by Sophia Gray
“Oliver,” she found herself saying one night, “how about we go to the movies? We could get pizza or something?”
“No,” he’d snapped, like she had asked him to give up one of his less vital organs.
Trying to figure out what was wrong with him was, in a word, tedious. She wanted to say it was just typical teenage angst, but it felt like more than that. Oliver wasn’t a bad kid, she was sure of it, but he was spending as much time away from her as possible. Which took a pretty impressive amount of talent considering the rent-by-the-week apartment they were sharing was smaller than the doublewide they had grown up in.
More often than not, she was talking to him through the door. He came out to grab whatever food she had ordered from the steadily growing collection of takeout menus, only to ferret it back into his bedroom. He hadn’t snuck out again, but he had tried.
She was loath to admit it had been Finn who caught him.
Cora had been sitting on the worn couch in the small living room with a half-eaten order of pad Thai sitting next to her laptop as she tried to get some late-night work in. A horror flick was playing on the television screen in lieu of office music. She could only assume the melodramatic screams of a busty coed as she ran away from a faceless villain masked the sounds of Oliver trying to escape the confines of the double-locked window.
She had just been getting into the final fight scene where the hero figured out how to overcome the big bad scary thing when a knock had sounded on the sliding glass door. Cora had jumped hard enough to spill her evening wine over her pajama pants. Finn had been standing there, a surly-looking Oliver caught in one hand.
“Hey,” he had said when she slid open the pane of thick glass, letting in the scent of chlorine from the year-round pool at the center of the complex. “I was just…passing by, and…”
She’d raised her brow. “For a criminal, you are a terrible liar. Oliver, get to your room.”
Oliver had straightened his shoulders, trying to show off how big and tall he was. Cora wasn’t particularly impressed. One the one hand, she wasn’t a very tall woman herself, and bigger and badder men than her little brother had tried to use their build to be intimidating. On the other, he was standing next to Finn, who had a way of looking intimidating just by breathing. Oliver wasn’t aware of his failure.
“You aren’t my mother.”
She’d snorted and shook her head. “You say that like it’s supposed to be a bad thing.”
Oliver’s snort in response had been so similar to her own that she was reminded how much of their upbringing had been the same. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Funny thing. I can. You don’t have to listen. I don’t have any superpower that compels you to do what I say. All I can hope, little brother, is that you are smart enough to understand I am trying to keep you safe.”
“Whatever,” he said as he pushed past her and stomped off to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him hard enough to make the hotel-quality artwork on the walls shake.
Finn waited a moment, quietly standing in the still-open doorway. “I’m sorry.”
Cora could not bring herself to answer. Partly because the final screech of music was blaring out of the television as the bad guy was finally killed. Partly because she was getting to the point where she really didn’t know what to say. Cora wished it were that easy. One great big problem solved with a single action with no consequences to deal with. But there were always consequences, no matter what you did. Cora knew that better than most.
“What are you sorry for, exactly?” she’d asked, wiping at the wine that had stained her pajama pants. It was a mild frustration since the pajamas were both silk and new. Still, it was the only problem she currently knew how to deal with.
“For lying.” He stepped inside, sliding the door shut behind him. “I promised myself I was going to be honest with you. Speed said you liked honesty.”
She went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of club soda out of the pantry, pouring some onto a paper towel. Without looking at him, she began to blot the stain out. “I do. I’m surprised you still care what I like.”
“Why? Because you yelled at me?”
“I didn’t yell.”
He nodded, shoving his hands inside of his jeans. “True. You very carefully snapped at me.”
“Most men aren’t particularly fond of women who are willing to snap at them.”
Finn took a step forward. She paused in her cleaning and looked up at him. He was a lot closer than she would have liked. She could feel the warmth coming off him in waves, the scent of his skin beneath the ever-present scent of oil and hard work. It was a strangely compelling musk.
“Should I say that cliché about not being most men?” he asked.
“You are.” She turned her gaze away from him and back to the red blotch on her hip. “I’ve known plenty of guys like you. Criminals that think they are doing something wild and rebellious by slapping their ass on a bike and breaking the law. You think the rules of the world don’t apply to you. It’s a romantic thought, but it’s loaded with bullshit.”
“Wow,” he said. “Shit, Cora, what happened to you?”
Her head jerked up, and she was surprised to see the look of deep concern on his face. “What are you talking about?”
“I know I don’t have the great big college education that you do, but that doesn’t mean I am a complete idiot. I can tell when someone doesn’t like someone because they aren’t cool with it, and when it’s personal. That whole rant there was personal.”
