I was so torn over it, plus leaving Alicia, that I was considering telling everyone that I wasn’t ready to move. I had survived this long without my brother or Gray and it hadn’t killed me. I could do it a little longer. It could wait until school started for the fall semester, which wasn’t until the end of August. I could have a little more time with the woman who had adopted me, and I could have a little longer to find a way to deal with having to see Gray whore himself out every night.
“Kas!” an all-too-familiar voice called out behind me.
Goose bumps popped up along my arms, and I told myself that this was okay, I was okay, and I could do this. Slowly, I turned, a welcoming smile on my face. The one I had practiced in the mirror for the last few days. Then I saw him on the escalator, his gym bag strap slung over his arm and his red carry-on beside him.
My heart stopped at the sight of him, my breath literally trapped in my lungs as he smiled at me across the distance that separated us. He lifted the carry-on up and then above his head like it was a sack of feathers and then pushed his way down the escalator, not seeming to notice the people he was bumping into in his rush to get to the bottom as quickly as possible.
All I could do was stand there as if I were frozen in place. I had tried to tell myself over and over again that he wasn’t as good-looking as I kept imagining him to be. That the pictures around our house were lying when they showed me how handsome and sexy he really was. That his golden skin wasn’t really honey-kissed, or that his sand-colored eyes weren’t as unique as I let myself think. That, when he smiled, he didn’t do it with his entire soul in his eyes. His shoulders weren’t as massive as the picture proclaimed them—a camera added weight, for fuck’s sake.
Those had all been lies I had fed myself over the months since I had last seen him in the flesh, and if anything, he was even bigger now. As he grew closer, making anyone who dared to move into his path practically get bulldozed over because he wasn’t watching where he was going or didn’t seem bothered by who he walked over, I saw that his shirt was so tight that it looked like the material would split down the middle if he sneezed wrong. Tight veins had popped up on his arms, even more prominent now than they had been at Christmas.
I ate up the sight of him, soaking in the way his smile made his eyes actually sparkle, and still, I just stood there.
Then he was right there in front of me, his bag and his case on the ground at our feet, and I was in his arms. My arms went around his neck, and I let go of my hold on my happy tears as I hugged him and let him swing me around and around. People stopped and watched us, but neither of us saw or noticed their amused and somehow knowing smiles.
“Fuck,” he groaned against my ear. “I thought today was never going to get here. I missed you so damn much, little caterpillar.”
“You couldn’t have possibly missed me more than I missed you,” I argued, laughing tearfully.
He pulled back a little so he could look down at me and gave a shake of his head.
“What took you so long? I was starting to think you left without me,” I demanded when his eyes darkened at the sight of my tears.
“The plane sat on the tarmac for thirty minutes. No one explained why, and I was about to break a window and jump off the damn thing so I could get to you when they finally opened the door.” He set me on my feet and picked his things up. After slinging the bag over his shoulder again, he grabbed the handle of the rolling case and then took my hand, entwining our fingers as we walked outside.
“I hate when they don’t give an explanation.” I pulled my key fob from my pocket and handed it over to him when we got to the car, knowing he was going to want to drive.
He took it with a smirk before opening the trunk and putting his things inside. Then he walked around to the passenger’s door and opened it for me, but before I could get in, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. I looked up at him, saw the look in his eyes, and tried to decipher it, but the sun was shining right in my face and I couldn’t see what he was thinking.
Gray lowered his head and touched his lips to my cheek. “It’s good to see you, Kas.”
My smile was genuine when I looked up at him. “You too. You look great, by the way. Been working out like mad, it looks like.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “It keeps my mind occupied.”
From what? I wanted to ask the question but kept my lips pressed closed, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
The drive home was a lot smoother than the one I’d had on the way to the airport. Traffic flowed easily while there were still cars lined up for two miles on the other side from the wreck. Gray spent the time catching me up on Sin, Kale, and Cash. The guys were still working their extra jobs because their manager, Emmie Armstrong, was working on getting Tainted Knights a record deal. The band’s contract was up, and an all-chick band had taken their place at First Bass. The Blonde Bombshells had sounded kickass from one of the videos Jace had posted on social media.
“Okay, enough about the guys,” Gray grumbled as he took the exit that would lead home. “What are your plans for this week?”
“I’ve been invited to a few parties, but I haven’t made up my mind about going or not.”
“Who invited you?”
I shrugged and looked out the window at the passing houses. “Just a few friends.” I didn’t want to get in to it too deeply.
There were a handful of parties going on, most of which people would show up to for a few drinks before moving on to the next. But they were all given by people Gray couldn’t stand.
“Who are you going with?”
“I still haven’t decided if I want to go,” I reminded him.
“Who, Kassa?”
“Kevin Young asked me to go with him, okay?” I muttered and felt his sudden tension.
“Kelsey’s younger brother?”
Of course he would remember Kelsey. She was only one of many who had slept with Gray when he’d been in high school. But, unlike most of the other girls he had hooked up with, she had really only wanted one night with him. They had even stayed friends from what I had seen, and she had gone to a few of the band’s shows when they would play gigs at some of the local bars.
