Page 11 of Whiskey Reveals

Chapter 7

Fox laughedas his butt hit the ground when his nephew Nathan tackled him. Dare and Loch cracked up laughing, their bellows echoing throughout the neighborhood as Fox winced from the impact of the fall. At ten years old, Nate had grown into an amazing kid who was going through a growth spurt. He was all legs and long arms at this point, but somehow, the kid had wrangled that into a driving force into Fox’s side. Of all his family, Fox had been the late bloomer, and now, watching his nephew grow up, Fox had a feeling he would be the smallest one again before too long. Nate might only be ten, but the kid was going to be a big dude, just like his dad.

“Did he hurt you?” his mom asked from the back porch as she shook her head. He could see her fighting a smile, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes as Nate stood up and held out a hand to him. Soon, Fox was on his feet and mock glaring at his mother for daring to smile or even laugh at her son’s fate.

“Are you talking to me or Nate?” Fox asked, rubbing his hip.

Nate wrapped his arms around Fox’s waist and grinned, a gap in his smile since he’d recently lost a tooth. How on earth had his nephew grown up so quickly? It felt like only yesterday that Nate was a little, wrapped bundle of crying and poop.

“I didn’t hurt you, right?”

Fox shook his head and roughed up the kid’s hair a bit. “Nope. I’m just acting like an old man since you surprised me. You’re getting good at tackling.”

“Uncle Loch is teaching me because of peewee. And you’re not old.” A wicked gleam shone in the kid’s eyes, and Fox grinned. “Dad’s old.”

“I heard that!” Dare called out from the porch.

Fox nodded, forcing his smile back. “You know, your dad is old. And Uncle Loch’s even older.”

“Uncle Loch can kick Uncle Fox’s ass, so he better watch what he’s saying,” Loch drawled from the porch with the rest of them.

“Language,” their mother and Kenzie said at the same time, and Fox laughed out loud right along with Nate.

The two women looked at one another and starting giggling, sending the rest of the family into fits, as well. Kenzie was new to their family but had already fit in perfectly. Nate had a great mom that he lived with half the time, and Dare got Nate the other half now, but Kenzie was filling the role of stepmother with an odd ease that Fox thought perhaps surprised her. It was never easy stepping into a situation where the kid already had two loving parents who were part of his life, but Kenzie was finding her way around it and was, thankfully, friendly with Nate’s mom.

Fox leaned down to tickle Nate, who ran out of his grasp so, of course, he had to try to follow the kid. Loch and Dare joined in and, soon, there were four of them rolling in the dirt and grass and trying to outdo one another.

When Fox got a kick to the ribs from Nate’s foot as Loch held the kid upside down, he bent over, trying to catch his breath while the others stood back, sweaty and covered in dust and dirt.

“I think I’m too old to play like this,” Fox said, winded, his voice strained from the kick.

Dare ran a hand over his jaw, wincing. “Uh, yeah, I think Loch punched something that’s not going to bounce back anytime soon.”

“Serves you right for playing like you’re all Nate’s age,” their dad said from the porch before going inside. He’d grinned as he said it, so Fox had a feeling the old man wanted to join in but was smart enough not to.

“Come here, baby, let me take care of you,” Kenzie said as she rushed to Dare’s side before ducking under his arm and wrapping her arms around Nate in a tight hug. “How’s my best boy?”

Fox and Loch cracked up. Kenzie totally fit in with their family. If their sister were living there, he had a feeling the two of them would be best friends.

“I won.” Nate beamed.

“Of course, you did.” She winked at Dare and wrapped her free arm around his waist, and the three of them made their way back to the house. Fox and Loch stood there, watching the new family for a bit before Loch punched him in the shoulder as brothers do.

“She’s good for him,” Loch said after a moment. His brother didn’t speak as often as the rest of them, but when he did, it was important. If the man ever rambled, Fox always knew something was wrong—or Loch’s best friend Ainsley was annoying him to no end as the two of them tended to do.

Fox agreed with his brother on how Kenzie fit in, though. She was absolutely perfect for Dare, and the two of them worked as if they had always been in each other’s lives. They’d been through hell and back in order to stay together, however, and Fox was just glad they had found the happiness that had seemed to elude both of them for so long. And on the heels of that thought, for some reason, images of Melody entered his mind. He didn’t know why, and it worried him now that he thought about it a little too long.

Melody was just his friend, or at least she was well on the way to becoming his friend. He hadn’t texted her or called her in the past couple of days, even though he had her number now thanks to her grandmother. But after the awkward encounter at the gym, she’d been on his mind more than he cared to admit. He’d gone back over to the home she shared with her grandmother two more times to interview the famous woman who made him smile with her stories of the long-ago past, and had seen Melody both times. But he still hadn’t had a full conversation with her without both of them bumbling around, trying to figure out exactly how to act around one another. It was hard to be friends when you started off by getting into each other’s pants.

But even though it seemed as if it would be difficult to try and figure out how the two of them fit into each other’s life, however platonic, Fox knew he was going to keep trying. Because Melody truly needed a friend, at least that’s what he thought from the look in her eyes. What he should do, is introduce her to Kenzie and Ainsley because he had a feeling the three of them together could take over the entire town, but for some reason, he was being truly selfish and wanted Melody all to himself. That was probably another mistake, but he was good about making mistakes.

He and Loch walked into the home his parents had raised them in, and he couldn’t help but smile at how familiar everything felt. Life might have moved along, and everyone might’ve grown up to start their own lives, but the feeling of home had never changed. His mother might have removed the wallpaper to paint, and his father might have built a new table for them to fit around over the years, but the sense of who they were as a family could never be redecorated out of this home.

Over the years, he had shared a room with both Dare and Loch since he was the youngest boy and his parents hadn’t been sure who should get their own room since their younger sister Tabby always had her own space. So was the right of any little sister who had been forced to live with three older brothers who treated her as if she were one of their own: a girl with cooties and a baby sister to be protected all at the same time. It was no wonder she had gone to college out of state and never came back. Each of them might talk to her more than once a week on the phone, but it wasn’t the same. He had a feeling he would be making another trip out to Denver soon to see her and her husband Alex before the baby came. Since they were the closest in age, he’d always felt a deep connection to his little sister.

Fox let out a sigh and shook his head as everyone started to talk around him, taking their seats at the big table where his parents had set out their family dinner. Every single time he walked into the house he had grown up in, he let his mind wander to what connections and family meant in general. Maybe it was the writer in him, but he couldn’t quite get the idea of who they were as a family out of his head. According to his mother, he might be late in starting a family of his own it, but it was hard to want to start one at all when he had such a solid one to lean back on with his parents and siblings. But now, Dare and Kenzie were a unit with Nate, and Tabby and Alex were forming a family of their own all the way across the country. Somehow, he and Loch had been left behind, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. And he really wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that Melody’s face once again entered his mind along with that train of thought. He had slept with her once—well, three times actually—in the span of a night before she had walked out of his life for what he had thought was forever. They were just friends, or on their way to becoming friends—nothing more, nothing less. He needed to get the thought of her sweet curves and the way she had molded to him when they were pressed into one another at the gym out of his mind.

Clearing his throat, Fox strategically placed his napkin over his growing erection because every time he thought of Melody, his dick did what it wanted to. He really needed to get that reaction under control.

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