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Yet, the whole day, they are making my life very unpleasant. No, I won’t say terrible or horrible or any other synonymous of the sort because this? This is not horrible. This is merely an inconvenience I will deal with if it doesn’t go away on its own.
I know horrible.
I’ve lived it.
But that doesn’t mean I am not frustrated as hell with those nosy idiots trying to break into my restaurant, talk to my staff, and even attempt to attack me after I come out of the bathroom. I scowl at them and keep my mouth shut because I’ve worked way too hard to ruin my reputation for something so stupid as a boy with small penis problems. So, what do I do instead?
That’s right, I take out my frustrations, my anger on the one subject who won’t give in to me. Who will serve as my dutiful punching bag? Vassar. I laser in on his every move, I inspect his every dish, I trail over every inch of his glorious body and the hard-set jaw peppered with a dark, short beard.
What? I did say he was hot as fuck and a perfect distraction. And I know he is fed up with my antics, yet he silently takes it and prowls through the day. Sexy, if you ask me.
The next day I made him work twice as hard because Steven—Jesus, what a stupid name, granted I’d say that about any name attached to that clinging dick, but nevertheless—he decided topiss me off early in the morning with a delivery of fresh flowers right as I was walking out of my building and all those prying cameras snapped away.
Maybe I should feel bad about using Vassar as my therapy, but I don’t. Tofeel, you have to have a heart or at least a soul. And I don’t have either one.
However, something about him always calms me down. It grounds me. So, I will not stop, and the whole next week passes in the same manner, and I am getting hopeful that the worst of this shitstorm is over when Steven decides to announce his love for me on national TV after he won some hockey game or whatever.
Now, that did not go unnoticed.Thatstarted stirring up the pot, asking why I haven’t gone to his games. Why haven’t they seen us together? Do I have someone else? Which inevitably started the process of digging through my perfectly hidden life. And I am not an idiot. I know they can find anything, no matter how hard I tried to erase it.
Panic. Panic starts gripping my chest when I think of the world knowing me. And panic makes you do stupid things, like calling your brother. The one who takes the word overprotective to a whole new level, and while Julius and I mostly leave each other alone and never meddle in each other’s lives, my call sends him into action.
“You finally decided to call me,” he simply states when he picks up the phone.
“Don’t pretend you couldn’t do the same a million times,” I say in a way of greeting him back.
“Give me a day; I will figure this out,” is all he says and hangs up.
This is what I love about my foster brother. No unnecessary chatter, sure, he changed after he met his little ballerina, Katerina, whom I have yet to meet, but Julius Winters willalways have that darkness in him. He won’t ever forget the demons that plagued him his whole life. He won’t ever lose the broken pieces in his eyes.
No, he has worn them like a shield since the day I met him at fifteen, and from what I have seen, he only lifts up that curtain around his fiancée. But I am comfortable with that curtain. It’s what protected him and me when we met at fifteen years old when I got placed into the same foster home he was living in. It’s what created our unbreakable bond.
I am slightly terrified of what he means by figuring it out, but if he decides to kill the bastard, I will make sure to hire the best damn lawyer in the world. We’ve always stood by each other, and that won’t ever change. However, the next morning, when Jules calls me back, I wish he would take the murder route instead of inviting yet another idiot into my mess.
The one and only, shameless demon of New York, Landon Locke. Who just happens to be the CEO of Fashion Linc magazine—the largest information empire—and I have no doubt at least half of the reporters sniffing around were sent to hunt me down by Landon himself. He also supposedly changed his ways after finding his own fiancée, Lexi, to tame his beast. Who happens to be Julius’s friend. I met both Lexi and Landon one day when they tried to interview me for a piece in their magazine, but let’s just say, the conversation didn’t go exactly as planned.
The man managed to piss me off almost immediately, and there was no love lost between the two of us, so why in the world my brother thought Landon would help me is beyond me. Besides, I don’t want his dirty help. He may fool the world into thinking he’s the good guy now, but I know better. I know we can’t lose those demons as easily.
When you have that darkness inside you, you see it in others. You see those demons because they are a part of us. They are in our DNA.
Yet, here I am, entering his gleaming, glass-covered office because Julius wouldn’t hear it. Landon has a sense of style; I’ll give him that. Everything is modern and clean. Large, floor-to-ceiling windows open up to the breathtaking view of New York, and even though I basically have the same one from my apartment, you simply can’t pass up the opportunity to gush over it.
Not when you know how the view looks from the other side. The shit side.
My brother is already here and immediately unfolds himself from the comfortable leather seat, comes up, and wraps me in one of his brotherly hugs. The best ones. The only ones I allow in my life. Jules is a retired hip-hop dancer as well as a notorious biker. So, I think you can imagine how this handsome devil looks. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark heart, dark clothing.
“Hey, Firehead,” is how my amazing brother greets me after seeing each other for the first time in about a year.
“Hey, Lucifer,” I respond with a wink. What can I say? We have a special kind of bond. But we both smile and hug one more time.
Slowly, my eyes lift up to meet the dark steel ones currently ogling us in morbid curiosity.
Landon Locke. He looks almost identical to my brother, except his hair is a shade darker, and his build is at least twice Julius’s. The man is walking sex on two legs, and if he wasn’t be such an asshole, I’d definitely consider sleeping with him. But alas, he is very much taken and still very much the asshole I remember.
“What a lovely relationship you two have,” he says with a smirk, falling back into his chair with ease and a clear show of power. “Although, I must say, the firehead is very fitting. But I’dgo with something like ‘hey demon’ or at least a ‘hey witch.’” Of course, he would, just like everyone else in my life.
“Lan,” my brother growls out a warning to his friend.
“Yeah, yeah,” He waves him off. “She is your sister and all that. Don’t worry, Lexi gave me the speech already.”
