Abraham
You’re such a fucking pain in my ass,” I barked, stomping toward where Anita was standing in front of the Harris and Evans Logging office Tuesday morning.
“They locked me out!” she shouted incredulously, pointing at the office door.
“I told you I’d meet you at your house.”
“I told you I wasn’t taking a day off work!” she screeched back.
“Looks like you don’t have a choice.”
“This is ridiculous,” she bitched, shaking her head as she moved toward me. “Who forces their employee to take a day off?”
“You’re also family¸” I reminded her, throwing an arm over her shoulder and steering her to my truck. “Come on, you can ride with me, and we’ll get your car later.”
I glanced up as she was climbing in the passenger seat, and noticed my dad at the glass front door, his arms crossed over his chest and a shit-eating grin on his face. Crap. I narrowed my eyes at him and watched him laugh as I closed the door behind her.
“Thanks for doing this,” Ani finally said after almost fifteen minutes of silence.
“No problem. Today would have been a slow day for me anyway.”
“Exactly,” she murmured as we came to a stop in front of her little house. “You could have had a slow day.”
“You need the floor done, right?” I asked, turning off the truck but staying inside the cab.
“Yeah, but—”
“Well, let’s get it done then.”
Ani’s eyes met mine, and her lips pulled into a shy smile. “You’re good to me,” she said softly. “When the hell did that happen?”
Her words made me squirm. Did she think we were in a relationship? It was sex. Fucking great sex, but nothing more than that. We didn’t have a relationship; I didn’t do relationships. The thought of anything long-term made my skin crawl.
“When you started letting me fuck you,” I said with a nervous laugh.
I pretended I didn’t see her smile fall as I climbed out of the truck.
* * *
We didn’t talk much as I sanded the floor—the machine was too loud for that—but Ani stayed pretty close while I worked, using the smaller sander on the edges and corners of the room. By the time we were done, the room was covered in a fine layer of dust, and we were both sweaty as hell.
“You have the rags?” I asked as I came back in from dragging the sanders to my truck.
“Yep.” She tossed me a rag and went to work, wiping down the walls and windows with her own blue rag.
The silence between us was uncomfortable as I dropped to my knees and started wiping down the floor. I wasn’t sure what to say to get things back to the easy way they’d been before. Should I apologize? Somehow I thought that would make it worse.
It was a relief when Ani’s phone started ringing in her pocket. I didn’t even know her phone could ring—usually when it went off, it was someone’s voice telling her to pick up the phone.
“Hello?” she answered behind me. She didn’t say something for a long time after that, so I turned to check if she was still there.
Her head was bowed as she held the phone to her ear, but after a moment, she looked up, and her face was completely void of color. For a second, I thought she was going to tip over.
I got to my feet quickly, but before I could go to her, she started shaking her head and lifted one finger to ask me for a minute. When I nodded, she left the room.
I dropped back down to my knees and started wiping down the floor again. I had to make sure that all the dust was completely gone before we could put the finish on, or the entire floor would look like shit and we’d have to start over. My arms still felt numb from pushing that vibrating machine around the room, and I sure as fuck wasn’t planning on doing that again anytime in the near future…at least not until Ani was ready to do the hallway and bedrooms.
Twenty minutes went by, and then thirty, and by the time Ani got back to the living room, I’d gone through three rags, and the floor was almost wiped clean.
“What’s up?” I asked slowly, coming to my feet as she paused in the middle of the room.
“Uh.” Her eyes searched blindly around the room, then finally came to rest on me. “My sister’s having a baby,” she said, shaking her head.
“What? Kate?” I asked in confusion.
“No, my real sister.”
I almost argued about that statement but decided that was a conversation for a different time. “You have a sister?”
“Yeah.” She reached up and scratched at her hair with both hands, making it stand straight up in some places. “She’s fifteen.”
My stomach rolled. “Oh, fuck.”
“I have two little brothers too,” she went on. “All still live with my mom. She got her act together, at least enough that CPS didn’t step in with them.”
“Jesus Christ.” That had to fucking kill her. Alex and I had never dealt with that kind of family shit. Our mom had died when we were little, hit by a car when she was walking to work one day. It sucked big time, but we hadn’t been taken from her, she’d been taken from us.
“So yeah, fifteen and having a baby. Mom’s doing a fucking bang-up job. Obviously.”
I took a step toward her but froze when she held up a hand to stop me.
“I need a shower,” Ani muttered after a minute, looking down at her clothes. “So do you.”
She turned and left the room, peeling off the tank top she was wearing as she hit the hallway. “You coming?” she called over her shoulder as she paused to shove her jeans down over her ass.
“You wanna talk about it?” I asked after I’d stripped and climbed into the shower behind her.