“Yes, Kelsey’s brother.”
“He’s a douchebag, Kas.”
“Most guys are,” I tried to tease. “Just look at your friends.”
“Let me take you to the parties,” he surprised me by offering. “I can promise you will have ten times more fun with me than that assclown.”
“Gray, I told you I don’t even know if I want to go. I thought maybe we could all hang out Saturday night after the ceremony. I haven’t seen Jace in almost a year, and it’s been even longer since I saw Kin. And I want to spend some more time with Alicia if I’m going back with you next week.”
He stopped at a red light and turned his gaze on me, his shoulders even more tense than they had been when I had mentioned Kevin. “If?”
“If what?”
His face tightened, his eyes shuttered as he tried to read me. “You said ‘if I’m going back with you next week.’ I want to know what that means, exactly.”
I mentally cursed my choice of words and blew out a long sigh. “It means I’m going to miss Alicia. We’ve gotten really close since Christmas. I love her just as much as I love you and my brother, and I’m going to miss her. So yeah, I’ve been thinking about staying for the summer.”
The light turned green, but Gray didn’t attempt to move forward. “Kassa…”
Several of the vehicles behind us honked their horns, and I could actually hear one old man cursing, but Gray just sat there, not bothering to touch the gas.
“We have to go now.”
“No, we have to talk about this. I have been going out of my fucking mind missing you, so goddamn excited for you to graduate so you could move out to Cali with us. Now, you’re telling me that’s not going to happen?” Disappointment and something else twisted his handsome face, breaking my heart.
“I just told you why,” I cried, not wanting to go down this road with him now. Or ever.
“But Alicia has been yapping my ear off about how excited she is for you to come out with us. You have four boxes of shit sitting unopened in your room right now, Kas.” He turned slightly, putting his hand on the back of my seat as he leaned forward. “Talk to me here, baby, because I’m confused as fuck right now.”
More horns blew behind us and several drivers drove around us when there was no oncoming traffic. The road rage going on around us was real, but he didn’t seem to realize what was going on outside of my car. His eyes were focused solely on me, those sand-colored orbs trying to see inside me and read all the chaos going on inside my brain.
I pushed my hair back from my face and turned in my seat so that I was facing him, but it also gave me a few extra inches of space between his face and mine. “Look, I haven’t made up my mind yet, so can we not talk about this right now? I don’t want to get into it.”
“Fine,” he muttered and sat back. The light had already turned red again, but I was thankful it’d changed. “But we will talk about this later, Kassa.”
Joy.
FIFTEEN
Kassa
“Are you sure you don’t mind picking us up tomorrow?” Kin’s voice filled my ear as I stood in my closet, trying to figure out what to wear. “I mean, we can rent a car if you’re busy. I know how crazy the day before graduation is.”
“No, it’s not a problem. I’ve had so much time on my hands lately that I have already done everything that I needed to prepare for Saturday. All I have to do is be at school by seven tomorrow night for practice. You can tag along if you want. I haven’t seen you and my brother in forever. We could go get something to eat after.”
“That sounds like a plan, babe,” Kin assured me. “But are you sure you want to spend that time with us? Don’t you want to hang out with friends since you’ll be coming back with us next week?”
I grimaced and finally picked up a pair of jeans. The jeans were ever so slightly tighter now that I had curves from working out so much. Turning, I looked at myself in the full-length mirror, liking the way my ass looked in them.
“Kas?” Kin called out in a singsong voice when I hadn’t answered her.
I turned the phone onto speaker and started looking for a top that would go with the jeans. “Nah, most of my friends are already partying pretty hard. I bet half of them show up hungover for graduation. Alicia has already promised vengeance if I look like crap the day of.”
“So, what, you’re hanging out with Gray all week?” She made an annoyed noise in her throat. “The guy was annoying as fuck the last few weeks, girl. All he could talk about was getting to see you and all the crap he planned on doing with you. Even Kale was starting to get annoyed with him, and you know it’s hard to annoy that stoic bastard.”
“Gray and I have hung out all week,” I told her as I decided on my black halter top. I didn’t even bother with a bra as I pulled the top into place. “Tonight, I’m going out with a friend from the gym.”
“Is this friend a guy or a chick?”
“A guy,” I mumbled, checking myself out once again in the mirror.
“Holy shit! Really?”
Her surprise at my answer made me blush, and I gritted my teeth a few times before answering. “Yes, really.”
“Whoa… Wait, is this a date?”
The pink in my cheeks only deepened. “Uh, kind of, I guess.”
“Does Gray know?”
I didn’t answer, and she took my silence as confirmation.
“Well, hell. Now, I wish I were already there. I want to see his face when his ‘little caterpillar’ spreads her wings and turns into the beautiful butterfly we all know she is.”
I rolled my eyes at my reflection, and after picking the phone up, I walked into my bathroom to do my makeup. “It’s not like that. Brandon has been asking me out for weeks now, and last Sunday, I finally gave in and told him yes.”
“You gave in and told him yes, then arranged a date on a day when you knew Grayson Knight would be home and see you going out with this guy.” Kin’s observation was spot-on, dang it. “So… Can you maybe take pictures of Gray’s face when the dude shows up to pick you up?”
