Page 95 of Mr. Broody

“Aren’t people going to ask questions?” I let him wrap me in his arms again because it feels too good to deny myself.

“They’ll think I’m doing what I should’ve been doing since you walked into that back room at Peeper’s Alley. Taking what I want.” He bends his head, and I place my hand over my mouth so he ends up kissing the back of my hand.

“Nope. We can’t start up again. I have to grab my camera stuff.” I turn around and open the cabinet.

“I don’t love that you’ve hidden it away,” he says.

“Well, I’m taking it out now.”

Footsteps sound down the stairs.

“Close your eyes, Bodhi, we can’t have you scarred for life,” Waylon says.

“Scarred?” Bodhi asks, either not knowing what that word means or not understanding the reference my idiotic brother is trying to convey.

“Nice, Waylon,” Henry says. “How’d it go last night?”

“We lost. Mostly because Owen couldn’t score.”

“Me? Lancaster was on me all night. I couldn’t get a puck by him.” Owen points at Waylon. “You let three goals in.”

Henry’s arms are crossed, and he’s now sitting on the edge of the couch with his legs out and crossed at his ankles. “Stop pointing fingers. You know the rules—you win as a team, and you lose as a team. Figure out where you didn’t contribute and try to fix it. But blaming other people isn’t going to make you better.”

The three of them talk hockey, Owen demonstrating the way a specific play went down while Henry listens and offers some advice on how to get away from the defense. I’m so busy admiring Henry interacting with my brothers that I don’t realize Bodhi has gravitated over to me.

“Is that your camera?” he asks.

Bodhi’s words remind me of what today is about. I’m eager to get him behind the lens and see what he sees. So I bend down. “Let’s get out of here. All this hockey talk, right? We have pictures to take.”

“Yeah.” His brown eyes light up.

I want to hug and squeeze him, but most of all, I kind of want to make him mine.

“See you, boys,” I say, taking Bodhi’s hand and swinging my camera bag over my shoulder, walking toward the stairs.

“You’re missing your driver,” Henry says, catching us at the bottom of the stairs. “See you Thursday,” he says to my brothers.

“Remember you have impressionable eyes and ears with you today,” Waylon shouts up the stairs.

I cannot wait to pay them back when they bring home a girl.

We say goodbye to Reed and Mom. Each of them looks at us a little suspiciously, but neither says anything. When I head out the front door and look down the stairs at the street, I see Henry’s old car from high school, all restored and now painted black, parked along the curb.

I glance at him, and he presses his hand to the small of my back. “Thought I junked her, huh?”

“I’d hoped not.”

“Nah, I couldn’t. Too many good memories in that back seat—hell everywhere, even the hood.”

As we walk down the stairs, Bodhi’s staring at us, but I can’t see his expression with the low-hanging sun.

Henry keeping his car and restoring it shouldn’t mean a thing, but there’s no way he drove that car without thinking of me, which tells me he’s always kept a piece of me with him. I really like that thought.

Forty

Henry

I pick up tacos on the way to the Lakefront Trail, and when I get back in the car, I see Jade’s hands running over the new leather.

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