Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
He flips over onto his back, and I lean my ass back onto his new desk. “You can relax,” I tell him, still amused. “You don’t have to watch your ass here.”
Not like in prison.
His black hair lies mussed and matted, shorter than mine now, and he just blinks up at the ceiling, unmoving.
I narrow my eyes for a moment. “No ‘screw you,’ ” I tease. “No morning cigarette, no lipstick on your neck or on your…”
And I reach over, jerking up the sheet to confirm there is no evidence of a party on his dick last night.
He snatches the sheet back. “Dallas, fuck off,” he grumbles, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
“There he is.” I hand him the mug of coffee. “Here.”
Lifting his head, he takes it, looking grateful. “Thanks.”
He drinks, keeping his eyes down, and I sit there, my nerves aching underneath my skin as two seconds stretch to ten.
Iron and I were always the closest. Not the closest in age, but we were on the same page about everything. The middle kids out of six, we often found ourselves on the prowl for our own fun. Liv and Trace were too little, and Army and Macon were too busy putting food on the table. When our parents died, we were too old to be raised and too young to do whatever it was the others were doing to make money. Iron didn’t need me, he didn’t bitch at me…He just wanted me around.
I’m supposed to ask him how he is or what it was like in there, but he knows me, and he knows I wouldn’t like hearing it.
I mean, if anyone fucked with him in prison or is threatening him, we’ll take care of it—happily—but I don’t want to know he’s hurting if I can’t help him.
I honestly didn’t think he would be different. I’d visited him. I’d talked to him on the phone. The first thing he should’ve done last night was dive into the party we had going at Mariette’s and then slip into the bar next door and take one—or two—of the women who were so ready to welcome him home up here to his room.
He just scarfed down two burgers and half a key lime pie and went to bed.
For the first time I can remember, I don’t know what to say to him.
“Y’all did a good job.” He lifts his head, offering a small smile as he looks around his new room. “I barely recognize the place.”
I nod, following his gaze. Our house here in the Bay has been in our family for a couple hundred years. It’s huge, but for our entire lives, little of it was livable. After Iron went to prison, the family was finished with failure—and heartbreak—and we renovated, as well as making additions. Not only do the six of us live here, but Army’s kid, Dex, and Krisjen’s siblings, Paisleigh and Mars, do as well.
Iron and I used to share a room, even when we reached adulthood. We had the same appetite for the same women, and it made it easy. That small room felt like a fucking penthouse.
I put two beds back in my room after the renovations, but Macon felt Iron needed his own, and Iron, apparently, agrees.
“I didn’t help much.” I grip the desk behind me. “I was busy, same as you.” I flash him a grin, because just because he was in prison didn’t mean he was going to escape Macon’s plans for the future. He spent some time in the books, too, while he served his sentence. I muse, “What did Trace ever do to deserve getting to run a bar instead of getting a higher education?”
“Yeah.” His amused gaze narrows on me. “Philosophy, huh?”
I stroll to the end of the bed, checking out the box of presents he got from people last night. “Krisjen says it will enable me to make better excuses for my conduct.”
Iron spits his coffee back into his mug, his chest shaking with laughter.
Picking up a Playboy, I flip through it, tilting my head to admire the women’s flexibility. Positions like that always look hot, but it never feels right. I’ve tried.
“To be honest,” I say, “I’m not unhappy with where I fell.”
Clay, my sister’s girlfriend, got her parents to wrangle me an admission to St. Philip University, so I have to be nice to her now. I never would’ve gotten in otherwise. I barely graduated high school.
But after a year of online courses, I started attending some classes in person. One of my professors, Dr. Sarkander, is married to someone who sits on the board of admissions at Marymount, and making a decent impression in order to get some recommendations from my other teachers wasn’t a bad idea, either.
I shoot Iron a knowing look. “It sucks to be you, though.”