Page 72 of Wreck Me

Me?

He was trying to rein me in?

What the hell was happening lately?

I couldn’t hold it in check, and then I was snapping, “Problem, Cal?”

“You tell me.”

“No problem whatsoever, brother,” I ground out. “Just talking. Working on that trust, just like you are with her.”

He stared at me for a moment as he dragged on his smoke, clearly trying to see into me.

I locked it down quickly, making damn sure that wasn’t a possibility.

He sighed, then told me, “Skylar needs to head home. She just came out here to say goodbye to you. I told her you’d appreciate that, seeing as though the two of you didn’t get to interact all the while she’s been here.”

Had he now?

Bullshit.

He’d sent her out here to test me.

That was why I hadn’t been sent away from the house with one distraction or another this time. It had been an experiment to see if my previous apparently worrying reactions and behavior when it came to her had settled and calmed down.

“All right,” Skylar said, clearly picking up on the tension. “Well, I’m going to get going.”

As she passed by, I spoke low so that Caleb, being the interfering bastard he was right now, didn’t overhear, “Better lock your bedroom window, beautiful. Could be a psychopath lurking nearby.”

Her breath hitched and she trembled.

Fucking trembled for me.

It was all I could do to keep the grin from my face as she headed over to Cal.

The way she reacted to me… it was like nothing else.

And it was quickly becoming a need in me to elicit that from her.

Just for starters.

11

~Skylar~

I heard my mom’s footsteps coming toward the landing just as I was passing by the bottom of the stairs.

I quickly hid what I was carrying behind my back.

Not a moment later, she appeared at the top of the stairs struggling with a ginormous rolling suitcase. “Can you ask your father to give me a hand once he’s done with the other one?”

The other one being the first massive suitcase he’d hauled down the stairs for her and all the way out into the courtyard.

“I can help you, Mom.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Absolutely not, it weighs a ton.”

I rolled my eyes—well kind of inwardly as she wouldn’t appreciate the visible kind. “Sure, I’ll go get him,” I told her, taking the path of least resistance.

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