Page 5 of Dirty Love

“Then why—“ he cuts off, changing his mind. “Why you bein’ a little bitch right now?”

“I’m not bein’ a bitch.”

“Nicky, I swear to g—”

“Because you let her in here!” I blurt out, dropping my head back against the wall with a soft thud. “You spend less time with me when you’re with her.”

“I spend all my time with you, baby brother,” he stresses. “It’s always me and you.”

“Except at night,” I argue, unable to stop myself. “When she’s in your bed instead of me.”

His jaw ticks and he tightens his grip around my neck, causing an involuntary sound to leave my throat. It’s desperate and needy, and I can’t help the way I’m damn near writhing between him and the wall. My hard dick brushes his thigh and he glares again, opening his mouth like he’s about to say something about it, but he doesn’t get the chance before our dad’s newest girlfriend appears in the open doorway.

Oh, fuck.

“Kade!” she screeches over the music. “What on earth are you doing? Get off him!”

He releases me like I burned him and takes a full step back, still staring at me from beneath his dark eyelashes, his chest rising and falling with slow, deep breaths. He’s not afraid of getting into trouble. He’s only afraid of her seeing something she shouldn’t, something that would ruin us both and tear us apart.

Elle’s eyes land on me and she offers me a look, one that suggests she did me a favor or some shit. “Are you okay, Nicky?” she asks, patronizing as fuck.

She thinks I’m a pussy, just like everyone else does.

Everyone but him.

I ignore her stupid question and she sighs, nodding to herself while she smoothes her hands over the front of her floral dress. She’s an average looking blonde woman in her late twenties—a prissy little bitch who’s closer to our age than our dad’s. They’ve been together for a few months now and I’m sure he just loves how tight her pussy is, but we have no intention of being nice to her and she knows it.

“We’re leaving for church in fifteen minutes,” she informs us, attempting to sound authoritative but failing. “Please dress appropriately and don’t be late.”

We continue to ignore her and she hesitates, almost as if she doesn’t want to leave us alone together, but then Kade turns his head to look at her and she drops her eyes, her heels tapping along the hardwood floors in the hall as she makes a beeline for the bathroom.

“I don’t like her, Kade.”

He nods and leans over to snatch the clothes he dropped before he grabbed me. “I know.”

“Kade—”

“Drop it, Nicky,” he cuts in, barely sparing me a glance as he shoulder checks me on his way to the shower.

“Asshole.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” I chuckle, grabbing some clean sheets from the linen closet to get to work.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, we’re both dressed in dark jeans and long sleeved shirts, walking downstairs to find our dad sitting at the kitchen island, a cigarette pinched between his teeth with his eyes on the phone in his hands. Elle’s standing beside him with her arms crossed over her chest and a troubled look on her face, but it seems he’s only half interested in whatever she’s saying to him.

“…for goodness sake, he had his hand wrapped around Nicky’s throat,” she hisses. “He was choking him, Eric.”

“They’re just boys being boys, Elle,” he says distractedly, dabbing his roach into the ashtray on the counter. “They fight like that all the time. It’s not a big deal.”

“No, you didn’t see the way they were—”

“The way we were what?” Kade asks, moving for the fridge to grab us two waters.

She wisely shuts her mouth and Dad looks up at us, only just tearing his attention away from whatever he’s reading on his phone. The man looks good for his age, his dark hair a little gray at the edges, bright blue eyes similar to Kade’s and a nasty temper to match. We’re pretty sure he’s an actual psychopath, one who has the nerve to look us dead in the eye while we eat breakfast five feet from the spot where he broke our mother’s skull.

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