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I ran my fingers through his dirty blonde hair, and he groaned, always a sucker for a good head scratch. “I need you, Blaine.” I whispered, “It’s hard keeping Maddie on the straight and narrow on my own.”
Our dad dipped on us when we were kids, and mom died two years ago in a car accident on her way home from the hospital. She had worked a double shift in the ER and fell asleep behind the wheel on her way home. The firefighters said she died on impact, but it didn’t help ease the pain in my chest every time I remembered opening the front door at three am to the policemen there to inform her three teenage kids that she was never coming home.
And Blaine had been saddled with raising a sixteen and fourteen-year-old because we didn’t have anyone else that cared to help out.
And I loved him for it.
But the last year or so, he’d been around even less than normal, and I hated how the distance felt more than just physical between us anymore.
“If anyone has a prayer of keeping her straight, it’s you D. Not me.” He said and yawned, with his eyes closed as I continued to play with his hair.
“Yeah.” I said sadly, feeling the weight of the task pushing my shoulders down further.
He was asleep within a few minutes, and I went back to studying for my anatomy test the next day. Maddie was at her friend’s house for the night, so it was quiet in the house as I tried to memorize the different veins and arteries in the arms of a human by looking at pictures of my dissected cat in the lab at school.
Nursing school was weird.
I was so engrossed in the red and blue blood ways that when a figure in my doorway finally caught my attention, I jumped and covered my mouth to keep from screaming in surprise.
Fox.
Blaine’s best friend stood in my bedroom doorway with his shoulder leaned against the frame and his arms crossed over his wide chest like he didn’t have a care in the world.
His dark hair was long and shaggy, hanging around his shoulders tonight to match the dark stubble on his jaw. He had cleaned up since work at the motorcycle garage, and he wore his signature white tee and dark wash blue jeans over his motorcycle boots.
And my god did he look yummy in it.
“Hey.” I whispered when my tongue finally unstuck itself from the roof of my mouth.
“Hey.” He said back quietly. His hazel eyes flicked to my brother who laid on his stomach with his boots hanging off the end of my bed snoring into my pillow then back to me.
I looked down at my brother and then up at him, “You here to steal him away from me again?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrow at me and leaned up off the doorframe to walk across my room and lower himself down in the chair next to my side of the bed. I quickly looked around my room for anything embarrassing lying out that he might see, as he kicked his long legs out and crossed his ankles. He was so close I could smell him.
But he didn’t stink like Blaine did.
He smelled like his aftershave and mechanical grease.
It was intoxicating.
“You think I take him from you?” He asked quietly.
“You think you don’t?” I challenged him.
Which was nuts, because Blaine was right. Fox wasn’t a nice guy.
He was one of those guys that was usually quiet on the edge of the crowd until he was needed, and then he moved so fast and with such grace, you never saw him coming until it was too late.
He was one of the enforcers of the MC that Blaine and he were in, and he was scary as fuck because of it.
But not to me.
Or at least I tried to pretend he wasn’t.
“I think Blainey’s a big boy who makes his own decisions.” He said, watching me closely.
I hated that I wore only an oversized graphic tee that was Blaine’s in high school and a pair of cheerleading shorts, because I felt exposed and frumpy at the same time. I needed to be fully clothed and dressed to kill in order to feel adequate around Fox.
