Chapter 2
Kelsi
“Instinct is stronger than upbringing.”
~ Rowan O’Sullivan
He was here. He was alive. He was okay.
I wasn’t a “crier” in the typical sense of the term. I didn’t cry when I was upset, or sad, or mad. I’d never shed a single tear when I was hurt physically, no matter how bad the pain. Instead, I went into what I called emotional lockdown. I put up protective shields around my heart. My waterworks were only triggered by happiness, joy, elation, or pleasure. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried but as sweet relief washed over me at finding Milo, my eyes pricked with tears.
Adrenaline continued to rush through my system like a raging river as the panic that had swallowed me whole started to subside. I tried to compose my runaway emotions and just breathe. My breaths were so shallow, I was afraid I was going to pass out or hyperventilate.
I hoped my anxiety wasn’t evident as I asked as calmly as possible, “Milo, what are you doing here? What’s going on?”
“What are you doing here?!” My little brother spit out with rage and hostility filling each word. “Are you following me?! You’re such a stalker! Just leave me alone!”
I should be used to this by now, but every time I heard the hate in Milo’s voice directed at me, it stung like a slap in the face. It was hard to remember that this was the same boy I’d stayed up all night long with, walking the halls as he was teething. The same boy I’d taught the alphabet to and how to write his name. The same boy I’d taught how to ride a bike and to tie his shoes. The same boy that used to crawl into my bed when he had bad dreams and was scared.
Now Milo could barely look at me. He didn’t talk to me unless he needed something. In the two months since I’d been granted temporary custody of him he’d snuck out of the house and run away three times, and now he’d added breaking and entering to his list of offenses.
“Milo, what are you doing here?” I needed answers, even though I knew that getting them wasn’t going to be easy.
“Fuck you!” Milo placed his hands on the bar and started to scramble over; his movements were jerky and frantic like a trapped animal trying to escape.
He didn’t get very far. A large tattooed arm grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him back like he was a ragdoll. His actions were not overly aggressive or forceful at all. This man had a more controlled and contained manner. Like he never expended more energy than necessary.
Milo struggled, trying to break free, but his efforts were in vain. He was no match against the sheer strength that had a hold on him. My eyes shot to the stranger and a shiver rolled through me.
“Not so fast, Karate Kid.” The deep voice held a commanding authority that matched the man it was coming out of perfectly.
I’d been so focused on finding Milo that when I saw him behind the bar, I’d barely noticed the man beside him.
Now, noticing was all I could do.
The man holding onto my brother was another level of hot. From the jet-black hair that appeared soft to the touch and electric blue eyes that were so vibrant, they looked like they were neon, down to the perfect amount of stubble covering a strong jawline and surrounding two of the most kissable lips in existence. Somehow this guy managed to pull off pouty lips and pretty eyes without looking feminine at all. It was quite a feat. Still, I couldn’t help but think that those stunning eyes, long lashes, and full mouth were wasted on someone with a Y chromosome.
But none of that compared to the neck and arms of the sinfully sexy stranger currently restraining Milo. I’d always loved tattooed men. Since I was a teenager, guys that were inked up were like honey to my bee. Throw in a cocky attitude and a motorcycle, and I went into full be-still-my-heart-Scarlett-O’Hara-swoon-mode. It was frustrating and not something that I was proud of.
If you Googled “Bad Boy” I was sure that this man’s picture would cover the first page of results. I hadn’t inherited much from my mother, thankfully. I wasn’t a selfish, scheming, liar. But the one thing that had been passed along in my DNA was my love of tattooed, motorcycle-riding assholes. If there was a loser within a mile of me, I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. In my teens and early adulthood, I went through a wild child phase and eagerly indulged in my predilection for guys that were all wrong for me. Each dip into the bad boy pond left me drowning and gasping for breath. I had no desire to swim in those waters again.
That was why Russell had been so perfect, I thought wistfully. He was a nice, funny guy that I was actually attracted to. Not in the knock-your-socks-off, all-encompassing, all-consuming way (like with the bad boys), but I’d liked him and grown to love him, which made the fact that we weren’t together that much more disappointing. He was the kind of guy that I could’ve had a forever with. Not like Mister Panty Melter here. He wasn’t a forever guy. No bad boy was, and he was a Bad Boy with two capital Bs, my body’s reaction was proof of that. He was Top Gun-level “Danger Zone.”
