Page 2 of Burn It Down
1
Three Weeks Later....
I am a man of few morals. Wasn’t raised with many. I do follow a loose code, though. Kind of make it up as I go, really. I don’t believe in a lot of rules but some are just non-negotiable. Do not sleep with co-workers. Do not double dip. That’s disgusting.
Don’t bang your buddie's girl, or ex-girl, or even once-in-awhile girl. Do not let the cute and super busty cocktail waitress at your favorite pub suck your cock. No matter how hot her mouth is and how often she offers. Certainly never, ever, fall for your best friend’s little sister.
Never mind that said little sister is without a doubt the most beautiful woman you’ve ever laid eyes on. Or that the way she uses her mouth, like putting you in place the first time you broke one of your own codes, gets you harder than steel. Ignore how hot she gets when she’s mouthing off to you; her cheeks flushed and those dual colored eyes full of desire.
Doesn’t matter that she’s the only girl whose face you see when you’re banging faceless, nameless broads. Based on code alone, I knew to keep my distance. And yet, I didn’t. Now I’m paying the price because it blew up in my fucking face.
It’s been nearly a month since Cage, my best friend for more than half my life, caught me with his little sister. I knew it would happen eventually. I'd even prepared a few speeches for it. Then when it mattered, I didn’t say shit.
I didn’t tell him I never wanted to fuck up our friendship. Or that I didn’t mean to help fuck up his relationship. Didn’t even tell him that I was absolutely fucking crazy about his sister. Shit I didn’t even tell her that.
Gigi knew who I was, had known about my proclivity to bang randoms on nightly basis. Sometimes more than one. What she didn’t know was the depth of my depravity because I had never brought that shit home. I always ran the risk of Gigi being there and realizing what a piece of shit I truly was. That would kill me.
Cage knew though. Of course, he knew. For as long as I can remember it had been the two of us. We met in junior high when our shared last name, but lack of actual relation, thrust us together.
We were inseparable from just about the day we met. Cage had become the only constant in my life. My life was made up of two very different but parallel before and afters.
The first being the shit show of a life I had before I met Cage. I barely remember much about my parents. Although I’d recognize them from the back. I had four older siblings who swear at one time we were like the fucking Tanners. I don’t remember that.
When I think real hard, I can remember a nice meal once, maybe around the holidays. When it clears up, I don’t see my brothers, Abel and Brant, nor my sisters, Chelsea and Dulcie. I certainly don’t see my parents. I see Gwen and Deacon Cooper, Cage’s parents; I see Regan and Tegan, and sometimes, Gigi. They became my after.
Cage was always there. The night I found out Abel and Brant were busted for trafficking drugs. Cage was there, taking me home to his parents when I had nowhere else to go.
The night I came home from my first day of football practice to find my sisters fucking half the team. Cage was there to keep me from going to jail too.
When I had no one to spend the holidays with, nowhere to go after school, no one to talk to, Cage was always there. So was his family.
His two older sisters Regan and Tegan were just a year apart and super close. They were also very close to Cage, the both of us just freshman when they were juniors and seniors. They let us hang out with their hot friends, which is how I bagged my first chick. One of their friends had a thing for younger dudes. I always benefited from hanging out with the Coopers.
Gigi was always there too. In the background with her mouth and her giggles, and I was always more drawn to her than I should have been. Not like that; I’m not a sick fuck. No, I just thought she was brilliant, and she always made me laugh.
Both Regan and Tegan were brilliant too; they had careers carved out before they even graduated. Cage always knew he’d join the fire department just like his Pop. I had no fucking clue what I would do with my life. Something I knew Gigi struggled with too.
At her graduation party, I could see the world looming over her and it scared the shit out of her. I felt somehow...kindred or connected or some such bullshit.
“Why are you out here, Red,” Gigi’s lovely porcelain skin both burned in the summer and did nothing to hide her embarrassment, hence the name, “when your future is inside waiting for you?” I had found her sitting out on the deck that led out onto the water at her parents' place.
There had been a huge party for her--the Coopers didn’t know strangers--and she had been out there most the night. By then, Cage and I had joined the department, because I had shit else going for me. I turned out to be a damn good firefighter and I loved it but then, I was clueless.
Usually where Cage went, I did too. He was most definitely the brains of our operation. I was both the brawn and the beauty. Gigi had seemed lost that night and for some reason, I just wanted her to be okay. Really, I wanted to be the one to make her okay. I wanted to be the one to tell her it didn’t matter if she didn’t know what the hell she was doing.
“Why would I want to miss that, right?” Gigi had looked lovely in a short dress that had a keyhole back and I reached out to touch her.
My hand pressed to the small of her back, looking to comfort her. Instead, I felt something burn through me unlike anything I had ever felt. Through my fingers at her petal soft skin, straight to my chest. Then right to my dick.
So, like a fucking idiot, I kept touching her. Smoothing my hand over her skin, feeling her shudder a little. Back then, I'd noticed the way she looked at me.
Oh, she had always looked at the two of us boys like we were fucking heroes. I never understood how she could watch us fuck up and still look at us like that.
The way she looked at me changed, though. I don’t know when but I was aware of it. Gigi was different than the other Coopers. I never could figure it out, at least not then, but I knew. What fucked me up? Gigi knew I understood just how different she was.
That night, we sat at the dock together, my hand touching her as she kicked her bare feet in the warm lake. We laughed and she talked about not missing school and not looking forward to college in the fall. I told her how terrified I was to be like my before family of Coopers. Fuck ups, the lot of them.
Gigi touched me when I said that, her tiny hand pressing to my jaw as she looked up at me. When she argued that was an impossibility, looking up at me in the moonlight, I believed her.