“Not especially.” She wasn’t crying, but her eyes seemed almost blank as she grabbed a bar of soap and lathered her hands.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it is what it is,” she said, reaching forward to run her soapy hands over my forearms.
“I didn’t know you had siblings,” I said quietly as her hands moved to my chest.
“Yeah, I found my mom when I turned eighteen. It was stupid to even look for her nasty ass—but I found out then that she’d had more kids. I keep in touch with Bethy and the boys, but they live in Seattle.”
My breath caught as her fingers moved farther down my chest, and I reached out to push her wet hair out of her face. I didn’t say anything because I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to say to that.
“They have B names,” she scoffed, lifting her hands from my chest and turning to face the spray. “I’m Anita, and they’re Bethy, Ben, and Brayden.” She shook her head, her shoulders so tight they were practically pressed up against her ears. “The second wave. Her second goddamn chance—and she still fucked it up.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. She looked so small with her arms crossed over her chest in the spray of water, her back curved inward enough that I could count every vertebra up her back. I reached around her and pressed my hand to her smooth belly, pulling her back against me.
“It’s a good thing you got out then, yeah?” I whispered into her ear, wrapping my other arm around her chest. “She didn’t get any better. You’re the lucky one.”
“Yeah,” she replied hoarsely, resting her chin on my arm as her body relaxed into mine. “But if I had been there, I could have watched out for them—”
“You were a kid, Ani—you couldn’t have done shit,” I said flatly.
“She’s fifteen, Bram.” Ani sniffled, her whole body shuddering. “Jesus.”
“Come here,” I ordered, turning her in my arms so I could see her face.
Her eyes were red and so was her nose, but she wasn’t crying. She was keeping it together for some reason, even though I’d seen her bawling her eyes out before.
“You got out, baby,” I said gently, watching as her eyes closed and her chin dropped. “You’re feeling guilty for something you couldn’t control. You know how many kids wanna go back to their piece-of-shit parents? But it’s not up to them and it wasn’t up to you. That wasn’t your choice to make.”
“She started over again,” Ani choked out. “Like, ‘oh, fucked up with the first one, better try again.’ Who does that?”
My throat knotted around any words I might have said. How long had she been feeling like that and saying nothing? Had she talked to Katie about it? Alex? I wasn’t sure if anyone even knew that she had younger siblings. I’d never heard anything about them.
“Pieces of shit,” I finally ground out, cupping her face in my hands. “Look at me.”
She opened her eyes and almost brought me to my knees with one look.
“It’s her loss. I know that sounds too simplistic. I know that.” I brushed her hair away from her face as I struggled to speak. “She lost out big with you, all right?”
Ani nodded and pressed her lips together tightly like she was holding in the words that wanted to pour out of her mouth.
I leaned down and kissed her gently, running my lips over her stiff ones until they softened against mine. Running my hands down her neck, I stopped at her shoulders, pressing my fingers in lightly until the muscles beneath her skin began to relax a little at a time.
“You don’t have to be nice to me,” Ani murmured against my lips as I crowded her against the wall, running my hands over her breasts as she slid her tongue over my top lip, then sucked it into her mouth.
I pulled back slightly. “Yeah, I do.”
“I’m already a sure thing,” she argued, wrapping her arms around my neck and lifting one leg so that I’d pull her up my body.
“I’ll be a dick to you later,” I assured her as her legs tightened around my waist.
“But what if I want your dick now?” she said with a small laugh against my mouth.
“If you insist,” I grumbled jokingly. “You good?”
“Fine,” she said with a nod, like our entire conversation since we’d jumped into the shower had never happened.
* * *
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I yelled in surprise a week later, opening my front door in nothing but a pair of white boxer briefs and a huge grin.
“Thought I’d surprise you. You’re welcome.”
I took a couple steps back and let my brother inside, barely waiting for him to drop his bag on the floor before I was wrapping him up in a bear hug.
“It’s good to see you,” I said gruffly, slapping him hard on the back.
“Yeah, you too, brother,” he replied, tightening his arms around me. “You look like Grizzly Adams.”
We both pulled back at the same time, and I got a good look at the grin that looked so much like the one I knew I was wearing.
“All the kids together again,” I said with a laugh, picking up his bag so I could carry it into my spare bedroom.
“That was the idea,” he said with a nod, following me farther into the house.
“How the fuck did you get here? I woulda picked you up from the airport.”
“And miss the look on your face when you came to the door? No fucking way. I rented a car.”
I smiled as I opened up the spare room and tossed his bag on the bed.
Thank Christ, Ani had already left before Alex showed up on my doorstep. We’d seen each other almost every day for the past week, but she hadn’t stayed over and neither had I. She was dealing with some shit, so I left her to it, even though I’d gotten a little used to the overnights.
