Page 66 of When It's Us
She grins up at me and I groan dramatically, “Shit, you’re getting big!”
Her lips tip up on one side and she holds out her palm with a triumphant gleam in her hazel eyes. “That’s a dollar for the swear jar, Uncle Hutch.”
“A dollar? Holy fu—” I stop, wide-eyed, splitting a look between Hudson and Hank—who both wear matching smirks, theassholes—before digging my free hand into my pocket for change. “Fees are getting steep.”
I drop my eyes to my palm and shrug before dropping a shit ton of change in her sticky little hand, not bothering to count it.
“That should hold me over for the next thirty seconds or so,” I say with a chuckle and give one of her pigtails a light tug.
She grins at me and reaches up to give my bun the same tug in return before I crouch down, setting her on her feet.
“Thanks, Uncle Hutch,” she says once we’re eye level and she’s standing again. “I’m gonna go see if Grammy will let me keep these coins for our swear jar athome.”
She swings her gaze toward her dad and gives him a look—half pout, half scowl. “Daddy and Mama only givefifty centsper swear, and I don’t think that’s fair.”
I throw a knowing glance up at my brother and can’t help but chuckle at the look on Hudson’s face. With the mouth on my brother and his wife, this kid will be rich before she’s fifteen.
“No problem, kid,” I tell her before she saunters off and out of the stable.
When I push to standing, my back twinges as I straighten up. I wince, rubbing at a spot above my waistband. Maybe Idoneed a new mattress for the Vanagon after all.
“Throw your back out fucking your way across the country?” Hudson asks, eyeing me. His expression is innocent, but the twitch of his lip has me rolling my eyes.
“Eat me,” I throw back at him, upending a crate and lowering myself onto it to sit.
Hudson tips his head back and laughs. “Excuse me…Six or seven states, then?”
“It’s sleeping in that small as fuck bed in the shoebox you call home,” Hank throws out, his back to me as he dicks around with Apollo’s halter.
I shoot a look at the back of his head, because until recently, he lived in a one-room cabin not much bigger than my Vanagon for twenty years, like some sad, anti-social troglodyte.
Trouble is, I can’t tell either of them my back is sore—not from the bed itself, but from sharing—and sort of fucking—Ginger in that tiny bed for the past three nights. Can I? Technically, we never actually fucked, but it’s not like I can talk about her like she’s another girl I mess around with
But then again, Ginger isn’t anything more than that, right? Well, sheis, but not because anything will happen between us. She and Wren are best friends. Finnley, too.
Hank would have my balls in a vice if he knew about the two of us, simply if his wife requested it. Hudson would go tattle to Finn, and fuck, we all know what would happen then. Whole damn family would be privy to who I’m sleeping with. Slept with? It’s not continuous, so ‘slept with’ is probably more accurate.
Besides the fact that it’s none of their business, I don’t need anyone knowing. And Ginger specifically asked me not to say anything.
Why the fuck am I still thinking about this?
I glance up at my brother when he clears his throat.
“At least get a new mattress for that thing,” Hudson pipes up, taking a brush to Mystic’s body. “Don’t even want tothinkabout how many bodily fluids are all over that piece of shit,” he adds with a mock shiver.
“What is it with you two and your obsession with my jizz?” I ask, glancing smugly between my brothers. “Besides, you didn’t seem to mind crashing on thatpiece of shitwhen you passed out drunk on it last fall,” I shoot at Hudson, no real venom in my response.
He and his best friend Finnley—now wife, since they were secretly married and screwing around behind everyone’s back besides mine—we’re taking a break. Hudson’s ex had blown back into town and turned shit upside down and he’d shown up drunkoff his ass. Because there was no way he was driving in his condition, I’d filled him up on cheap tequila and given him the bed in the Vanagon for the night.
“Key words there being ‘passed out drunk’, dumbass. I coulda fallen asleep on the fucking ground and I wouldn’t have noticed.”
“Get a new mattress. Your back will thank you,” Hank says gruffly.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Don’t need one.”
“Whatever you say. But we’re getting fucking old, brother,” Hank says as he exits Apollo’s stall, closing it behind him.
I glare over at him. “Speak for yourself, asshole. I’m just hitting my stride.”