My brain knew that. My body had other ideas. A tingling sensation tickled just beneath my skin.
“I think you owe the lady an apology.” Mr. Danger Zone said.
Milo jerked his arm away, trying to put distance between him and the much-too-tempting man restraining him as he scrunched his face in disgust. “She’s not a lady; she’s my sister.”
When the sexy bad boy’s eyes met mine, the same tingles that were simmering just below the surface moments before, exploded and spread through me like lava down the side of a volcano. It wasn’t just the vibrant color framed in dark, inky lashes that had my body going all Mount Vesuvius; it was also the intensity that they held.
“Hello, Karate Kid’s sister.” A dimple appeared on Danger Zone’s left cheek, and I caught a slight accent that I hadn’t heard earlier and I just about melted into a puddle of goo right there on the spot. “I’m Bry—”
“What the fuck, dude?!” Milo’s expression turned to horrification as he twisted so he could look up at Danger Zone “Are you flirting with her?!”
“Milo,” I said his name as a warning, not that I had any delusion he would heed it. His defiance of late showed he clearly lacked any respect for me.
Danger Zone completely ignored Milo’s rude interruption. “I’m Bryson O’Sullivan. This is my family’s bar, and I got a call from the security company that an alarm was going off. I came down and found him behind my bar, gulping down a bottle of whiskey.”
My shoulders began to slump with each word he spoke. I’d been afraid that was the situation, but hearing my fears confirmed was crushing. Knowing that I couldn’t break under the weight of this reality, I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin. I may not know how in the hell I was going to get us out of this, but I knew crumbling was not an option.
I stepped forward, hoping to exude a confidence I didn’t feel. “Hi, I’m Kelsi Robbins, and this is my brother, Milo. We only moved to town a couple of days ago. I woke up to get a glass of water and saw that Milo wasn’t in his room. I tracked his phone here.”
“See! You are a stalker!” Milo shouted. “Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alo—”
“Hey. Apologize. Now.”
My pulse raced as Bryson spoke with that same commanding authority he had moments ago. It was like catnip to my kitty.
Three words. That was all it took to have my heart fluttering like a butterfly on speed and for my lady parts to go full Southern belle waving her hanky and saying, oh my, what a big, strong, alpha man you are.
My reaction was to be expected, what wasn’t was my brother’s response. In a plot twist to rival Bruce Willis being a ghost in The Sixth Sense, Milo dropped his gaze to the ground as he mumbled, “I’m sorry.”
I was still in the process of picking my jaw up off the floor when Bryson’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked it before walking to the end of the bar, grabbing a barstool that was turned upside down on the bar top, and placing it on the floor right-side up. “I need to take this. Sit.”
Milo nodded, walked past Bryson, and slumped into the seat that he’d been directed to.
“Stay,” Bryson instructed harshly before disappearing down a hallway.
When he was gone, I rushed across the room towards my brother as anger vibrated off of me. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re—”
My forward momentum stopped short when I saw a large, drooling dog come out from behind the bar and plop down between myself and Milo. I couldn’t tell if the dog was guarding my brother to make sure that he stayed in place or guarding him to make sure I didn’t hurt him. Or both.
I pointed at the massive, tan colored hound dog. “What is…who is…where did he…”
“This is Goliath,” my brother explained.
Well, the name certainly fit. This dog was huge.
Milo reached down and rubbed Goliath’s wrinkled head. Seeing my baby brother do such a “normal kid” thing like petting a dog broke my heart. I may not have been around for the last five years, but I didn’t need to be to know that Milo never had a normal childhood. He’d never had a dog or a real home or a real family. His dad had never been in the picture, and he could’ve snuck out, broke into a bar, and gotten arrested and my mom wouldn’t have noticed. Even if she did, she wouldn’t have cared. Before Milo was born, I ran away and was gone for a week before I was picked up by the cops for sleeping in a park. When they brought me home, she just asked if I knew where her smokes were. I was ten at the time.
Some of the anger at Milo deflated, but the fear did not.
Keeping my voice low, I whispered, “I know you’re mad at mom, at me, at the world. But, you can’t keep pulling these stunts. You’ve got to stop. If that man calls the cops, do you have any idea what could happen?”
