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I couldn’t help my glare as I stalked over to her. I put my hand under her chin and gently forced her face up to look at me. “Don’t ever call yourself that again. Do you hear me, Casey? Everyone has moments of weakness. You obviously had something spook you, and it shook you badly. From what Dr. Tom said, you had been nervous for a while. Did you feel like you were being watched? Followed?”
I could feel her neck convulse as she swallowed hard. Her eyes got that glassy sheen again, and she stared up at me silently.
“Casey.” Brent’s growl came from beside us as he moved in closer. “Answer him.”
Her eyes went to him, then back to me swiftly. “I, uh. Yeah, I felt like I was being watched.” She jerked her head back and glared at us both. “But I don’t see what right you have to question me about it.”
Brent took another step closer. “We have the right dollface because we want to make sure our girl is safe.”
I cleared my throat before he could say anything else and reveal what our intentions were. We had to ease her into it slowly, not shove her head first while she was still raw from her emotional trauma. “We are worried. Look, we already discussed you coming to stay with us, and I think now would be a perfect time for you to come to our home. We can keep you safe. When you are ready, you can tell us all about what spooked you and why. But not until you’re ready. Okay, sugar?”
Her shoulders dropped, and her expression lost the look of defiance that she had been so bravely wielding. “I—” She looked off into the distance, and I could imagine she was weighing her options. Get back on the bus and keep running? Or come home with two strangers that offered her safety. I could see the moment she made her decision, and the tension that had been a ball inside me let go, allowing me to take my first relaxed breath since Dr. Tom’s phone call. “Okay.” She looked down at the floor, but instead of looking defeated, she looked relieved.
“Okay, what? I have to hear it, dollface.” Brent stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with me.
She looked back up, a small smile playing around her beautiful lips, even as they trembled slightly. “Okay, I’ll become a guest in your home. I accept your offer.”
Eight
BRENT
The momentthe words left her lips, I wanted to shout, to rush her and wrap her in my arms. To kiss her. I did none of that. Instead, I took a page from Ethan’s book and pasted on a grin. “Good girl,” I practically purred, delighting in the pink that tinged her cheeks at the words.
I took her suitcase by the handle again, and this time, I didn’t stop until I was at my truck, lifting it into the backseat of the dual cab. I closed the door firmly and turned around to see she was back to being shy, but hadn’t reverted to reluctance. If she had, I didn’t know what I would do with my sheer frustration. I had never been so eager for anything in my life. Ethan had always been there for me, always ready to fight my demons with me. This, not knowing if our futures would include her… it was killing me.
“Ready?” I didn’t give her a chance to back out, just opened the passenger door and lifted her by the waist, depositing her in my truck. I wanted nothing more than to run my tingling hands over her body, but I would settle for knowing we were finally getting her into our home. It was the first step in reaching our forever together.
I shut the door after reaching across her body to buckle her in, hiding my grin at the adorable squeak she let out at my touch. I turned to face Ethan, taking in his relaxed posture and the grin that matched mine. Yeah, we were both beyond relieved at this first step.
I stalked over to him and grabbed him by the back of the neck, and slammed my mouth against his in a brief kiss that held a promise of what I wanted to do with him later. I yanked back and stared into his honey eyes before smirking and stepping back, letting my hands fall from his body. “Love you.”
I turned around before he could say anything and stalked to the driver’s side of the truck. It wasn’t that I didn’t like saying the words. Ethan knew I loved his sexy ass and had since we were teens. I was just uncomfortable with them. My home life had been nothing but fucking shit, shaping me into the man I was today. There was no love in our house. There was only filth and hatred. Ethan understood that, and he understood me.
I turned the key, fired up the engine, and backed out of the small parking lot, feeling Casey’s eyes on me the entire time. Once we were a mile down the road and too far away from the bus station for her to change her mind, I let the tension I’d been hanging onto out with a heavy breath.
“You two are cute together.”
I turned my head so I could glance at her out of the corner of my eyes, seeing her wistful smile. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. How long have you been together?”
I grunted, turning back to the road as she played with the hem of her top. “Since high school. We were competitors, and then we became friends.”
When Ethan had seen past the hard exterior I’d built for the world, somehow seeing the pain underneath. He had insisted I talk to him. He was the first person to have ever shown any concern for my well-being. Growing up, none of my teachers had ever seemed to notice all the bruises, or they just didn’t care to. Ethan, though, he cared. It took our rivalry from being the best on the team to being a duo that worked together to make an unstoppable pair on the field. By the time we had made it to our junior year, we had been more than friends and didn’t give one solitary fuck what anyone thought about it. The couple of times someone thought to give us shit, they learned real quick that we would beat acceptance into their shallow little brains.
“Competitors?”
“Yeah, we were both on the football team since our freshman year. We were both damn good and always tried to outdo each other on the field. Once we became friends, we started working better as a team and became unstoppable. Turns out, working together does more for your stats than working against each other.”
Her little snort had me grinning and glancing at her again. The sun was shining through the window and lit her hair up. It made the dark blonde strands shine with every shade of gold you could imagine. It took my breath away.
Both of us knew we liked girls. We just hadn’t had time for them when we were freshmen. Or we were just too awkward to get involved with one. I knew I held back because my head was fucked up. Falling into each other after spending our days and nights hanging out at his house, and later, taking his car out for joyrides when we got a bit older, was as easy as slipping on your favorite pair of jeans. Or slipping them off.
“So, you became friends, and then…”
I chuckled. “What do you want to know, dollface? You want to know which one of us took the plunge first?”
Her cheeks were rosy, but there was a twinkle in her eye as she stared at me. “Sorry, it’s just… you guys together…” She turned her head to look out the window, obviously feeling shy from the turn the discussion had taken. “I just think you two seem to have a deep connection together. I wish I had that.”
