Always Have: (Bad Boy Romance)

by Claire Kingsley

  I answer Kylie’s text, realizing it’s been a while since I could text back and forth with her without angling my phone so my jealous girlfriend can’t see who I’m talking to.

  You know I’m in, baby girl.

  It’s going to be a relief to be able to shamelessly flirt with Kylie again. She’s one of the reasons I broke it off with Hope, although I would never admit that to either of them. I knew Hope didn’t like Kylie. She seemed to think I didn’t see her glaring, but I’m not blind. It pissed me off. If a girl can’t handle my friendship with Kylie, they need to step off. I put up with Hope’s jealousy for a while—she gave me some very compelling reasons, and I don’t mean with words—but it got old.

  Not that I blame her. It’s not easy to be with a guy who has a close relationship with another woman. Particularly when that woman is Kylie. She’s fucking adorable. She’s one of those women who has absolutely no clue how beautiful she is, and that only makes her hotter. She’s little compared to me and Selene, with inky dark hair, and these crazy blue-gray eyes, plus a tight round ass and a set of magnificent tits.

  Yes, I notice her ass and her tits. Of course I do. I’m a fucking man, aren’t I?

  I’m normally not the kind of guy who gives a crap about Valentine’s Day, but since I get to hang out with my sister and Kylie, sans boyfriends or dates, I’m in a pretty good mood about it. I wonder why Selene isn’t going out with that Nathan guy, but I guess I’ll find out tonight. I’m assuming it isn’t because they broke up, otherwise I would have heard. I decide to swing by a store and get them both flowers. That will make them smile.

  I meet my girls at a Thai place not far from my condo. I saunter back to their table, holding two huge bouquets of roses wrapped in white paper—pink for Selene, red for Ky. Selene sees me first and her face lights up.

  I grin at both of them. “Ladies,” I say, and hand them their flowers.

  “Aw,” Selene says. She takes the flowers and holds them up to smell them. “Big brother, you’re the sweetest.”

  We’re twins, but I’m older by three minutes.

  “And for you,” I say, handing the red bouquet to Kylie.

  Kylie takes the flowers, but looks more suspicious than my sister. “What is this all about?”

  “It’s Valentine’s Day,” I say. “I wanted to make sure my girls had flowers.”

  They’re sitting on the same side of the table, so I take a seat across from them.

  “So how are we all dateless tonight?” Kylie asks.

  “Nathan is out of town for work,” Selene says. “I was kind of bummed about it, but this is fun.”

  Kylie’s eyes flit to me. She won’t ask. She’ll wait to see if I mention why I’m not taking Hope out tonight. It’s our thing. We don’t discuss our relationships.

  “Hope and I broke up,” I say with a shrug.

  “That’s too bad,” Selene says.

  Kylie raises an eyebrow. “Is it?”

  “Oh, come on, Ky,” Selene says, “Hope wasn’t so bad.”

  “She hated my guts,” Kylie says.

  My stomach twists a little at that. Kylie did notice. Fuck, that pisses me off. “Yeah, well, it’s over. So we can celebrate our singlehood together tonight.”

  “You guys go ahead,” Selene says with a smug smile. “I’m very happily un-single at the moment.”

  “I like Nathan,” Kylie says. “At first I thought he was too arrogant, but he’s actually pretty funny. I’m glad things are working out for you guys.”

  Selene smiles, and my heart swells. I love seeing my sister happy. Nathan better not fuck this up, though, or I’ll break his face.

  The waitress arrives with our dinners, setting down a steaming plate of food in front of each of us.

  “Crispy garlic chicken with sautéed basil, five star,” Kylie says, pointing to my dinner. “I ordered for you.”

  “Thanks, Ky,” I say. The smell already burns my nose. I love Thai food, and crispy garlic chicken is one of my favorites at this place. Kylie knows me well.

  We all dig into our dinners. Selene has some sort of veggie thing that looks decent, but Kylie ordered coconut curry chicken, which is my second favorite thing here. I reach over and grab a bite from her plate. It has just the right mix of heat and flavor.

