Page 67 of Brewbies
Some-fucking-how, on the outskirts of Townsend Harbor, she’d managed to merge them both.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the three sets of eyes fixed on the main attraction: a very impressive man hanging from hot-pink aerial silks affixed to an equally impressive two-story pipe rig dead center of the action.
“Whoa.”
“Damn.”
“Does he even gravity?”
Gemma, Cady, Myrtle, and Vee watched in abject awe as Gabe Kelly of the Boston Kellys executed a series of jaw-dropping aerial acrobatics that gave the stiff middle finger to the laws of physics.
And a stiff lady boner to half the population that had showed up to help with the Brewbies benefit carnival.
To Darby, Gabe would remain the Peter Pan-like, somewhat scrawny sixteen-year-old he’d been when she first met him. The kid brother she’d never had. Had never wanted, if she was being honest.
But he’d been so damn pugnacious, so intolerably and insistently charming, that she’d eventually adopted him like a scrappy stray.
Now, at the ripe age of twenty-three, he’d added twenty pounds of brawn, an impressive collection of ink, and a two-year stint at Deer Island Correctional to his resumé.
As was the Kelly way.
“Where’d he learn to move like that?” Gemma wondered aloud, a matted puff of cotton candy melting in her fingers as she stared.
“Chippendales would be my guess.” Myrtle’s mouth missed the straw of her elaborate coconut tiki bar cocktail the first couple tries, smearing fuchsia lipstick on her recyclable bamboo straw.
“The way those hips move, I’d bet he could shag you from around the corner,” Vee observed.
“But then you’d miss the view.”
All four heads tilted to the left as Gabe did some sort of Magic Mike-esque pelvic thrust that flipped his legs over his head.
“That’s amazing,” Cady breathed.
“He’samazing,” Gemma added, leaning back against the camper.
The muscles of Gabe’s shirtless back rippled with each movement, making the tattoos on his wide, winged back muscles dance.
“What was he in prison for again?” Cady asked, flicking a pointed glance at Gemma.
“Grand theft auto.” Darby knew this as she’d been one of his regular correspondents during his incarceration, frequently providing the emotional support his family was too busy helping restaurant equipment fall off delivery trucks to offer.
“Like a real-life GTA character,” Gemma said with a sigh.
“Like a real-life felon,” Cady reminded her.
Darby knew it had been said from a place of protectiveness on Cady’s part, but she felt a twinge of defensiveness even so.
Which—like her post-boning temper tantrum—was unexpected. All the ties she’d tried so hard to cut, fate seemed determined to mend, resulting in strange knots of her past and present.
Edgy and parched, Darby took a bottled water from the pastel-pink cooler she’d set out for all the volunteers who’d showed up to help with the carnival prep while Vee et al. distracted Ethan.
Darby’s heart swelled with manic glee as she remembered Vee’s account of Ethan turning pre-stroke purple when she took him into the back room.
It was the little things.
“I’d bet I could help him graduate to breaking and entering,” Myrtle said, dentures sinking into her lower lip.
Vee gave her partner a long-suffering look. “Have you any idea the training he’d need? He’s a puppy. I’ll bet he’s not even housebroken.”
