“He! Did stuff! To my face!”
“Uh, come again?” he asks. He sits down next to me on the couch. “Who did stuff to your face? Did someone hurt you at the bar?” I can hear the steel in his voice. Helena’s never too far away.
I shake my head and clear my throat. “No. Kissed me!”
“Who kissed you?” Then a smile splits his face. “Well, I’ll be fucked. Did someone perchance find out what a certain officer of the law tastes like?”
“Holy shit!”
“Holy shit, indeed,” he says. He reaches over and wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. Holy crap, do I need this. I curl up against him, and he laughs quietly to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, because I’m failing to find any humor in this situation whatsoever.
“That didn’t take long,” he says. “I expected you to last at least another week or so.”
“It wasn’t me! He did it!”
“Even better, then. It means he got tired of waiting for you to open your eyes. Gotta love a man who takes the initiative.”
“I’m so confused,” I mutter.
“Why, baby doll? You’ve got what you wanted. Dom is, at the very least, interested in your cute little ass. And at most, it’s what you’ve been waiting for.”
“I don’t even know what that means!”
“No one does. That’s the beauty of it. You’ll find out together. The big thing that you need to do is just go with the flow and not overthink it.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly a ‘go with the flow’ kind of guy,” I remind him.
He laughs again. “Yeah, I kind of figured that. You’re lucky I already have plenty of experience with Paul. You two are peas in pod. Maybe you’re a little less neurotic and a little more of a smartass, but you remind me of him. And that’s a good thing.”
“He and my brother can never meet,” I warn him. “It really would be the end of the world.” And then it hits me what I’ve forgotten. “Oh shit,” I moan.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“My brother!”
“What about him?”
“He’s going to kill me.” And he really will. There’s going to be no end when he finds out that Dom and me are doing… well, whatever it is that we’re doing.
“Why?”
“He’s… overprotective.” Understatement, that.
“I thought you all have known Dom a long time.”
“We have.”
Sandy cocks his head at me. “I don’t understand, then. You’re twenty years old. You’re an adult and capable of making your own decisions. Who you love and choose to spend your time with shouldn’t be dictated by your brother.” I can hear the frown in his voice, and it’s my fault, really. He doesn’t know about Bear and me.
“It’s not like that,” I tell him. “It’s hard for people to understand who haven’t been through what we’ve been through.”
“And what’s that? If you don’t mind me asking. And if you do, please tell me to shut the hell up and mind my own business. I won’t be offended.”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got all night.”