“It wasn’t a rant,” she growled, tossing the wet towel into the cheap trash bin. The wet spot on her pajama pants felt cool against her skin. She could only assume she was so aware of it because he was so close.
There were certain men who had a presence to them. Their nearness made a woman aware of her body in such a way that he didn’t even need to touch her to get the proverbial engine purring. Finn, she had known from the very beginning, was one of them. There were only two ways to deal with those kind of men. You either ignored them, or you took them for a drive to get them out of the system. Once the body’s curiosity was satiated, life could go back to normal.
Cora was more than willing to just ignore Finn, but it wasn’t easy since he kept showing up in her life.
“Is this about the kiss?” he had asked.
God, that kiss. It hadn’t just been good. It had been phenomenal. The curl of his fingers against her body and the taste of him making her head go light. The kiss had been the paragon of its kind. Cora wanted to bottle up the sensation for her memories.
With more passion than grace she had shooed him out. Even now, as she stood at the small bit of counter space that her rental had provided for her, pouring herself an evening glass of wine, she felt herself flush in memory of the way their mouths had felt against one another.
“Cora?”
She jumped, nearly spilling her wine. It would not do to spill two nights in a row. Oliver was standing there looking dark around the eyes. Had he lost weight these past few weeks? Maybe, or maybe she was just so used to seeing him in oversized hoodies that seeing him in a T-shirt was a little jarring.
“Yeah?”
“I finished my homework.”
After his first little foray into the late night, Cora had not only grounded Oliver, she had laid down the law. She got confirmation texts every time he went to class. She knew what homework he brought home, and she made sure all of it was done. It had seemed like a good idea when she had been furious about him sneaking out. Now it felt like she was the warden and he was the inmate. It was not her favorite feeling.
“Can I see it?”
He held up several sheets of paper and a printout. She spread it out in front of her. The handwriting was terrible, but the answers were all correct.
“You’re smart,” she said easily.
He dipped his head and jerked one shoulder into the air dismissively. “Whatever.”
She was quiet as
she shuffled the papers back together. “Intelligence isn’t something to say ‘whatever’ to.”
He made a tch sound as he clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “I just repeat what they tell me.”
She looked him over for a moment. The dark rings around his eyes made them look bluer than the hazel she knew they were. There was a slight red tinge from lack of sleep. He was skinny, she realized, not just small.
“Did you eat tonight?”
“Some leftover Chinese,” he said without enthusiasm.
“I’m sorry I don’t cook.”
His lips quirked. “My sister? Admitting to something she can’t do?”
She rolled her eyes but found herself smiling anyway. It felt good to hear him joke rather than some passive-aggressive comment. “I tend to overfocus on one thing while something else burns. Sue me. You are far better off with takeout.”
He glanced out the sliding glass window. “Finn can cook.”
She followed the line of his gaze. Across the span of the parking lot she could see a vehicle with the solid outline of a lone occupant. At first glance it could have been anyone. At a second glance, she knew it was Finn watching the apartment.
“Jesus, is he always out there?” she asked.
“Ever since I snuck out.” The bitterness in Oliver’s voice was thick enough to walk on.
Cora frowned. She wasn’t entirely sure she liked a criminal sitting outside of her rental apartment, waiting for her little brother to sneak out of his temporary bedroom window. Still, she thought as her memories wandered to the evening before, I can hardly fault his usefulness.
“I see,” she finally answered. She wandered over to the window and looked out. She couldn’t quite see the glitter of his blue eyes staring at her, but she could almost feel it. She shivered.
“Is there something going on between you two?”
She turned away from the window. “What?”
“I mean, you two snap at each other a lot. Like…a lot, a lot.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and walked away from the window, out of the line of Finn’s sight. “I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be associating arguing with interest. That’s not healthy.”
“I’m pretty sure you just avoided answering my question.”
“See, I told you you were smart.”
He mimicked her stance by crossing his arms and standing there with his feet shoulder-width apart.
“We kissed.” She released her arms and ran her hand through her short auburn locks. “It was stupid and unexpected.”
“So, do you like him?”
“No,” she answered firmly, picking up her glass. “It was a fluke that happened in a moment of stress.”
“He’s not a bad guy, you know.” Oliver plopped down on one of the barstools at the island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room. “I know you just want to think that he’s a criminal, but there is more to him than that.”
One carefully plucked eyebrow danced up her pale forehead. “You want to explain that to me again?”
“Can I have some of that?” he asked, pointing to the wine.
