by Kris Jayne
The pint-sized irritant rolled her eyes.
Erin’s face pinked. “I was over Ricky the instant he fled with his stash of magic mushrooms in the middle of the night, little miss sunshine.” She pursed her lips, closed her eyes, and shook her hands in front of her face. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue.”
Ricky’s girlfriend gave Erin a pinched look. “Good because we’re here like you wanted. Let’s do this.” She turned toward the garage, and her idiot ambled behind her. He gave me the evil eye but said nothing.
I started after them, and Erin grabbed my arm and whispered, “Thanks for coming to do this. I don’t think I could face Ricky and what’s-her-name without…It’s a little humiliating.”
“What is?” I choked out the question, ignoring the heat radiating from her body now pinned to my side.
“His showing up here with a new woman,” she grumbled.
She’d taken off the headband she wore at boot camp, and a flurry of red curls fell across her cheek, hiding her eyes. I couldn’t see her face, but I still knew the truth. “Hey, there’s no comparison.”
“Right.” Erin straightened. “If he hadn’t left, I might still be paying his bills. That’s probably Blue Bell’s problem now.” Her arm tightened around mine.
“You would have kicked him out eventually,” I declared with more certitude than I felt.
She tipped her head up enough for me to glimpse the doubt creasing her brow. “Maybe. Yeah. Of course. I’m glad you’re here.”
The loose red waves of her bobbed hair lifted in the light wind. Gratitude widened her steel eyes, and her soft lips formed a perfect bow that shot an arrow to my chest with each smile.
She’d been my personal cupid since I was nineteen and Sean introduced me to his fifteen-year-old-sister. She had long, unruly hair in high school but the same blue-grey eyes that stormed like the Atlantic. Erin would sit silent for long stretches and then snap into the conversation with something clever and snarky as only a teenage girl who’s too smart for every room could.
Damn. Sean McKenna’s little sister.
She called me “Brother Luke”—an endless reminder of where I stood in her life.
Sean’s raspy request to take care of her ricocheted in my mind whenever I thought about Erin in less than brotherly ways. A wisp of guilt floated through me. If he were still alive and even sniffed how I felt, Sean would kick my ass. The dreams I had. The way her smile rearranged my pulse.
And Erin would kick my ass if she knew I was the reason Ricky left.
I’d stopped by the house months ago, but she hadn’t been home. Just Ricky. Well, not just Ricky. I threw the images out of my head.
A week later, he was gone. Erin had been wrecked. Each of her tears watered my shame until I thought it would split me open. But slowly, the spirited, sparkling Erin emerged again. She railed at the endless frustration of Ricky’s irresponsibility. She got over him.
Any regret I had faded when I remembered how easily Ricky abandoned her.
I wanted to protect her. I’d promised I would always do that.
Erin pressed her face into my neck. The sensation of her breath on my skin tinged my protectiveness with something else.
Ricky’s tornado siren voice erupted, and an odd relief flooded me. “If you guys are going to screw, can you let me in the house first, so I can get my things?”
I tilted my head back and forth and refocused on the moron, his minion, and the piles of boxes. The moment and the tension in my body evaporated.
Erin pulled her warmth away from me and headed toward the other couple.
I unzipped my jacket to give myself a little air and breathed deep while she started directing the unwelcome guests.
She tucked a wayward curl behind her ear and swung around pointing. “I packed your clothes there. The small office items and pictures here. Your kitchen stuff. There’s the double bed you had in my spare room.”
Behind the boxes that took up half of the two-car garage, a ratty mattress and box spring leaned against the wall with the dismantled metal bed frame.
“I don’t need that. We have a bed.” He flipped his thumb between himself and his new mark.
“I don’t care. You need to take it,” Erin snapped. “I’m not dealing with your junk after today.”
“Fine.” Ricky scratched his dark head. “What about my gaming system and my speakers? I need to go in and find that. Those are the most important things.”
