Chapter 2

Delilah

“Who was that?” I ask my brother.

Nervous energy has me pacing my room as he sits on the bed, uninterested in the two boys that just showed up at the clubhouse. He’s only able to focus on a way to convince Dad and Pop to let him go on the senior trip to Mexico when he’s not even a senior until fall. I’m grateful for the lack of attention and the inspection my response would bring if he bothered to notice me.

“No clue,” he says in a dismissive tone.

“Diego and Morrison seemed to recognize the older one,” I add.

“Guys looking for work?” he offers even though it’s a ridiculous notion.

“The dark-haired kid is younger than us, Sam. So I doubt that.”

He doesn’t even bother to pull his eyes from his cell phone as he types furiously on the screen.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters,” I hiss at him, the self-absorbed response has me stopping in my tracks. “He has Dad’s eyes.”

He huffs. “We have Dad’s eyes.”

“And we’re blonde. How many guys do you know that have black hair and piercing blue eyes?”

His gaze pulls from his phone and meets mine. “Piercing? Really, Delilah?”

“What?” I shrug and continue walking across the room. With my back to him, I fiddle with things on my dresser.

“Maybe it’s a long-lost son,” he offers with no enthusiasm.

“Don’t even say that,” I squeal turning back to him. “That would be disgusting.”

Dammit.

His phone drops to the turquoise duvet covering my bed, and I have his full attention now. The one thing I was hoping not to draw. I can handle a distracted Samson, but when his twin eyes stare into mine, all of my secrets spill out with minimal effort on his part.

“Disgusting? Tell me, Delilah, what would be so gross about Dad having a blood-related child with piercing blue eyes?”

“N-nothing,” I mumble. “I misspoke.”

“You’re the smartest girl in our school, so I highly doubt that.”

I turn away from him without a word. I can feel the heat of my embarrassment flushing my cheeks.

“They had duffel bags with them,” he says as if I didn’t notice them, too. “They’re probably moving in with us.”

I turn, fast enough to knock a few books off of my dresser, only to find his back at my door and his laughter echoing down the hall as he heads to his room.

Moving in?

There’s no way the beautiful stranger will end up here.

I let it sink in as I pick up the things I knocked down. Neither one of my dads would turn away a kid in need, and even though the older one looked one hundred percent grown, the younger one isn’t.

Sticking my head out of my room, I listen for my brother. I’m met with silence and knowing him, he’s locked away in his room on his phone or he’s masturbating.

I shudder at the memory of forgetting to knock before entering his room last week. As I try to force bile back down, I head to the spare bedroom. It’s clean, but I’m not sure who slept in the bunk beds last, so I strip them and grab fresh, clean sheets to remake them. Sometimes Dustin and Khloe’s little boy stays in here and sometimes it’s friends from school or others from next door.

Satisfied that the beds are ready to go, I scoop up the dirty linens and run them down to the laundry room. From the small window, I see Gigi sitting on her front porch painting her nails. Her body is angled so she can keep an eye on the back door of the clubhouse. Seems the handsome, blue-eyed stranger caught her attention too. There’s no other reason for her to be battling the late May heat, and I know for a fact she hates to sweat.

Disgusted with myself at finding him so handsome and the possibility that he could be my brother, I head back upstairs and keep the door cracked so I can hear them if they come home with my dads.

I don’t wait long before the sound of the front door opening and closing makes it up the stairs. Sticking my ear to the crack in the door, I listen for movement and conversation from below. Unable to decipher the voices, I step out on the landing just as my dad, Jaxon, is coming toward me. Both boys, the younger one with excited anticipation in his eyes, the other with more anger on his face than any guy his age should suffer, follow behind him.

“I changed the sheets on the bunk beds,” I inform him.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Jaxon says with a quick kiss on my temple as he walks past to the spare room.

“Perfect little ass kisser aren’t you?” the older boy sneers as he walks past.

I recoil at his rudeness but follow them into the room.

“You guys have free run of the house except for the bedrooms. Stick to your own so personal boundaries aren’t broken,” my dad explains as Drew bounds up the bunk bed stairs and plops down on the mattress. “Hopefully you’ll be comfortable.”

“Are you kidding?” Drew yips. “This is better than anything we’ve ever had.”

My heart clenches. A bunk bed is better than anything? That’s both sad and pitiful.

“Drew,” the tall guy beside me chastises with a frown.

I see my dad’s eyes soften as he looks up at Drew who’s crossed his legs at his ankles and positioned his hands behind his head. The kid is truly in hog heaven right now.

“Which room is yours?” The gruff whisper from beside me has more effect than it ever should.

I take a step back and to the side, creating some distance between us. Bumping into the door and causing it to knock against the bump stop garners my dad’s attention and he turns to face us. First, his eyes assess the boy, and then they turn to me.

“Lawson, this is my daughter, Delilah. Delilah, this is—”

“His bastard son,” Lawson interrupts holding his hand out to me as my eyes flash to my dad.

His lips flatten, but the slight nod of his head tells me to shake his hand, and that he’s handling a difficult situation the best he can.

When he wraps his hand around my smaller one, there’s no burst of electricity, no zing up my arm predicting my future obsession with this man. The only thing I feel is the cold sweat on his palm betraying his anxiety over this whole situation. It’s almost worse than that burst of adrenaline I’ve read about so many times in books. His somatic reaction to this situation makes me feel sorry for him, pity the life he may have had up until this point. It pushes away the anger I felt with his snide comment in the hall and makes me want to pull him against my chest and tell him everything will be fine.

“Nice to meet you,” I manage after an awkwardly long handshake.

“I can’t wait to get to know you better,” he says as I jerk my hand away.

In a rude gesture, I rub my hand against the fabric of my cut-off shorts, a way to let him know I feel his discomfort. It’s mean and something out of character for me, but he needs to know I can read him like a book. Let him act macho and pissed off with everyone else, but his secrets were revealed in a simple handshake.

“This is Drew,” my dad says interrupting the stare off Lawson and I are having.

I divert my eyes to the younger boy, closing the space between us with an outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you, Drew.”

He shakes my hand over the rail of the top bunk and due to my height, or lack thereof, I have to stretch to reach it.

I pop back down on the heels of my bare feet when an appreciative grunt echoes around the room. Embarrassed, I pull down the hem of my tank top that had shifted up on my back.

Turning and not making eye contact with anyone but my dad, I direct my words at him. “I’ll be in my room until supper.”

He nods as I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek. “Maybe change your clothes.”

A suggestion I plan on following the second I get back to my room. “Yes, sir.”

Lawson is chuckling as I scurry past him and make it to the safety of my bedroom. Closing the door, I twist the lock for good measure.

With no time to ask my dad questions, my mind races with what putting Lawson and Drew up in the spare room means. Are they living here? Is it only for a few nights?

Bastard son?

Samson was right. The worst possible explanation of this situation has just been laid at my feet. I feel sorry for them. Just the small glimpse into their lives with a few spoken words from Drew’s lips paints a dreary picture.

The ding of my cell phone pulls me from my selfish thoughts of wondering how them being here is going to affect my life. I’m no better than Samson.

Gigi: What’s going on? I saw them go inside your house.

“Of course you did,” I mutter to the text message.

Ignoring her text, I toss my phone back down on my bed and change my clothes.

Avoiding him without seeming rude will probably be my best bet. He’s a grown man, or at least he looks like one so he won’t be here long. The rules in the house aren’t what I’d call strict, but there are limitations to our choices. Lawson doesn’t seem like the guy who’s going to stick around after the ‘my house-my rules’ speech is given to him.