“You’re sixteen.”
“They can drink wine in Italy at sixteen.”
“Weird, I didn’t realize we were in Italy.”
“You’re snarky.”
“True.”
“So I can’t have any?”
She frowned. “If you make it through the next month and get to your court date without giving me a heart attack, I’ll take you to Italy and you can have wine.”
He gave her a dubious look. “For real?”
She nodded. “For real. I’ve been meaning to take a vacation anyway. Why not to Italy? I mean, we will have to get you a passport and everything.”
“Can I still get a passport if I have a record?”
“According to US Code Classification Table 2714, so long as your charges are not drug-related or you’re not currently serving time, you can get a passport.”
Oliver blinked at her slowly. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Because I got a passport a few years ago.” She took a long sip of her wine and eyed him carefully. If she could dangle something he wanted in front of him, like a trip to Italy and a glass of wine, she would do that to keep him doing what needed to be done. Sure, some people saw that as bribery, but the fact was people bribed themselves every day. They could eat that cheeseburger if they did an extra couple of miles on their treadmill. They could buy that pretty jacket if they did an hour or two of overtime. Done right, rewarding yourself for doing something was a pretty healthy way of achieving your goals.
“You really mean it? You’ll take me to Italy?”
She held her hand out to him. “I promise.”
He eyed her extended hand dubiously. “Mom makes a lot of promises.”
“As you were more than willing to tell me last night…I’m not Mom.”
The flicker of shame made his eyes go dark. For a moment, he stood there looking at her hand like he couldn’t quite believe that it was there. Slowly he extended his own and clapped their palms together for a firm shake. After that he dropped her hand like it was made of fire. “Don’t piss out on me,” he said, stomping past her and into his bedroom.
Yet again Cora was swamped with the feeling that she was going about this all wrong.
And why not? She wasn’t anyone’s mother. She’d never been a caretaker before. No one succeeded the first time they tried something. Her first company had been vested in research. Not scientific, but businesses. She would gather people around to ask them if they wanted to buy a product and what it would take for them to like it. Cora hadn’t really understood how to handle the many facets of running her own business, and it had crashed.
She did not have the time or the opportunity to crash when it came to Oliver. It wasn’t like she had another brother, and he really didn’t have another chance.
She did not, as her brother put it, have the time to piss out on him. Not that Cora really understood what that meant.
With that in mind, she wandered over to the fridge to find something to snack on while she watched a late-night movie. There wasn’t much, she had to admit. It was a collection of paper cartons and takeout boxes. It wasn’t a healthy arrangement. Back home there were twenty restaurants within walking distance of her place. And two-thirds of them delivered until eleven at night. She’d never had a problem getting variety there. But Carson wasn’t exactly known for its culinary diversity.
According to Oliver, Finn could cook. She wasn’t sure what she thought of that. Okay, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Men who could cook were hot. Maybe it was the idea of slapping traditional gender roles in the face, or maybe it was the fact that Cora worked an average of fifty-five hours a week, but the idea of coming home to a guy who knew how to put a meal on the table so there was one thing less for her to worry about in her day was pretty much a must in Cora’s estimations.
Not that she was actually looking for a boyfriend or anything. Even if she were, the fact that Finn had a criminal record would be enough to keep him out of the running.
She sighed and shut the fridge door again. She didn’t need the extra carbs in her diet anyway.
Her phone buzzed, letting her know she had a new e-mail. Cora read it as she plopped herself down on the couch to enjoy a quiet evening. It was a daily update from Gemma, letting her know how the company was doing without Cora. While it was filled with a generous amount of information, it could have been simplified by a simple “things are going well, we’ve got things covered.” Cora had mixed feelings about that.
She liked to be needed. Then again, who didn’t? Maybe Cora liked it a little more than most, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to compare a mental scale of needs and desires. She enjoyed what it felt like to fix a problem and see a situation work out for the best. Maybe that was her issue with Oliver. She was bashing her head against a problem, and nothing seemed to be changing.
With a sigh, Cora popped open her laptop and typed up a response, which she had no doubt would work its way around the office in some kind of memo. After she hit Send, Cora flipped on the television to find something to watch. She settled on a drama that focused on the relationships between parents and children. The irony was not lost on her.
She was just nodding off when she felt the heat of his hands on her. Finn’s fingers were callused from his work around the body shop. Dimly, she mused that there was something delectably perverse about working in a place called a “body shop.” He skimmed his hand over the bare inch of her belly that was exposed between her pajama pants and the matching top.