His games were most important? The guy acted like he was three and not thirty.
Erin pointed again. “I labeled each box. One of them has all your games. The only thing left in the house is the rest of your furniture.” She counted off on her fingers. “Your recliner, your dresser, that bookcase, and your old college desk. I moved it all into the spare room after I moved the bed out here.”
Ricky sighed, now with both hands scrambling through his tumbled hair. “I’m going to have to go through this and make sure you didn’t miss something.”
Seriously?
“No.” My voice boomed with an echo in the cement space louder than I’d intended. Ricky jumped and turned to square off with me, stumbling over a box before his girlfriend caught him with a hand to the back. I took a breath. “Has she given you any indication that she wants to hang onto your things or trash them? She’s been pestering you for four months when she could have dropped your shit in a dumpster, but it’s still here.”
“How am I supposed to know if I got everything?” he whinnied.
Erin winced, but she spoke with the calm indulgence of a daycare worker. “Check the labels. I sorted things by where I found them. I organized as much as possible so we wouldn’t be here all day.”
“But I had—”
Erin and I didn’t have to intervene. His lady friend snatched at his sleeve and toed one of the boxes with her combat boot. “Oh, my God, Ricky. Every box has a label. See? ‘Bedroom, clothes’ and ‘Kitchen, dishes and coffee maker.’ She used a fucking label maker for Christ’s sake. Let’s load it and go.”
I glanced at one of the boxes. Sure as hell, Erin had carefully, clearly labeled each box. With. A. Label. Maker.
Ricky kept kvetching. “Will it all fit in the truck, Crystal?”
His blue-haired sidekick threw up her hands and thundered, “You don’t have that much.”
Still, it was. The mattress set alone would take up a half the space in the back of their small truck. They would have to make two trips.
Erin turned away. She pretended to rifle through some electronics, but I saw her inhaling, holding, and exhaling in a frantic attempt at mindful breathing.
She was going to lose it.
I rubbed my hands together. “The weather’s clear today. How about I help you load everything you can, and then we’ll carry the rest out to the curb? You can come back and get anything you can’t carry without even having to come inside.”
Ricky palmed his forehead and spun around in a circle as if chasing his tail.
“Fine. A plan.” Crystal spoke for him, and instantly, I pitied her.
As much as Ricky hadn’t deserved Erin, this poor sap didn’t deserve to be saddled with the schmuck either. Thank God, he hadn’t ever appreciated the gold mine he had in his ex.
Chapter 3
Erin
Luke helped Crystal with the second truckload of boxes while Ricky paced my empty garage. It took a couple of hours to fill the truck and for them to drop the cargo wherever they lived and head back, but a few more minutes, and he’d be gone forever.
I wiped grit from my forehead. “You’ve loaded the last of it, Ricky.”
“I want to make sure.”
He opened an unlabeled box and shut it again. I ground my teeth to quell a scream.
“Take your time.”
“I guess you can’t wait for me to leave. Looks like you’ve moved on.” He flung the back of his hand in Luke’s direction.
“He’s only here because I wasn’t sure which of
your lunatic friends you were bringing to help you move.”
“Right. He’s always around because of my friends. Always. Even when we were together. And now—”
I didn’t want to hear Ricky’s supposition about me and Luke. “He feels responsible for me because of Sean.”
“You always had a thing for him.” My ex spoke quietly and, for once, in a low tone befitting a grown man.
My cheeks burned. “He’s a friend.”
“I thought that. I mean, I never figured he’d…” Ricky trailed off and shrugged. Doubt and something indecipherable edged his words. “You’re not even his type.”
“Lovely. Nice to know.” I snapped, folding my arms over my chest. “You have your stuff, so go.”
I raised my brows and gestured toward the door, but Ricky stared at his feet and mumbled.
“I never would have left if I thought…He played this perfectly.”
“What are you talking about?” My escalating irritation drew Luke’s attention. He strode up the driveway, looming over Ricky’s shoulder.
