Chapter 8
Kelsi
“Lose an hour in the morning, and you’ll be looking for it all day.”
~ Rowan O’Sullivan
“I have to take it back to him!” Milo pleaded desperately as he held the iPod up in the air.
“You can give it back to him tomorrow,” I reasoned.
He shook his head vigorously. “No! I have to give it to him tonight. He’s gonna think I stole it. I can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“I’m sure it’s fine, I’ll just text him and tell him tha—” I started picking up my phone.
“No. I need to return it tonight. In person!” he insisted as he stepped closer. “I don’t want him to think that I took it on purpose. If you text him, he’ll think you’re lying for me, to cover it up, so he won’t call that sheriff. He can’t think that.”
An internal battle was waging inside of me. As much as I appreciated my brother’s desire to make things right and take responsibility, selfishly, I wanted him just to give it back when he saw Bryson in the morning. It was a quarter to seven in the evening, and I still had a ton of things to do before my first day of work tomorrow, including finding and unpacking my equipment and throwing together some dinner for us. I’d been going non-stop all day, but I just couldn’t seem to catch up. And the other, more pressing reason I didn’t want him to return it tonight was I wanted to avoid the danger zone at all costs.
Milo was grounded. Otherwise, he’d be able to take it over himself. I thought about making an exception, but I was worried that if I did that on the first day of his punishment it would set a bad precedent. It was the first time I’d ever disciplined him, unless you counted time outs when he was little, and if I didn’t stick to it, I worried that he wouldn’t take it seriously.
I decided to try a different tactic. “Look, I understand you wanting to take it back to him tonight, but we don’t even know where he lives so—”
“Yes, I do.” Milo eagerly interjected. “I went to the hardware store with Mr. O’Sullivan, and we passed Bryson’s house on the way, and he pointed it out.”
Great.
I knew when to throw in the towel. This was a battle I wasn’t going to win. “All right, I’ll take you over, but we’re just dropping it off. That’s it. We’ve taken up enough of that man’s time.”
Milo threw his arms around me and hugged me tightly. “Thank you.”
It was the first hug we’d shared since I’d been back in his life. I’d hugged him a number of times, but it had been one-sided. He’d either pulled away or kept his arms at his sides.
“You’re welcome.” I hugged him back and hoped that my emotion wasn’t evident in my voice. If I made a big deal out of this one hug the chances that it would be repeated were slim to none. “Get your shoes on.”
He ran back to his room, and I came up with a plan to limit my exposure to the danger zone. Yes, I would be in the same vicinity as Bryson, but I would stay in the car. I wouldn’t even look in the direction of the front door.
The last person I wanted to see tonight was Bryson. I either needed to build up a tolerance to him or find an antidote to his effect on me. After what went down at the pond, I was planning on staying as far away from him as possible until one of those two things happened.
I’d been so close to kissing him. Not just because I was so attracted to him, which I was, or because he looked like he could kiss really, really good, which he did, but it was also the setting that we were in. It was a private, mini-Garden of Eden. It truly did feel like we were the only two people on the earth.
The only thing that saved me from myself in that paradise was remembering that I was only there because of the trouble Milo had caused. It snapped me out of my momentary lapse of judgment like a rubber band snapping back after it had been stretched. It was exactly the wake-up call I’d needed, and I’d hustled my little butt right on out of Temptation Oasis. The entire way back to the car, I’d read myself the riot act for letting things get so out of hand, so quickly. What kind of a person has that little self-control?
When I’d picked Milo up, I’d thought I’d dodged a bullet when I saw my brother waiting for me as I pulled up. He was alone, which meant I could avoid any awkwardness with Bryson. He jumped in the car, and I thought I was home free. But, then I’d made a fatal mistake when I looked in the direction of where Milo was waving.
That’s when I’d seen something that I couldn’t un-see.
Bryson O’Sullivan’s six-pack abs.
He was using the hem of his shirt to wipe his forehead, and the flash of rock hard muscles that the action revealed was nothing less than male perfection. I’d had to wipe the drool that formed at the corners of my mouth as I pulled out of the driveway and I’d barely heard a word that Milo said the entire way home because I’d been floating in a lust cloud.
No visual contact. That was my only hope of building up a resistance.
“Let’s go!” Milo called out as he rushed out the front door.
I grabbed my purse and repeated my plan in my head. No visual contact. No visual contact. No visual contact.
By the time I locked the front door and made it to the car, Milo was already in the front seat.
I got in and automatically spoke as I looked over, “Put your seatbelt…oh, never mind.”
He was already wearing it. I started the car and pulled out of the driveway in stunned silence. As soon as we’d gotten home, Milo had taken a shower without me asking him to. Unpacked several boxes, without me asking him to. And he was now wearing a seatbelt, without me asking him to. I knew that this pattern of behavior could be a fluke or temporary, and I shouldn’t count on it lasting, but I was certainly going to enjoy it while it did.
“Mr. O’Sullivan said that when he still lived in Ireland, there were no laws about seatbelts and one day he was driving with his best friend, and they got hit by a car. His best friend went through the windshield and almost died.”
“Wow.” I nodded, not sure what else to say.
In the four hours since I’d picked him up, Milo hadn’t stopped talking about Mr. & Mrs. O’Sullivan, Bryson and Sawyer. It seemed he’d learned more life lessons in one day than I’d been able to impart in his entire lifetime.
Earlier he’d told me that Sawyer had told him that he wished he would have paid better attention in math class in school because he needed it in his work and asked if he could get a tutor next year to help him catch up, I’d dropped the glass that I was putting away. I’d done everything, including bribing him, to try and get him to do his homework and pay attention in school the past few months. Nothing had worked.
Another big change had been inspired by the matriarch of the family. During lunch, which wasn’t the grilled cheese, apples, and chips that I’d packed, Mrs. O’Sullivan had made a comment that in her house, people did not speak with food in their mouths. Milo told me that he was going to work on his table manners because he wanted them to invite him to lunch again.
It was heartbreaking to see how starved he was for structure. For stability. For family. It was up to me to provide those things for him.
“That’s it.” Milo pointed to a gray Craftsman style house with a wraparound porch.
As I pulled up in front of it, I reminded myself not to look up when my brother returned the iPod.
No eye contact. No danger zone. No eye contact. No danger zone.
He reached for the handle but paused before opening the door. “Aren’t you going to come with me?”
“Nah, I’m just going to hang here.” I tried to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“But…I didn’t do anything wrong…this time, I mean.” He held up the device. “I didn’t take this home on purpose. It was an accident.”
“I know,” I assured him, not knowing where any of this was coming from.
“Then why are you making me go up by myself?”
Ah, crap.
He was nervous. He thought I was making him go and face the music alone because he was in trouble. The truth was I was the one that was going to be in trouble if I went with him.
New plan. Avoid eye contact. Resist danger zone. Avoid eye contact. Resist danger zone.
I shut off the car and firmly reiterated as we walked to the house, “We’re just going to drop it off. We are not staying.”