I loved my brother. I really did. I just had to keep repeating that over and over in my head. He was probably the best brother I could wish for, but he had the absolute worst timing. Whenever I thought something was about to happen between Parker and I, Mason would burst into the room and ruin any chance of what was about to happen. I didn’t know if it was on purpose or not, but either way, his timing was impeccable.
“It’s fine, Mason.” I pulled my eyes away from Parker to look at my brother. Parker had widened the space between us as soon as my brother walked in, and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.
“What happened?” Mason stepped closer to me, and as he stepped out of the doorway, I noticed a small blonde lingering by the door.
“Thomas Alexander ran his mouth, but I took care of it.” Parker spit out the words as if he was disgusted to even say his name.
Mason looked at Parker, and I could see them speaking to each other without ever saying a word. It drove me crazy because I wanted to know what the hell they had to say. It was something they did often, and it pissed me off. When Mason seemed satisfied with his silent conversation with Parker, he patted his shoulder once.
“Are you okay?” Mason gripped my chin in his hand and his eyes ran over my face.
“I told you I’m fine.”
“Then where were you? We were looking everywhere for you.”
“Mason…” I sighed.
“Don’t ‘Mason’ me. Where were you?”
I crossed my arms, and he matched my stance. He was stubborn, but I had been following in his footsteps my whole life. I could be stubborn too. I learned it from the best.
“Dude, back off of her.” Mason’s eyes snapped from mine to his best friend’s. “Just give her some space. I think she’s dealt with enough tonight.”
Parker was standing up for me to my brother, and I couldn’t hide the small smile on my face.
Mason took a deep breath and looked me over again. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But…” the small, forgotten blonde at the door piped up.
I had never seen her before, but I wasn’t surprised. Mason didn’t stay with one girl for long.
“We’re going to have to have a rain check, doll.” Mason smiled down at her, and I wanted to puke when I saw her melt before my eyes.
“I can take Livy home.”
Parker’s words shocked me, and they seemed to shock my brother as well.
“You sure, man?” Mason looked from the blonde back to me.
“Yeah. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
Pain bloomed in my chest at his words, but I smiled the same fake smile that I wore often when I was around him. Did he not see how bad his words affected me?
“Cool.” Mason and Parker slapped hands and then Mason took off with the small blonde in tow.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.” My voice was clipped, and Parker could tell. He gave me a strange look, and I internally flipped him off for saying he had nothing better to do.
“Okay…” he hesitated before he led the way out to his truck.
He opened the door for me, and I rolled my eyes at the part of me that was swooning at his chivalry. I was just as easy as the blonde with my brother.
The truck roared to life and he thumbed his phone for a few seconds before one of my favorite songs started playing through the speakers.
I watched the houses pass by us out the window so he couldn’t see the smile on my face.
“Are you really not going to talk the whole way home?” He looked over at me quickly before returning his attention to the road.
“I’m just tired.”
“Really, Livy? I know you’re mad. I’m just not sure why.” He chuckled softly, and even though it was my favorite sound in the world, it grated on my nerves in that moment.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do anyways.” I knew I was being catty, but he hurt my feelings.
Asshole.
“Ahh. That’s what this is about. You’re really mad about that?” His hand ran over the steering wheel, and I watched the way his fingers softly bounced against the leather to the low beat of the music that was playing.
“I’m not mad. I’m hurt.” I looked back out the window and watched as we pulled into my driveway. The only light on in the house was the living room light that I had left on earlier, and when I looked up at my mom’s dark bedroom window, I knew she still wasn’t home.
“Fuck, Livy. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He put the truck in park and turned to face me.
“Like I said, don’t worry about it, Parker.” My hand gripped the door handle, but he put his hand over mine before I could open it.
“What did you want me to say?”
I looked at him but didn’t answer because I didn’t know. What did I expect from him? I knew where we stood. That didn’t mean a girl couldn’t be hopeful. That I didn’t dream about the day he would say something like…
“Did you want me to tell him that I just needed a few more minutes alone with his baby sister?”
There was a sharp inhale of breath, and I realized it came from me.
His hand pressed against my cheek and softly swept the same piece of hair from earlier out of my face. “It just keeps falling, doesn’t it?”
Yes.
I wanted to scream at him.
It falls and falls and falls, and so do I.
There was no use trying to stop either of us.
It was an inevitable drop, the kind that made your heart race and the butterflies in your stomach take off like a tornado, and no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible to stop the free fall.
He leaned closer to me, and breathing was no longer possible. I had thought about this moment for as long as I could remember. His breath blew out against my lips, and I traced my tongue there to try to capture the taste of him.
“Livy,” he breathed out my name and my stomach clenched.
A shrill sound rang through the truck interrupting the moment, and when the two of us looked down at his phone that lay between us, all the butterflies in my stomach came to a sudden halt and the breath I was holding finally escaped.
Madison Smith lit up his screen and ruined everything.
P A R K E R
Present
There was no way my bachelor party could get any more fucked up. When she came out onto the stage, I knew that she was by far the sexiest woman I had ever seen, but I also knew that I had seen her before. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
My dick hadn’t been that hard since I was eighteen years old and she was begging me to take her virginity. I hadn’t been this furious since the moment she ran away, or better yet, the moment I pushed her away. Every extreme in my life, every high and every low, had a story with her attached to it.
Seeing her like this, with her body on display for all these fucking men, I wanted to kill her or fuck her or God. What was I thinking? I was getting married.
Married.
To a woman I love.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Livy was still standing in front of her brother. She’d crossed her arms over her chest but that only seemed to enhance her breasts rather than hiding them. I searched the faces of my friends. All of them, with the exception of Mason, were looking at her like they wanted nothing more than to devour her, but I would take them all out. I didn’t give a fuck if they were my friends or not. She was mine.
No. She had been mine once.