Page 3 of The Bachelor

Nurturing.

My dick was fucking throbbing.

Hannah wrapped her arms around Oaklyn. “I love you.”

“Go kick his ass,” Oaklyn replied. “Or better yet, show him why you’re an ass-kicker.”

Hannah released her and moved over to me. “If you want to stay and hang instead of going back to Mom and Dad’s, just crash in my bed. If I’m lucky enough to come home before morning, I’ll climb in with Oaklyn.” She hugged me. “I don’t know if I’ll see you before you leave, and I hate that. Hard.”

What I hated was that I’d only come home for a long weekend, I was flying back to Boston tomorrow, and this was the first time I’d seen Hannah. The previous evenings, she’d been too slammed with work and babysitting our cousin Ford’s daughter to get together with me.

I set my hand on top of her baseball hat, lifting the brim to see more of her face. “Hang in there. You’re going to get through this.”

She gave me the smallest of nods. “See you at spring break?”

“I might go to Mexico with some friends.”

Where Hannah had opted to do her internship her final semester, I’d chosen the fall semester, so that freed up my spring break, and now, I only had to focus on school and prepping for the bar.

She sighed. “You mean, you might come home and hang with your sister because she’s your fave.”

I smiled.

As much as I loved her, that wasn’t going to happen.

She knew that, and she returned my expression with a frown. “See you guys later.”

I watched her leave, and the second the door clicked, I turned to Oaklyn. She was in front of the couch, less than ten feet away, eating a Nutella brownie my sister had baked, a full plate of them on the coffee table.

I pointed at the door. “Should I get out of here too?”

She covered her mouth, a chunk of fudgy brownie at the tip of one of her fingers. “No. Stay. I’m just going to eat the rest of these and finish drinking the rest of that. You can join me.”

Thesewere the brownies.

Thatwas the wine, and there were several more bottles in addition to the one sitting on the table.

I took a seat on the opposite side of the couch, catching a glimpse of her licking the gooey dough off her nail.

The way her tongue scooped.

The way her teeth nipped her flesh.

The way her cheeks sank in as she sucked the remainder of the dessert off her skin.

Fuck.

Me.

Oaklyn and my sister had been friends for as long as I could remember, so she was a girl I’d grown up with. A girl I’d seen grow through every physical stage, starting with the adorable, pigtailed princess, morphing into the sultry twenty-four-year-old woman she was now.

She finished chewing, and her piercing blue gaze connected with mine. “Just a little bit longer, and you’ll be moving back here.” She grabbed her wine from the table and tucked her legs beneath her. “Hannah will be so happy. All she talks about is how much she misses you.”

And I missed her.

But I’d chosen Boston for my undergraduate degree and New York for law school because I knew, ultimately, I would be joining The Dalton Group as soon as I graduated, so I just wanted to get away for a handful of years and have some fun outside of LA and the usual crowd we hung around with.

Besides, choosing Harvard and NYU had meant I could pave my way with a reputation I earned all on my own.

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