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Braxton clenched his fists. When he went to step toward me, it was to hear Bain say, “Don’t even think about it.”
Braxton turned his gaze toward Bain and said, “Why do you have to ruin everything?”
Bain crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Why do you have to break every single thing you have before you realize that what you had was good?”
There was a standoff for two point five seconds before Braxton hissed, turned and started across the street where I now saw his car parked in the shadows.
“For what it’s worth,” Braxton called over his shoulder, “Y’all are fuckin’ made for each other. Both of you thinkin’ you’re God’s gift to mankind when in reality, all you’re here on Earth for is to make other people miserable.”
He got into his car, started it up and then did a three-point turn before squealing out of the area.
“I just love him,” Bain said the moment the dust settled.
I snorted and turned to look at him. “I think it’s safe to say that you’re the smart one in this situation. I didn’t have to be with him, yet I was. You, on the other hand, have to accept him because he’s your brother.”
“Point to you,” he agreed. “Want to go grab ice cream?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Ice cream,” he repeated. “I thought you might want it before you start studying the night away.”
I looked at my watch.
If I started studying now, I would have exactly three hours to do it before I needed to go to bed. Because, unlike most college students, I didn’t thrive on anything less than a full eight hours.
“How about I make you a bowl here,” I suggested. “Because I don’t have the time to waste if I’m gonna get a decent amount of sleep tonight.”
“Deal.”
He followed me into my cramped little apartment.
Once upon a time, I’d planned on getting something bigger. Something that was also on the better side of town.
But that was before I realized that it made no sense to get something bigger and move, when I wanted to start building a vet practice. And would likely spend all my available time there.
“Hey,” I said as a thought occurred to me. “Do you think that it would be weird to add sleeping quarters to the office that Matilda and I want to build?”
I felt him at my back as I pushed through the door to my apartment, so close that I could feel his heat, but not so close that I could actually feel his touch.
It was torture.
“Well,” he said, “as long as the county doesn’t have a rule on living in a business—which some do—I don’t see why it can’t be done. Why? You don’t like this place?”
I could hear the facetiousness in his voice, so I knew he was teasing me.
However, I blatantly acted like I misunderstood him.
“I do,” I lied. “It’s a convenient location right next to the interstate. And it only floods sometimes when it rains too hard. Then there’re the neighbors. There’s this guy next door that sometimes has some questionable friends visit. But ultimately, he can be sweet. If not a little bit scary.”
“Which guy?” Bain growled. “The one in 2C?”
The apartment unit I was in had eight apartments. Four floors. Two apartments on each floor.
And 2C was definitely the man that I’d just been talking about.
So, it was obvious that the man’s scariness hadn’t escaped Bain’s notice, too. Which was kind of sad seeing as Bain had been here a total of three times. All of those very short visits.
Wonderful.
“That’d be him,” I drawled as I flipped on all my lights.
The stack of mail on the counter caught his attention, and he eyed it with barely contained disgust.
“Really?” he asked, reaching for it.
“Don’t you…” I said, watching as he moved to push it over. “Dare.”
He did, causing the entire neatly stacked pile to fall to the side, spilling letters all across the counter.
“Why do you keep that?” he asked curiously.
“Because it’s a habit,” I said. “My parents threw literally everything away. Bills. Important documents. Junk mail. Anything and everything went into the trash. I can’t tell you how many important documents were thrown away in my eighteen years of living there. But it’s now a deeply ingrained phobia that I’ll throw something away. Something important. So I just keep…”
“Everything?” He rolled his eyes. “This is a request for money for dead dogs in the Outback. You can toss it.”
I eyed it.
It wasn’t dead dogs.
It was asking for donations for feral cats in Australia. A growing problem over there that was quickly becoming a situation that could go very poorly.
“You can throw it away,” I said. “But open it for me? Make sure that it doesn’t have any cute stickers. I like to keep those.”
Before I knew it, I was scooping him up lots and lots of ice cream and he was going through my mail.
