Page 249 of Branded
Where she worked. Where she’d become part of us.
The Breakers.
The guys and I came in regularly.
She was taking careful steps toward friendship with Hazel and Pru and Kailey and Beth.
I didn’t want to be responsible for fucking that up.
“The quiet,” I said, waving my arm out toward the alley. “I get needing it.”
Not a smooth transition in the least.
But disappointment was flowing through me in great waves that resembled tsunamis.
So, it was the best I could do at that particular moment, yeah?
Meanwhile, Jules was so still she resembled a statue, and as I watched her out of the corner of my eye, it seemed like she was hardly breathing. Tense. On edge.
Because of me.
Fuck.
“I’m one of four, so it was always noisy,” I told her, barely able to resist the urge to rub my temple, to try to soothe the ache that was beginning to blossom there. I was fucking things up. Royally. “The oldest,” I added, wanting to give her something of me, something that would make her know a piece of me, but also something that wouldn’t make her feel uncomfortable. “Which means that my parents were always in my business growing up”—this time when I shot her a smile, I breathed a little easier because some of the tension had left her frame—“at least until my siblings started making trouble.”
That sent the corners of her mouth turning up. “And were you?”
I lifted my brows in query.
“Trouble?” she asked, eyes dancing.
And now I relaxed.
Because she was Jules again.
And maybe I hadn’t fucked this up quite as much as I’d thought.
Growing up, I’d actually been a pretty good kid overall, critically aware that my parents had been working to the edges of their physical and mental abilities to provide for our family. I hadn’t wanted to add to their stress.
But I hadn’t been perfect.
“No more than any other kid,” I admitted and then laughed at her expression before adding, “Truthfully, I get into a lot more mischief nowadays with the guys. In my family, Sam”—a glance at her—“he’s my younger brother and the ringleader of trouble. Now and then.”
The pranks that kid had pulled…
Good God, it was no wonder our mother always complained about all her gray hairs.
“Yeah?” she asked, curiosity in those pretty brown eyes. “What’d he do?”
I opened my mouth, mind spiraling through the stories of my brother, filtering out the best ones, the ones that would make her laugh?—
The door crashed open behind us.
A drunk couple, locked in an embrace that resembled two octopi going at it, stumbled out, giggling and pawing each other, their mouths creating so much suction that the sounds of their saliva exchanging bodies was going to haunt me for a good long while.
Jules shuddered—I assumed for the same reason—but the couple had shattered the relaxed mood I’d managed to coax her back into. Her shoulders tensed and she inhaled, held that breath, then released it in a rush of air.
I watched all of that in fascination.
