Page 28 of Broken Chains

“Yes,” Brady said, giving her a quick kiss on her cheek that had me biting down the desire to rip his throat out for touching my girl.

My girl?Shit, I had to stop thinking of Peyton as mine.

Mate,my wolf pressed.Mine.

“Hey, do you want to go with me?” Peyton turned to me and asked. “I’ve never really done this before, but I’m tired of sleeping on an air mattress.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I said, then remembered Eve was still napping soundly upstairs. “But—”

“No ‘but,’” Brady said. “You just told her yes.”

I shot him another look. What the hell was he playing at today?

“But, Eve’s still down for her nap,” I said.

“Go,” Brady said. “I’ll babysit. I just brought over the last of my stuff anyway, so I’m in for the night.”

He smirked at me, and I wanted to punch it off his face. He knew I wasn’t happy that he was going through with this.

“You moved everything over?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s all good. Only a few boxes. Would have gone faster if this jerk had let me borrow the van.”

She crinkled up her forehead. “What about a bed?”

I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want her to know the truth of our living conditions, but I couldn’t stop Brady in time.

He snorted. “A bed? Nah, we’re fine with just a sleeping bag and pillow. Can’t remember the last time I actually slept in a bed.”

And there it was.

The truth was, we’d had one bed between the four of us our entire life. It was only a twin and always went to the youngest. Kenneth had had issues with bedwetting and no matter what I did we couldn’t get the smell out until we finally agreed to just toss it in the dump. Dad had been pissed when he found out. Called us all sorts of names, “ungrateful” being the nicest of them all, and had refused to replace it or buy anything else for us boys again.

To her credit, Peyton didn’t seem shocked or react to the news. Instead she just shrugged and said, “If you’re sure you’re up for babysitting, then we’ll take you up on it. We’ll be gone a few hours and I’ll leave Ruby’s number for you in case something comes up and you need help.” After answering for the both of us, she turned to me. “I’m just going to run up and change, then I’ll be ready to go.”

It should have bothered me that she really hadn’t given me a choice, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to go. I was going to get to spend the entire afternoon with Peyton all to myself. That thought made me a little too happy.

As soon as we heard the door to her room close upstairs, Brady turned on me.

“She’s the best thing that ever happened to you. Best that ever happened to any of us. Don’t screw this up,” he said before walking away.

I wanted to call him back and argue that there wasn’t anything to screw up because there wasn’t anything going on between us, but it felt like a lie. Worst, that meant I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding my feelings for her. I tried to think back through the weeks. I hadn’t done anything to encourage things between us, regardless of how persistent my wolf was in demanding I just claim her as ours. I couldn’t do that to Peyton because she deserved so much better than me. I’d purposefully tried to keep my distance, even though her laughter and smile righted my day, and her occasional little touches gave my wolf peace. I hadn’t encouraged any it.

She came back down the stairs wearing tight jeans and a crop top that showed off a belly button ring that surprised me. She looked incredible. It was going to be a testament of willpower to get through the day without touching her.

“You ready?” she asked.

I groaned softly. I should have made an excuse to stay behind, but instead I followed her outside like a sick little puppy.

She went straight for her car, and I shook my head and headed for the van instead. I had just filled up with gas that morning and hoped it would be enough. Peyton followed.

“Where to?” I asked.

She plugged in the address of a furniture store into the GPS on her phone and synched it with the Bluetooth in the van. I didn’t even know we could do something like that, but soon directions were coming through the speakers, guiding me where to go in some weird Australian voice.

The hour-long drive was nice. We talked a lot about nothing in particular. That was the thing with Peyton: by outward appearances, and carrying the name Collier, I expected her to be high-maintenance, but she was the most low-maintenance, easy-going woman I had ever encountered.

By the time we’d almost arrived, I had begun to relax and even let my guard down a little. When it was just the two of us, it was easy to forget why I was fighting this crazy need to make her mine. Then we pulled up in front of a high-end furniture store and reality struck again.

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