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Ripley took another sip from his mug, but it came with a slight twitch this time. The kind of twitch that only came with the taste of straight liquor.
“Tequila?”
His eyes grew a little wider, and he briefly glanced to Drake before returning to me with just the hint of a smile. “Vodka,” he corrected. “Hair of the dog. My old lady is in Phoenix, and we just finished building that apartment. I’m on holiday.”
I held my hands up. “No judgment here.”
“Let’s get a drink later.”
“Nope.” Drake scooped me around the waist, pulling me in front of his body and settling his hands on my hips, ushering me across the other side of the building and out some large roller doors onto a patio with an outside grass area.
It was kind of like a backyard—if your backyard was a shooting range. The line of cans and homemade wall of grass and dirt behind it was a dead giveaway.
I swished my long skirt around in the breeze. “If I’d known I was going to be staying in a biker compound, I’d have packed more leather and less floral.”
He stood back, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans. The slow look that took in my entire body from head to toe was almost enough to make me pass out. It wasn’t critical or scrutinizing, it was pure appreciation that ended with the gentlest tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “But you like floral.”
The butterflies.
They were back.
With a vengeance.
“But one would assumeyoulike something a little edgier.” I couldn’t help but hold out my hands, indicating where he lived and what he was wearing.
He shrugged. “You know what happens when you assume?You make anassout ofuandme.”
“I hate that saying,” I muttered, my nose crinkling. I honestly did, but maybe that was because it was so true. Assuming gets us nowhere, and Drake had already proven on more than one occasion that he wasn’t a man I could easily predict, but maybe that’s why I found being around him so exhilarating.
He waved me over to a couple of large outdoor chairs, and we dropped into them with a heavy sigh.
“You and Rip are very different,” I mused, leaning back in the chair and enjoying the way the Nevada sun warmed my skin. You just didn’t get this kind of heat back home in Boston. The kind that soaked right in deep and didn’t disappear the second a gentle breeze whistled by.
Drake sat forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. “You can tell from that one interaction?”
“Mm-hmm.” I nodded. “It actually makes a lot of sense. You’re the older brother, always had to be the responsible one, right?”
He didn’t answer, but when he tilted his head to look over at me, I knew I’d hit something right. “You sound like you know.”
I swallowed hard and forced a smile, not expecting he’d turn my words against me. “Yeah.” I let out a soft laugh but had to look away, forcing myself to glance up into the sky to try and keep the flood of emotions from washing over me. “Except I was the annoying younger sibling who always needed someone to be more responsible, someone to keep me from doing stupid shit, though I fucked it up a lot anyway.”
It was hard to talk about Eden without bursting into tears.
I missed her.
More than anything or anyone.
But I was still too scared to go back and ask for her forgiveness.
Why would she when I picked a man like Brian over my relationship with her?
“I think I can speak for a lot of older siblings when I say, no matter how many times you fuck it up…” Drake started, pulling my gaze back to meet his with a single tear dripping down my cheek, “… we’ll still have your back, over and fucking over again.”
What if he were right?
“Come on,” Drake said before I could think too much about it. “Maybe Ripley had the right idea when he suggested a drink.”
“It’s good to see people enjoying the sun,” a beautiful, tall blonde woman announced as she stepped out into the backyard and settled at the picnic table Drake and I had moved to as he attempted to explain a set of floor plans to me, but honestly, all I was seeing were a lot of lines. The woman placed a stack of magazines and a bottle of water on the table between us. “You must be Cassie, my name’s Zoey, and the broody guy with the beard following me around is Drake’s dad, Huntsman.