  “The cook is serious with the spice tonight,” I say.

  Kylie samples from my plate and makes an approving yummy noise.

  “So what’s going on with that guy you were trying to sign?” Selene asks.

  “Derek Marshall? Oh, he’ll sign,” I say. I’m an athletic trainer, specializing in college and pro athletes. My soon-to-be client is a receiver for the Seahawks. He’s trying to up his game after he almost got traded last season, which is where I come in. “He knows I’m the best. His manager is being a pain in the ass about it, but he’ll come around.”

  “Why does his manager care who trains him in the offseason?” Selene asks.

  “Who the fuck knows,” I say. “Maybe he’s getting kickbacks from the current trainer and he knows I don’t play like that.”

  Getting a Seahawk as a client, especially one as high-profile as Derek Marshall, will be great for my business. I have a lot of clients in other pro sports—soccer and baseball in particular. But football is my personal favorite, so I’d love to train more players. A football career was once my dream for my future, but a motorcycle accident when I was eighteen put an end to that.

  Kylie’s phone goes off and she digs it out of her purse to check. A little smile crosses her face as she reads her message.

  “What’s up?” Selene asks.

  “You remember that guy I went out with a week or so ago?” she asks.

  “The one who was so much fun, and then you didn’t hear from him after your first date?” Selene asks. She sounds as skeptical as I feel. If the guy’s ignoring Kylie, she should fucking ignore him right back.

  “Yeah, but he says he didn’t call because he had to go out of town for a family emergency,” Kylie says. She smiles again. “He apologized for not calling and says he wants to see me this weekend.”

  I keep my face carefully neutral. I think it’s bullshit, but I don’t say anything. Family emergency, my ass.

  “Are you going to?” Selene asks.

  “Yeah,” Kylie says, as she types. “We had fun. And he was definitely fuckable. I’ll see where this goes.”

  Hearing her say fuckable makes my back clench and I almost drop my fork. I hate this guy already. I don’t know who he is, but I’d like to smash his face in right now.

  She puts her phone away, still smiling. “Awesome. Now I’m excited for Friday.”

  “Hey, if you guys hit it off, we should triple date,” Selene says. “Maybe in a couple weeks?”

  “Triple date?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “Who the fuck is the triple? Because, hey, single again.”

  “Whatever, Brax,” Selene says. “Like you won’t be screwing some girl by then.”

  I shrug my shoulders. I guess she’s probably right.

  We finish our dinners, Kylie and I taking bites from each other’s plates. I ask if they want to go out for a drink, but they both have to work in the morning, so we part ways outside. Kylie drove, so I watch until I see her get in her car.

  Selene gets a call from Nathan and she waves at me absently as she walks away. I’d walk her home, but she only lives a few blocks away, and it annoys her when I try to do stuff like that. She says I’m overprotective, but that’s total bullshit. She’s my sister. There’s no such thing as overprotective when it comes to her.

  I’m restless and I don’t feel like going home, so I round the corner and pop into a bar. Kevin, the bartender, knows me, and he tips his head when I walk in.

  My gaze immediately lands on the group of women sitting at a table on the far side. I’ll bet a thousand dollars it’s an anti-Valentine’s Day outing. Group of single girls, showing their we don’t need men solidarity by going out drinking on this bullshit holiday.


  They might think they don’t need men, but one of them is coming home with me.

  I sit down at the bar and order a beer, but angle myself so I can watch them. I don’t bother to hide that I’m checking them out. Three of the four are hot enough to take home, but one in particular catches my eye. Long legs, straight hair, full lips. She’s exactly the type of girl I usually go after: tall, blond, nice boobs. It’s an easy sell for me. You might think that’s my type, but the truth is, it isn’t. But it is the type I go for to get my mind off my real type.

  Because my real type—the woman I want more than anything—I can’t have. She’s my best friend. And she’s always been off limits.