I snorted. “Sorry, but Gray is at the gym right now, and I’ll be gone before he gets back.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. You’re going on a date with a guy you don’t really know, and I’m the only one who knows? That’s not smart, babe. Not smart at all.”
“Alicia knows, and she thought it was a great idea to go out with Brandon.”
She had told me that she had started to worry about my disinterest in dating when I had told her about Brandon, and she had even encouraged me to say yes over the last few weeks. It was because of her that I had finally given in, not Gray.
Or so I had tried to lie to myself.
Maybe I was doing it because of him. Maybe I wanted him to see that I wasn’t going to sit around and let the world pass me by. Just because I was in love with him didn’t mean I had to close myself off and wait for something that was never going to happen. I had to be realistic about the fact that Gray and I were never going to happen, and it was time to move forward with my life.
Because, fuck, he sure as hell had been moving forward, and from what I had heard, it was at the speed of a bullet train.
“Well then, that makes me feel better,” Kin muttered, blowing out a relieved sigh. “Glad that’s out of the way. Now, let’s talk about the important stuff. Is he hot?”
I paused in the process of putting on mascara and pictured Brandon. Short chestnut hair, leanly muscled with a runner’s physique, and around average height for a guy. He was cute, and plenty of the younger women at the gym had been watching him more closely since he had joined two months ago. But cute was all I could say about him. He, like every other guy I had looked at, didn’t compare when I lined him up in my mind beside of Gray.
And that, too, was why I had finally said yes to this date. I hadn’t given him a chance because I had been too busy comparing him to Gray and finding him lacking. But that had to stop, and not just with Brandon. I needed to start dating. If Gray could go out and dip his dick into any chick who would spread her legs for him, then there was nothing wrong with my dating.
“Kas? Kassa?” Kin called out, pulling me out of my inner musings. “What the hell are you doing? I’ve been talking for a solid minute and you haven’t said a word.”
“I’m getting ready for this date. I heard you talking. I’m just trying not to stick my mascara wand in my damn eye.” It was a lie. I hadn’t heard a word she had said, but she didn’t need to know that.
“You could have said something, bitch,” she grumbled.
“Like you could have said something when I was talking to you last week while you and my brother were apparently doing things I don’t even want to think about? And by the way—gross! I heard him.”
“Touché,” she mumbled.
“I still love you.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll let you go. But I want details later.”
“I don’t know what time I’ll get home, but I’ll tell you all about it when I pick you up from the airport tomorrow,” I promised.
“Deal,” she said with a cheer. “I’ll see you tomorrow, babe. Have a good night. Hope you have fun.”
“Bye, Kin.”
Ten minutes later, I examined myself one last time and then grabbed my purse and my phone. Brandon was supposed to pick me up soon, and I didn’t want to keep him waiting. Or chance that Gray would be home early and see me leave.
I honestly didn’t know how he was going to react to my going out with anyone, let alone Brandon. We had never had to deal with that, but with as protective as Gray was, I knew he wouldn’t handle it well. He would scare the shit out of anyone who wanted to date me, just like any overprotective big brother or father would do. I didn’t want him to give Brandon a hard time.
Just as I was coming down the stairs, a car door shut in the driveway, so I hurried outside. I saw Brandon coming up the sidewalk and waved as I locked the door behind me and walked toward him. His brown eyes drifted over me from head to toe and then back again. The feel of his eyes on me, seeing the hunger in their depths, only made me feel exposed, and I had to curb the urge to go back inside to grab a cardigan so I could cover myself. I had worn this outfit to feel sexy, but I felt like a little girl playing dress-up.
Brandon reached me and took my hand, holding it tight in his as he took another slow appraisal of me. “You look hot,” he muttered in a deep voice.
“I … Um, thank you.” I smiled up at him. “You said we were only going to dinner and maybe dancing. I hope this isn’t too causal.”
He was already shaking his head. “No, no. I like what you’re wearing. There’s a bar downtown that plays really good music and makes killer wings and burgers. That okay with you?”
“Sounds perfect,” I assured him with another smile, but my face felt tight and I hoped he didn’t see how forced it was.
Relax, I mentally chided myself. It’s just a date. Nothing I don’t feel comfortable with will happen.
We walked down to his car, and he went right to the driver’s side, leaving me to open my own door. Instantly, I compared his action to how Gray always opened my door for me. It wasn’t something Alicia had tried to instill in him, either, and he sure as hell didn’t do it for everyone.
It was something so small, but most guys didn’t even think about opening doors for others these days. Until right then, I had never really thought about it, yet I was using it to compare Brandon and Gray again.
Ugh! I mentally screamed at myself. Just stop it, Kassa.
After that silent scold, I focused on Brandon. He kept glancing at me as he drove, his eyes skimming over my chest, but he made light conversation. The weather, sports I knew a little about because Gray and Jace had educated me on over the years. I could follow baseball pretty well, and I was fluent in football talk, but basketball was a whole new language for me. Unfortunately, that was the sport Brandon seemed to favor. He might not have had the height for the game, but he seemed to have passion for it.
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