He threw his hands up and leaned towards my face. “I don’t care.”
Whoa. It was a good thing that I didn’t have a match or a lighter in my hands because with the amount of alcohol on his breath, there would’ve been a serious dragon situation.
Milo had barely spoken to me since I’d been named his temporary guardian. Even still, I’d heard that sentiment more times than I could count. If I had a dime for every time I’d heard “I don’t care” in the past eight weeks, I’d be a millionaire.
Taking a deep breath, I tried again to explain the gravity of the situation he “didn’t care” about. “This is serious. If the police get involved, your caseworker will find out. If that happens, social services will take you away from me. You’ll go back to the group home.”
He shrugged as his jaw tightened and he repeated his life mantra. “I don’t care.”
“You should care.” Frustration and fear gripped me propelling me forward again. I took a single step, speaking even lower but with more intensity. “Do you have any idea what it took to get you out of that place?! The hoops I had to jump through?! What I had to do to get even temporary custody of you? I used all my savings to hire that lawyer and if you go back there, I can’t help—”
“So what, I don’t care! No one asked you to do that!” His eyes lifted to mine and the pain I saw in them was like a dagger through my heart. Milo’s suffering was palpable. It was a combination of anger, sadness, fear, and confusion. “I didn’t ask you to do anything! You should’ve just left me there! You should just leave me alone!”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I wanted more than anything to tell him that everything was going to be okay, that I would take care of him, that I loved him and I would do anything and everything I could to never let anyone hurt him again, but I knew that he wouldn’t believe me. Why would he? I’d abandoned him once, and I knew that he was just waiting for me to do it again.
“That was the security company.” Danger Zone interrupted my internal spiral.
I spun on my heels towards the sound of his voice and saw him standing in the hallway. “They were following up, making sure that I didn’t need them to call the authorities.”
A lump formed in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. “What did you tell them?”
“I told them I took care of it.”
“You did?” I let out a sigh of relief. This was still a complete mess, but the law staying out of it at least gave me a chance at trying to clean it up without permanent repercussions. “Thank you. I…we…will make this right somehow. Thank you so much for not involving the police.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t involving the police,” He corrected me. “I said I took care of it.”
And just like that my stomach plummeted to the ground like a penny tossed over the observation deck at the Empire State Building. I bit down on the inside of my cheek as panic, that at this point I should be getting used to, rose up once more. I glanced back at Milo, whose pain was now hidden behind walls he’d become an expert in constructing.
Stay calm. Think. I reminded myself that even though the entire world was closing in on me, the worst thing that I could do was retreat into my turtle shell. It was a habit that I’d developed growing up, the same one I’d seen Milo use these past few months. I’d worked hard, for years, to change that behavior. So, instead of wilting like a flower beneath the hot sun of anxiety, I stood taller.
Staring into the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, I held my chin high as I asked, “Can I speak to you for a moment? Alone?”
There was a slight flash of something that looked a heck of a lot like male appreciation in his gaze, but it was gone as fast as it had appeared. With a single nod, Bryson held out his hand, motioning to the darkened hall behind him.
As I walked towards the man that held my brother’s fate, his future, his life in his hands, my mind raced with what I should say to him. What the right words were to convey the gravity of the situation.
Then, when I found myself face to face, or face to chest, with him in a dim, narrow hallway, only an inch of space separating our bodies, I was concerned I’d be able to speak at all.
I’d always classified the opposite sex in one of two categories. Men that I found attractive and men that I didn’t. I’d never been attracted to pretty boys so guys that were too easy on the eyes were never my cup o’ tea. But Bryson broke that rule. He was equal parts sexy-as-sin and heart-stopping gorgeous. If he was a cup of tea, I didn’t just want to drink it, I wanted to be the sugar in it.
I reached up to brush a stray hair that had fallen in my face and tucked it behind my ear as I took in a breath that was as shaky as my hand. I did my best to ignore my completely inappropriate reactions to the man standing in front of me. My mind was still filled with what I should say to make him understand the severity of the consequences that could play out. How could I possibly explain everything that was in play here?
As my eyes drifted up and locked with his, all of the noise in my head fell silent and the panic disappeared. I just needed to tell him the truth. I only hoped it lived up to its reputation and set my brother free.