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My heart lurches.
I catch his hand at his zipper and stop kissing him. “No. I don’t do that,” I admit breathlessly into his mouth.
Fuck.
Humiliation turns me into stone. The urge to get as far away from the boy who tongued me to a soppy, wet sack of sentimental goo, causes me to shove him enough to slide out from under his large,annoyinglyperfect physique.
“Woman, wait!”
I scramble along the trampoline, retrieving my jeans and shoes and bag as I go. I will be the one to leave this time, and I feel solid about it, too.
Wrestling my jeans on, I hop around, then bolt across the lawn, half expecting him to follow, half wanting him to, and disappear into the trees that I know lead to the outer streets. Dashing around me, dark green shrubbery cloaked in darkness. And the moon’s strobes cut like lasers through the bushy canopies.
Then I exit the bush, run barefoot two blocks under the streetlights to Chloe’s front door, and find the spare key under the ceramic Buddha statue that her mother thought was a paternity sculpture of a pregnant woman.
I am heading upstairs to Chloe’s room, my feet still propelling me fast. No one is following me, but the sense of running away from something is still keen inside my body.
Running away from what?
CHAPTERSIX
xander
I poptwo painkillers and swallow them dry as I say, “I sorted it out,” to the car speaker. I drive down the dark Connolly streets on my way back to our home—a big, modern, white construction that my brother Max designed for us when he couldn’t stand the sight of the bricks-and-mortar we grew up in. Couldn’t stand the sight of the bathtub where our mother soaked us in ice after a beating or the wardrobe that she locked me in for weeks. It’s a bullshit concept because ‘scars remind us that the past was real.’
Sir Shakespeare knew his shit.
Tragedy, sex, and mother issues.
Damn fucking right.
“During your mother’s wake,” Clay states through the speaker, his tone level as always. And I think about that girl from tonight, with the burnt-caramel-coloured hair and the best-tasting pussy I’ve ever licked. The essence of which is still lingering on my lips.
“Is that what it was?” I laugh because he adores pointing out the goddamn obvious. I wouldn’t usually mind. That’s just his way. But I’m feeling out of sorts. The moment that girl broke down, clawing at my own guard, still unsettling me. She was so open. Raw. And I’ve got a raging boner, too. “A sham is a more accurate term for what that was, bro.”
He sighs roughly, and I canfeelthe disapproval rush through the speakers. “You need to stop taking matters into your own hands. Going off on your own—”
“Yeah. Yeah.” I turn a corner, watching the black road get eaten up between my tyres. “Gotcha.”
“I involve you as much as needed. I use your strengths. As I do Bronson’s and Max’s—”
“My strength is in my fists, Clay.” I squeeze the steering wheel, flexing the muscles that rush the length of my arms and shoulders, wishing he could accept that.
“Your strength is in your damn head! Pity you don’t use it.” He lets a rare moment of emotion flare, and it slides straight through my chest. I lock my jaw. I hear the sound of his cigar crackling, and it’s fair to say the sham party is over, the other side of the phone otherwise quiet.
He breathes out the words with what I presume is smoke, “You should be taking the bar, Xander, not—”
“This again?” I smile at the black interior, shaking my head in the darkness that is only bathed in glowing displays from the dashboard. “I gave up on law the moment we lost Max’s case. You know this.” I swallow over the memories of the nights I spent scrutinising my brother’s conviction file, finding every loophole, every possible clause or exception that might bring him home early. I found nothing.
After that—I glare at the road—after I failed him and his wife and their daughter, the lecture halls made me itch. The lawyers all around me, every damn day, made my muscles want to break through my skin. I can’t be a part of a system that took over two years from my brother.
I draw myself out of those helpless feelings and say, “Is that why you leave me looking over paperwork while Bronson plays the muscles beside you? You’re punishing me for boxing instead of taking the bar?”
Except for the hum of the tyres rolling smoothly along the clean, pristine Connolly streets, the car falls quiet. I anticipate a lecture, although my brother can convey a lecture in a single sentence.
Then he finally says, “Xander, if I were punishing you for anything, you would not need to ask, you would know.”
Yep. One fucking sentence. Fucking over it, I say, “Look, bro, I broke his nose. He’s gonna leave the girl alone. You got fifteen K, and I got to avoid shaking hands with the city sycophants as they pretend to mourn a woman that her sons don’t even grieve.”