My ex jammed his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t just—”
“You’re loaded up and ready to go,” Luke bellowed.
Ricky jerked like he’d been shot and whirled around. “Jesus!”
The two men surveyed each other, and Luke stepped to my side.
Crystal wandered in the garage, wiped her hands on her pants, and pulled on her boyfriend’s sleeve. “We’re done.”
“I need to…I wanted to…” Ricky huffed and glared at Luke.
Was he actually jealous?
Luke’s frozen profile betrayed nothing but the same fatigue I felt. He was protective of me. Period.
Ricky might be right. I did have a thing for Luke, but he was also right about Luke’s type: fit, hardcore women who hiked and biked and climbed mountains and wore leggings as pants without worrying about their ass.
If he wanted to be more than Brother Luke, I wouldn’t know what to do. How could I be what he deserved?
“Crystal, can you go ahead and start the truck? I want to take one more sweep of the house.” Ricky interjected into my thoughts and cut off the pending objection from his new lady friend with a wave of his hands. “Walk it with me, Erin. This way, we can both sign off.”
Crystal harrumphed and went back to the truck.
Ricky obviously had something to say to me. I turned to Luke with a pleading expression. “Can you give us a minute?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Please?” I asked.
Luke huffed and gripped his own biceps hard, as if he wanted to wrestle himself to the ground. I never knew how much he hated my ex.
When Ricky and I got inside, he stopped in the living room and turned. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for how things ended. I should have…er, shouldn’t have…I said some shitty stuff to you.”
My eyes shut for a second as I remembered. “Forget it. It’s over.”
“Do you trust Luke?” Ricky glanced over his shoulder at the door to the garage.
“Of course, I trust him. He’s never been anything but good to me.”
“I mean…he’s sliding in pretty fast. Isn’t he?”
The bitterness in Ricky’s tone might have given me a twisted thrill if I weren’t so tired and that blue-haired imp weren’t hovering at the curb. “So what if he is? What I do is none of your business.”
“But—”
“That’s what you wanted to say to me?” My volume edged up. “You wanted to warn me about one of my oldest friends?”
“No!” Ricky yelled, then deflated. “I wanted to apologize.”
The door swung open. Luke growled from the doorway. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. He’s leaving,” I said and turned back to Ricky. “I accept your apology, okay? Go.”
Ricky didn’t say another word. Luke held the door open for him, and he squeezed past and out to the truck.
That was it. Almost three years of my life, and all I had to show for it was a sick feeling in my stomach and previously hidden dust bunnies swirling in my empty spare bedroom. I fled to my kitchen and filled a tall glass with ice and water.
“You sure you’re okay?” Luke asked, joining me in the kitchen.
“Yeah. It’s all kind of empty.” I swooped a hand in the air. “My house. Me. He’s gone.”
The kick of the rickety truck engine coughed like a phlegmy old man outside, rumbled, and faded.
“Don’t get me wrong.” Relief tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Getting rid of Ricky is like checking out of a mental ward. I feel lighter. I just—”
“You’ll miss him?” Luke supplied.
“No. I miss what I thought we might be. If I hadn’t thought we could be something bigger, I wouldn’t have stayed. I don’t know. I’ll miss having someone.” My gut clenched with a groan, and I pressed my face to my hands. “Pathetic.”
Luke’s arms enveloped me. He smelled like work and strength. The solid mass of him let me lean in and be held up. “It’s not pathetic to get attached to people.”
“It is if you stay while they treat you like trash. I swore I wouldn’t be that girl. I never wanted to be my mother.” A lump coalesced in my throat.
“You’re not your mother.”
“I felt like it today. Ignoring my own feelings, so I could keep Ricky calm and focused. Telling myself to overlook his bad attitude and meanness to keep the peace. You can’t tell me that’s not an awful lot like my mom with my dad.”
“You and Ricky are different,” Luke insisted.
