AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Cammy, look at me.” Those big blue eyes come up to meet mine. I can’t stand the idea that she’s upset and would pretty much slither on my belly over broken glass to take that worried look off her face. “Hey, I’m sorry. I just wanted you to feel better.”
I want to protect her from the guys who don’t deserve her.
Hell, I want to protect her from everything. It’s been like that for three years. Since that first night I went over to her place with Greg to pick up Julia. There was Cammy. Twenty-two years old, Matty clinging to her side. She was so happy for Julia, smiling that bright, beautiful smile while we took her sister out and she stayed home. I could see the longing in her eyes, the envy. Only the second she looked down at that little boy, it was gone.
She was such a good mom. Trying so hard.
At first, I just wanted to help her out. Give her a break once in a while. So I’d make sucker bets with Julia, offering up babysitting here and there. Cammy’d come home and we’d talk a little about her night before I left. The next time we talked a little more. And pretty soon it wasn’t just babysitting and it wasn’t just about wanting to help her out. We fell into the kind of easy friendship you don’t find with most people.
She shakes her head and lets out one of those long breaths that usually mean she’s getting over her mad. “I know. And thank you.” The corners of her mouth tip, and it’s like the sun coming out after a month of rain. “Did you see his face?”
“The Blip’s? Hell yeah, I did. Pretty sure his mouth hit the floor hard enough to rattle his teeth.”
“Rux?”
“Sunshine.”
She rolls her eyes, but I know she likes it when I call her that. And it fits who she is perfectly.
“No bunnies next week.”
I get another little jab in my chest for good measure, and then catch her finger in my hand and pull her in for a hug that feels like everything good in the world. “Not a problem.”
Chapter 2
Cammy
“Come on, you’ve got to tell me,” Julia begs the next morning, her arms stretched across the kitchen table in a plea as pitiful as I’ve ever seen my sister deliver.
I’d planned on getting a few hours in on my medical coding job before Matty came home, but once she heard about that kiss, there was no putting her off—not that I’d want to. Julia and I talk about everything and I miss having her around like crazy.
But thank God for flexible hours.
“Was it good? Gross? Did he, like, try to eat your face or was it one of those tight-lipped Afterschool Special kisses? Rux is such a showy guy, I’m betting it was one of those kisses where your lips are closed but you move your face all around.”
I ought to answer. After all the years of living vicariously through Julia’s love life, demanding details only a little sister would dare to demand, it would be fair. But dang it, she never gave up the goods without making me work for it at least a little, and turnabout is fair play.
So I pretend to read over the field trip form in front of me. Move my pen down the page—I’ll have to read it for real later, they might need a chaperone—and blink innocently across the table we used to share.
Her eyes narrow. This girl gets pro athletes to spill their tea every day—she’s a woman to contend with. But she’s also my sister, and in a battle of wills, I’m not going down easy. It would be an insult to the both of us.
Finally, she cracks. “Cammy!”
And who am I to keep her in suspense? “Okay! Okay, okay, okay. Relax. I’ll tell you.”
She props herself on her elbows, her fingers drumming the table impatiently.
I lean in. “It was fine.”
“Fine?” she coughs, rocking back.
“I know, it would be so much more fun if it swung further to one extreme or the other, but the truth is, as kisses go, Rux’s was neither here nor there.”
“Tongue?”
“Come on.”
“Well, I don’t know. Open mouth or closed?”
