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CHAPTER 1
Jesse
“Yo, Jesse. Earth to Jesse.” Sam snapped his annoying as hell fingers and leaned in with an annoying as hell look on his annoying as hell face. He had a pizza stain on the left corner of his mouth and his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. Probably still hungover from his drinking last night. And today was only Thursday. The guy seriously had no abstinence. “You’re rich now. When are you going to grow up and start adulting? You know? Getting a girlfriend? Getting married? Moving on? I’m tired of mom calling me up, pinning all her hopes for a grandkid on me. Never gonna happen. Need you to grow a set and take the pressure off me. Don’t know why she’s given up on you, but thinks it’s still going to happen for me.”
Jesse leaned back against the leather couch in his massive living room, a sweaty beer dripping into his hand, onto his lap.
Brothers. Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t live without…
Okay. Whoever coined that phrase was wrong. Dead. Wrong.
The first part was just about spot on.
Jesse Samson could definitely not live with his brother. He used to. Back in college, they shared a tiny apartment. Since Sam was a slob and never bothered to pick up more than his dirty underwear in the morning, sometimes turn them inside out, and put them back on, there were fights. Every single day. It wasn’t that he was OCD or anything. He wasn’t even a clean freak. It was just that he hated finding moldy pizza boxes all over the apartment. Food wrappers in his brother’s bed on the odd chance he braved the space to go in there for something of his the bastard had ‘borrowed.’ God, there was one day, when he’d been searching for his phone after falling asleep on their decrepit couch, when he’d reached in and pulled out a half-eaten burger covered in blue fuzz.
It was too much. The mess. The constant parties that Sam threw. The beer bottles littering every single surface.
He’d moved out and shacked up with his bestie. Who just happened to be a woman.
A beautiful woman. A sexy woman. A girl he’d known since they were in diapers. She was always just the girl that his parents made him hang out with because his mom happened to babysit her while her mom was at work, but on the first day of kindergarten, she became his best friend. She’d pushed him down the big metal slide in the playground and broke his glasses. Not on purpose. She wasn’t mean like that.
They were horsing around at the top of the slide, too big for their little britches, and after ten minutes of encouraging him to let go, she got tired of waiting and gave him a not so gentle shove. He went flying down that metal horror, a thing straight out of every five-year old’s nightmare.
Jesse remembered the slide was so damn hot that it burned right through his grass-stained jeans. He flew off the other end, seriously sprouted a pair of wings, and landed face down in the rocks. Yes. Rocks. Someone had the bright idea to fill the playground full of abrasive rocks. So yeah. Bit it good. Got a mouthful of sandy gravel and his glasses went flying. Broke the lenses right out of them.
He’d cried. He’d cried about his scraped palms and the gravel in his mouth. He’d cried with fear and pain. And she was there. Whooshed right down that slide after him, except with far more grace. She scooped him up into her arms and held him against her warm sunshine scented chest. The curtain of her dark, fine hair enveloped him, and she told him not to be scared. Told him he was a hero. That he looked like a bird. That she wouldn’t have been brave enough to go down if it wasn’t for him. Told him not to cry.
And he was done.
At five years old, he’d made a vow. Sydney or nothing.
Unfortunately, it was mostly nothing.
“So, I just met this really hot chick the other day,” Sam said slurring his words slightly.
Brothers. Can’t live without them. That was definitely not true.
He could definitely live without Sam coming over to his place a few times a week and insulting him if he could live without Sydney.
Sam has always been big, tall, blonde and athletic. Sam never had to wear geeky glasses or fill into hand me down shoes that were always just a little too big and made him walk funny. Sam never had to have his pant legs rolled up because they were a mile too long. Sam never had his cheeks pinched because he was ‘just too freakin’ cute.’
Sam was one of those homecoming, all American, quarterback types. Seriously. He was the high school team’s quarterback. He was homecoming king. His was pretty much one of those typical stories. Popular in high school. Had everything. Girls, friends, booze, a free ride in college. He liked to party, a little too much, blew it on the field, blew his scholarship, dropped out. Liked to live the glory days and hang out with his old buds every single weekend- made possible by the fact that they hadn’t moved on to bigger better things either, not even sixteen years after graduating.