“Are we?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re not your mom and…Ricky isn’t your dad.” His mouth puckered around the sour compliment, and I forced a brittle laugh.
“Pigs must be flying. You’re defending my ex.”
“Hell no. I’m defending you. Trying to see the best in the people you love doesn’t make you pathetic.”
The careful spin on my history didn’t change the embarrassment of having been attached to someone like Ricky.
When I met him, he was the clever, funny graphic designer at the office who created user interfaces for our software. He had a sharp aesthetic eye and a sense of humor that made our long work hours skip by.
His work ethic took a hit after his team was laid off because of budget cuts. I thought encouraging his art would make up for his resentment about losing his gig when I kept mine. It never did.
Ricky was sweet, in his own way. Still was, I guess. His apology might have been easier to take if he hadn’t gone off the rails. Did I trust Luke? Crazy.
Luke and I stood in silence until the crash of new ice tumbling into my freezer broke the stillness. I stepped out of the embrace but still held Luke’s hand.
“Well, I’ll have an extra reason to toast the New Year in a few days.”
Luke cleared his throat and gripped my fingers. “I was going to ask you about New Year’s. Alexa and Graham having a party at their place.”
Alexa owned the gym where he worked. Her fiancé Graham threw a posh but raging New Year’s party each year that was one of the hottest invites in the city.
My skin started to itch, thinking about hot posh parties and hot posh people. “Am I going to have to dress up?”
I dropped my hand from Luke’s grasp.
“Of course, but we’ll have fun. When was the last time you saw me in anything other than gym shorts? I got my tux cleaned.”
I took a long drink of cold water. Luke in his sleek workout gear was hot. Luke in a tailored suit and crisp, white shirt weakened my legs more than ten thousand burpees.
I hadn’t worn a formal dress since my friend Becca’s wedding five years ago. I couldn’t remember what size that was, but it wouldn’t fit.
“A, I have nothing to wear. B, I don’t do fancy. I was thinking of hanging out in my pajamas, having a toast, and heading to bed.”
“Uh uh,” Luke exclaimed. “That is an unacceptably boring New Year’s.”
Aside from my weight and my lack of interest in jumping Ricky’s bones—or bone—the jerk has also accused me of being “as regulated as his grandmother’s shits at the nursing home.” The snide edge to his voice cut me with shame. “Make sure it’s the same. Write it down on the chart.”
I wrinkled my nose as if I could smell the insult. “I can go out without doing the big party thing. Seriously, I have nothing to wear. Nada. I can always hang out with Abby. I think she’s doing something with Ben.”
“Come on, Erin.” Luke swung left and right hooks at my shoulders like a boxer in training. “It’ll be fun. Spectacular food. Dancing. You love dancing.”
True. I did. Maybe I could go shopping and find something decent to wear.
He could sense my capitulation and punched my arm once more. “Get back on the horse.”
“You want to wingman me into a New Year’s hookup?”
“No.” His reply flew at me fast like a jab, but he dropped his fists. “I want to take you out and help you have fun.”
“I can’t believe you don’t have a date yet.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“You should.”
“I will—if you say yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “You and me isn’t a date.”
Luke dropped back against the counter and covered his mouth with his hands. The intensity of his stare took the oxygen out of the room. “Why not?”
My mouth gaped. No sound came out.
“We’re both single,” he said.
“We’re friends.”
His voice was cautious and still. “I love being your friend, but don’t you ever think…sometimes Erin, I…”
Luke moved toward me. His fingers trailed down my cheek. He was so close, I tipped my head back to see him.
His mouth came down on my mine fast, then time slowed like cold honey. Everything froze. My breath. My brain. My heart.
He slipped his tongue between my lips and began undoing my arguments. The probing pressure snapped a tie on my restraint and loosened my grasp on what had always been. His hands slid down my back and urged me closer before stopping on each side of my hips. He gripped and squeezed all while softly exploring my mouth. The subtle vibration of his moaning shook me to my toes.