  I fell for Kylie, hard, when we were teenagers. Fuck, it was before that, but at ten or eleven years old I hardly knew what the feeling was. I knew I loved it when she came over. I found out where my Aunt Cindy kept her day planner, and I’d sneak it to look for the appointments with Mr. Winters, our family lawyer. If Mr. Winters was coming over, that meant he’d bring Kylie. He always did.

  I’d wait for her at the top of the staircase like a fucking puppy. She’d walk in the door and the world would get a little brighter. The pain of losing my parents wasn’t quite so bad when she was around. It was the only time I was really happy.

  By the time we were teenagers, the three of us still hung out all the time, although we went to different schools. I watched her developing body with keen interest and a fair amount of confusion as to what was happening to mine when I thought of her. And that’s when it started—the shitty timing. She came over one day and pulled Selene aside, the two of them talking in excited whispers.

  Kylie had a boyfriend. He’d kissed her on the mouth. With tongues. I pretended I didn’t care, that it didn’t cut through me like a fucking butcher knife. I made a joke about the size of her new boyfriend’s dick, and she was mad at me for weeks. So I never commented on her boyfriends again.

  Relationships came and went, for both of us. I started dating girls; they weren’t her, so nothing lasted. I got a reputation as a player, and I went with it. Might as well. It’s all part of the facade, the mask I wear to be the man the two women in my life need me to be. Selene needs me to be her strong guy, her rock, her protector. So I am. Kylie needs me to be her friend. So that’s what I am for her. And if that’s all I ever get to be, then I’ll take it and consider myself fucking lucky. Because being her friend is a hell of a lot better than not having her in my life at all.

  That’s what I tell myself, at least.

  But as time goes on, it’s getting harder to keep it inside. I love every second I get to spend with her, but at the same time, it’s torture. I’ve watched her date assholes who don’t appreciate her, and some who almost do—and those are the ones who scare the fuck out of me. We’re both nearing thirty, and one of these days, she’s going to meet the guy who will capture her heart and take her from me forever.

  I have no idea what to do about that.

  I don’t interfere with her relationships. Just a text asking for a date, like the one she got at dinner tonight, is enough to send me retreating back behind my protective wall. I live behind that wall, never letting the world see the man I am inside. It’s tall and thick as fuck, built of hard stone and painful loss. I’m the man my girls need me to be. Nothing more.

  So instead, I look for happiness, or some version of it, and usually just find a lot of empty sex that makes me feel like shit when it’s over. I don’t talk to my girls about that either. They see what I want them to see—the big, confident asshole who can turn any woman into water in the blink of an eye. And I am that guy. He isn’t an act or a lie. But he’s not all of me.

  Tonight, because the ache in my chest is too much to bear, I let him take the lead.

  I take a long pull from the bottle and turn my attention back to the blonde at the table. I catch her eye and offer a very small smile. Just a twitch of my lips. She looks down quickly, like she’s going to play shy.

  Most guys would order her a drink and have it sent over. I don’t play that game. I’ll make eye contact a few times, show her I’m interested. If she approaches me, great—I like it when women are bold. If not, I’ll just walk up and tell her what I want.

  I don’t get turned down very often.

  I glance at their table again. They’re all looking at me now. I focus on the blonde, holding her gaze for a long moment. The others giggle a little and whisper behind their hands.

  I take a swig of my beer. Might as well get this show on the road.

  “Evening, ladies,” I say as I approach the table. I hold my hand out to the blonde. She takes it and I lean in, bringing her fingers up to my lips. “Braxton Taylor. And you are?”

  She looks at me with an open mouth. Yep, she’s in. I can see the yes in her eyes.

  “Jessica,” she says.

  I keep hold of her hand. “It is very nice to meet you, Jessica.”

  Her friends are staring at me, just as open-mouthed as she is.

  “You, too,” Jessica says, her voice breathy.

  I hesitate for half a second, wondering if I should ask her over to the bar to get her away from the influence of her friends, or just say fuck it and proposition her right here. I decide on the fuck it option.

  “Jessica, I was wondering something,” I say.

  “What were you wondering?” she asks. She’s getting her voice back, but she’s still staring at me.