“How long are you here for?” I asked as we made our way back to the kitchen, grabbing a couple beers from the fridge.
“Week. I couldn’t take more than that.”
“Katie, Shane, and the kids will be here in the morning. Henry too.”
“Yeah, I bet Mom’s flipping out, huh?”
“Jesus Christ, she’s gonna have a heart attack when she sees you,” I joked, grabbing my T-shirt that Ani had left on the counter earlier and pulling it over my head.
“You start cooking in the buff since I’ve been gone?” Alex joked as he watched me.
“Nah, took it off earlier before I got in the shower,” I muttered, turning to grab a dish towel from the counter and putting it on the handle of the stove.
I knew, if he got a good look at my face, he’d know I was lying and he’d start asking questions, and if he started asking questions, I’d be fucked. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of that before? Alex knew me better than anyone—he was going to see exactly what was happening the minute Ani and I got in the same room.
Fuck.
“So I can’t decide if I want to show up before Katie tomorrow so Mom can calm down before she and the kids get there or if I should show up right after she gets there and steal her thunder,” Alex said seriously, taking a long pull of his beer.
I met his eyes as I took a drink of my own.
“Steal her thunder,” we both said at the same time, bursting into laughter.
God, I was glad he was home.
* * *
“I was wondering why the fuck Henry was staying with Ani instead of me,” I blurted, shaking my head a couple hours later and seven beers in.
“Aw, did it hurt your feelings?” Alex asked with a grin, lying back on my couch with his bare feet propped on the coffee table. That was almost exactly the same thing Ani had said. God, sometimes they were so alike it was uncanny. Like they shared a brain.
Though most of the time I thought Alex was funny and Ani was a bitch.
“It didn’t hurt my feelings, asshole,” I replied, making Alex laugh. “It was just weird.”
“Eh, they’re buds. I’m not surprised,” Alex said with a wave of his hand. “I am surprised she had room for him—how far is she on the house?”
I shook my head and relaxed farther into my recliner, grabbing a new beer off the floor. “Not far. I helped her get the floors finished in the living room so she could buy a couch for him to sleep on.”
“I have no fucking idea how she’s lived there for so long with only bedroom furniture,” Alex said with a small laugh.
“She’s got her TV and shit in her room so she just hangs out in there,” I replied without thinking.
“Oh yeah? You’ve been hanging out in Ani’s room?” Alex joked, watching me closely.
“Yeah,” I deadpanned, my palms going clammy. “I go over there to watch TV while she sucks me off.”
Alex froze for a minute, then broke out in gut-busting laughter. “The only way Ani would put your balls in her mouth is if she’d already cut them off and was planning on eating them,” he choked out, his face turning red from laughing so hard.
I snorted like I knew he expected me to, but couldn’t stop the memory of Ani during a seriously good blow job the day before. My balls had definitely been in her mouth at one point. My dick hardened in the sweatpants I’d grabbed earlier when we came into the living room.
“Shit, I’m beat. I’m gonna head up,” Alex said as he finished laughing. “Wake me up in the morning?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
I locked up the house and cleaned up the beer bottles before following Alex upstairs. He was already snoring through the closed doorway to the spare room, and I couldn’t help but smile.
I loved it when Alex was home. He was literally my other half. The better half. When our mom died, he was the only thing I’d had to hold on to in a drastically changing world. I may have been the tougher twin, but he’d always been the strongest. Where I jumped to conclusions and went off half-cocked, Alex was slower to react. He watched and waited, covering up his feelings with humor until he was ready to let loose.
Few saw the serious side of Alex. He rarely showed anyone the guy who worried over his sister and parents almost maniacally. They didn’t see him angry. They rarely saw him quiet.
Alex was the life of the party—always—and he planned it that way. Sure, his personality was a pretty cheerful one, but no one was in that great of a mood all the time. Other people didn’t notice but I always knew.
I could read him as well as he read me.
I stripped naked and climbed into bed, bracing my hands behind my head as I stared up at the ceiling.
I loved that Alex was home, but it freaked me the fuck out, too. He’d see shit that the rest of my family didn’t. My fingers itched to pick up the phone and text Ani not to come over, but I knew that was ridiculous.
She wasn’t going to show up at my house after she’d already left for the night. It wouldn’t happen. But still, my stomach churned with anxiety as I lay there in bed. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for her, but I sure as fuck didn’t want her accidentally telling the entire family that we were fucking like bunnies.
My heart thumped hard as I thought about what Alex’s reaction would be to the fact that Ani and I were sleeping together. I’d told Ani that he would high-five me, but I knew even while I was saying it that it was far from the truth.
Alex would be livid.
He knew me.
He’d know what it was.
And he’d be pissed as fuck that I was screwing Ani with absolutely no intention of being in any type of relationship with her.