Page 7 of Love Thy Brother
“I was. It just blows my mind, that’s all. That she’s even here.”
I felt that. Mateo’s come-to-Jesus moment had been intense. A wild ride we were still reeling from. But our reward came in the form of the sweetest, cleverest little girl, and watching our tortured, angry brother morph into the mellow dad and lover he was meant to be.
That’s right, I said it. Papá Mateo was the tits. “Don’t forget we’ll have a newborn to consider soon.”
Cam blew out a stressed breath. “I keep forgetting there’s an endgame to Juana being pregnant.”
“No, you don’t. You bought her a house.”
“I bought Mateo a house,” Cam corrected. “He’ll have it off me by the end of the month. Can’t see anyone living there for a while, though. These kids don’t want to leave home.”
Our collective gaze turned back to Embry and Mateo. They’d gone back to loading pallets, but it was a standard joke between the three of us that they’d be shacked up in Embry’s upstairs bedroom forever, using my place up the road as a shag pad for reasons I didn’t want to understand.
Activity at the gate caught my attention. Folk stepped up to open it and Orla’s car rolled in, tailed by Locke on his hog.
Nash’s gaze sharpened. He tracked them as they pulled into the yard and parked outside the sales building, watching Locke dismount and scan the area, his bodyguard vigilance on point, before he opened Orla’s car door.
He said something.
She laughed.
Beside me, Nash pulled out a vape and sucked on it, exhaling a weed-scented mist through his nose. I knew him as well as I knew myself, but for once, his expression was hard to gauge.
“You know...” I started, waving away his cloud of lies and reaching for the real zoot I’d abandoned. “If you don’t want her bonding with Beefcake Halliwell, you should’ve stayed in her bed instead of invading my alone time.”
Nash rolled his eyes. “All your time is alone time.”
“So? Shouldn’t stop you getting your freak on?”
Cam cleared his throat. “Really? We’re gonna talk about him boning my sister?”
“I’m not boning your sister,” Nash said flatly.
“Bollocks,” I coughed out, not giving a shite that Cam was right there. “She’s in your room all the time.”
“So are you.”
Truth. But I wasn’t Nash’s one true love. We could sleep naked together for the rest of our lives and nothing would happen.Got that T-shirt already.
I smoked more weed and regarded Nash. He’d come in here stinking like he’d spent all night rolling in the hay with the hottest girl in town. Was he seriously telling me he wasn’t sleeping with Orla?
Tired and headfucked, I couldn’t puzzle it out.
Cam couldn’t either, and for once, he bit first. “How the fuck are you not banging my sister? You’re all over each other.”
Okay. Not what I would’ve opened with, but we could work with it. Maybe. If Nash didn’t blink too soon, something he wasn’t good at when it came to Orla’s big brother, and I got that. Loving Cam’s siblings was emotional and more painful than any fucking migraine.
Knew it.
Lived it.
Wasn’t prepared for the guilty look Nashie sent me, though. When it came to him and me, that emotion was all mine, and this time, I wasn’t quick enough to block the disjointed images that flooded my brain.
They bombarded me. River’s masculine build. His messy hair and roaming hands. His wild,pleadinggaze as he’d begged me not to do the one thing that would burn it all down.
“Don’t leave me, boo. Promise me. If we’re gonna fuck like this, I can’t wake up without you.”
Cam cuffed my shoulder, his glare heavy. For a blood-churning moment, I feared I’d taken that trip down memory lane out loud. Then he jerked his head at Nash. “Are you hearing this crap?”
