“You could say that. We screwed around whenever our families got together.” He glanced at me. “What about you? How old were you when you gave it away to some little piece of shit?”

“How do you know he was a piece of shit?”

“Wild guess.”

Somehow, he had me laughing again. “Well, it was a similar experience to yours, honestly. Only I was the girl left wondering what all the fuss was about.”

“He didn’t get you off?”

“Not even close. We’d been dating for a few months and things had been getting hot and heavy. We did the whole prom thing and I decided that would bethe night. We broke up a few days later.”

“Little fuck.”

“Yep.” He’d been my one and only boyfriend. I’d bowed to peer pressure, thought it was what I was supposed to do. But when he’d dumped me, I’d felt relieved more than anything.

“I hate him,” Manic said. “If we could go back in time, I’d pull his jocks over his head and ask you out myself.”

I was laughing again. “I was a major nerd in high school. You wouldn’t have looked at me twice.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Nerd or not, I would have wanted you, believe me.”

“When I was sixteen, you would’ve been twenty-seven.”

He glanced at me and screwed up his face. “Now you’ve gone and made it all weird.”

I snickered. “My aunt would have chased you down the street with her shotgun.”

Smiling, he glanced my way again. “So she raised you after you lost your parents?”

My gut soured, and my pulse raced. Why the hell had I mentioned Macy? “Yeah.”

“You went out of town a couple months ago. Lila said you had some family stuff. Is that where you were, with your aunt?” he asked.

No. Nope. I couldn’t talk about this. My breathing had gone funny, and if I didn’t shut this down, I’d have a panic attack right here in front of Manic. “Yep. She was dying. I went to say goodbye.”

“Fuck, Addie—”

“I don’t talk about it, okay. Can we leave it?” I chewed my lip and looked out the window, focusing on a mountain peak in the distance, and started reciting ingredients in my mind for my famous triple-chocolate muffins.

“Yeah, of course, baby.” I felt his eyes on me, but I couldn’t look at him.

Silence fell around us, and I focused on my mental baking and the scenery as we traveled higher. Manic eventually started pointing out landmarks and avoided all talk of family, and somehow, I pulled it together.

We rounded a bend and Manic cursed. I followed his gaze.Shit. Part of the road was missing. Then Manic smiled suddenly and that’s when I saw them.

Two guys.

Huge and bearded—and identical, though one was a little larger. Hank and Beau. Manic’s identical twin cousins. They both stood by ATVs, and there was no doubting Manic was related to these men, and not just in looks. Apparently, they made thembigin the mountains.

Manic got out and strode toward them. One was grinning wide, the other, not so animated but obviously happy to see his cousin. They all shook hands and thumped backs, talked for a bit, then Manic turned to me and waved me over.

“Beau, Hank, this is my girl, Addie,” Manic said when I joined them.

My stupid heart did another one of those flips. I wasn’t his girl, but all those fantasies I had about the two of us were still floating around in my head, and from now until we left, that was the part I was playing. “Nice to meet you both.”

One of them held out his hand. “I’m Beau, the handsome one.” He aimed his thumb at his twin. “Hank is a man of few words. Yes, he looks like angry Santa before his beard went white, but I promise he’s harmless.”

Hank swatted the back of his brother’s head. “Hey, Addie.”

Tags: Sherilee Gray Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net