  “Would you like to come home with me right now?” I ask.

  One of her girlfriends gasps and claps a hand over her mouth. Another says, “Jessica!”

  She holds my eyes for a long moment, but I don’t flinch. I don’t look away. I show her in my gaze, in the heat of my hand on hers, that I’m completely serious.

  Slowly, she stands.

  “Jessica, you can’t leave with him,” one of her friends says.

  She doesn’t take her eyes off me. “You bet I can.”

  “Come on, you’re only doing this because of Jordan.”

  Aha, now I see. They’re out in solidarity with their recently-made-single friend. This is perfect. Revenge sex is usually fantastic.

  I lean close to her so I can brush my lips close to hear ear. “After tonight,” I say, pitching my voice low, “Jordan won’t exist.”

  Her hand twitches and her mouth curls in a little smile.

  “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ll take very good care of her,” I say.

  “Holy shit,” one of them says under their breath.

  I hold my arm out and Jessica tucks her hand in the crook of my elbow. I lead her outside, turning down the street toward my condo.

  I’m well aware of what I’m doing. I don’t intend to get Jessica’s phone number, or be her rebound relationship after Jordan, whoever the fuck he is. I’ll give her a night she’ll always remember, and she’ll help fill the hole in my chest—even if only for tonight.

  I have to circle the block three damn times to find a parking space. I don’t know why the streets around Selene’s house are so clogged with cars, but it’s frustrating as hell. I haven’t seen her for a few weeks, but she texted me out of the blue twenty minutes ago with our code for an emergency, asking me to meet at her place. I was just leaving work, so instead of heading home I drove straight here.

  I finally find a spot two blocks away and park my little Honda Civic. It’s uphill to her house, and I’m in heels, so that definitely sucks. When I get to the door, I don’t bother knocking, just use my key.

  “Selene,” I call out as I walk in the door, “where are you?”

  Her muffled reply comes from the back of the house. “Couch.”

  I find her in the corner of the L-shaped sectional, wrapped in a thick blue blanket. Her eyes are bloodshot, her cheeks wet with tears.

  “What happened?” I ask. I sink down on the couch next to her and she tips over to lay her head in my lap.

  She sniffs. “Nathan…” She stops and sobs into my legs.

  I run my fingers t
hrough her hair and shush her. “Oh, honey. It’s okay. Tell me when you’re ready.”

  I’m seething inside. What the hell did Nathan do to her? They seemed so happy together.

  Selene sits up and wipes under her eyes. I swear, even the woman’s ugly cry is pretty. She takes a deep breath. “You know how Nathan travels a lot for work?”

  “Yeah.”

  She takes another shaky breath. “He wasn’t spending those trips alone.”

  “What?”

  “He has a woman in every city he goes to. They’re, like, trip mistresses or something.”

  “Oh my god, Selene,” I say. “What an absolute asshole.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “How did you find out?”

  “He was out of town earlier this week, and he texted me something really strange, something about meeting me in the lobby,” she says. “I knew, the second I got the text, that he sent it to me by mistake. Work has been so busy, I didn’t think about it much for the next couple days. But he got back today, and I went over to his place so I could ask him.”

  “What did he say?”

  Selene pulls the blanket tighter around herself. “He tried to deny it, but not very hard. At first he played it off like it was meant for a colleague, but I could tell he was lying. I asked to see his phone and he got really angry. He yelled at me, Ky—saying I was paranoid, and if I didn’t trust him, maybe we shouldn’t be together. I said he needed to prove I could trust him by showing me his phone. He tried to put his phone away, but I grabbed it out of his hand. For a second I thought he was going to take it back, but he just slumped down in a chair and put his face in his hands.”

  “Caught red-fucking-handed,” I say.

  “Yep,” she says. “He had phone numbers, and photos … and the texts. Fuck, Ky, he was dirty texting them on days when he and I were together.”

  “Oh my god,” I say. “What did you do?”

  “I broke his phone,” she says. I see the slightest hint of a smile.

  “Good girl,” I say. “You should have broken his face, too.”