off, the pink blush that crept over her cheeks when she got all flummoxed and worked up, the tremble that traveled her body when she was trying and failing to hide her reaction to me. She didn’t look at any other guy the way she looked at me, and I fed off that shit like some kind of incubus. She got off on it, too. I knew she did. Which made it all the more difficult to understand her need to put a brick wall between us.
A vivid image replayed in my head—of Riley backed up against the fencing, her eyes wide with want, body quivering with desire. I inhaled roughly, tampering down the urge to tear through the park and
storm her trailer. That wouldn’t work. Not with Riley.
I pressed the cool aluminium to my mouth and drained the can, wishing like hell I had a clue what the fuck went on inside her head.
Eleven
Riley
