The humor fled from his expression, replaced with a look of uncertainty. “I didn’t feel it when I was doing it.”
I turned my attention back to doctoring his hand, tossing the used alcohol wipes aside and peeling open the bandages. “Okay. But . . . why did you do this? Were you mad or something?”
I wasn’t sure why I was pushing, but for some reason, it felt like the answers were just too important. The seconds ticked by at a freakishly slow pace before he finally answered reluctantly. “Let’s just say things in my life aren’t as easy as you assumed they are.”
For some reason, that answer made a knot form inside my chest, and when I looked up at him, I was sure he could see the emotions I was feeling written all over my face. “Jensen, I—”
“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” he bit out angrily. “Just drop it, okay?”
I thought back to that day when I was standing inside his bedroom, looking up at him. I remembered the emotion behind his words when he mentioned boarding school and how it hadn’t fit that arrogant demeanor, and suddenly I realized I’d been wrong.
With the last bandage stuck in place, I released a heavy sigh and looked up. I didn’t know what was happening, or why I felt such a strong pull to this boy I hardly knew, but finding out I’d jumped to incorrect conclusions about who he was made me feel queasy.
“All done,” I whispered, snapping the lid on the kit closed. I gathered up the trash and walked across the room to throw it away, keeping my back to Jensen as the sound of his chair scraping across the floor shot through the room. He was leaving, and this time, I was determined to let him. “I guess I’ll see you around—” My words died when I turned and nearly ran into the wide expanse of his chest. I’d expected him to be near the door, not standing only inches away, and suddenly the warmth from his body and the heady smell of his cologne left me feeling lightheaded. “W-what are you doing?”
“Saying ‘thank you’,” he replied, his voice a gravelly rumble that made me tingle.
His eyes turned darker as he slowly leaned in closer, the storminess turning into a hurricane. A heat began to burn low in my belly, making it feel as if my skin was too tight.
“Don’t,” I rushed out, panic making my heartrate accelerate. “Please d-don’t kiss me.” There was no chance I’d survive it if he did.
He stopped then, but not before his chest pressed against mine, turning me into a jumbled mess of exposed nerves. “I won’t,” he said softly, his face taking on a gentleness I hadn’t thought him capable of. Then he shocked me even further by closing the last of the distance between us so his lips could skim across my ear as he finished, “At least not until you beg me to.”
With that mystifying response, he pulled back, turned on his heel, and headed out of the breakroom, leaving me standing there on shaky knees.
Chapter Six
Shane
The Rolling Stones were blaring through the Bluetooth speaker I had set up on the TV console. The thing had cost a pretty penny, but I justified the purchase by telling myself Brantley would like listening to music on it just as much as me, but the truth was, it had been one of the very few frivolous purchases I’d made in the past five years that was more for me than my son. Besides, The Stones were the only thing that made housework more bearable, and with Brantley over at Caroline and Scooter’s for the afternoon, I could blast it at full volume while I scrubbed every nook and cranny of my house.
With the hours I waitressed at Bad Alibi, a local biker-friendly watering hole, I tried to spend as much time with my boy as possible, but it was difficult. That meant learning to function on very little sleep so I could stay up during the day and spend that time with him before working the evening or night shifts at the bar. That didn’t leave a lot of free time, so once a month I pushed my guilt to the back burner and had my aunt and uncle babysit so I could do all the cleaning and laundry and errands I hadn’t gotten to do in my very limited time.
Today was that dreaded day, but I tried to make it better by belting out “Sympathy For the Devil” right along with Mick as I mopped the old, yellowed linoleum and vacuumed the threadbare carpets.
Our place wasn’t much; it was small and had definitely seen better days, and it didn’t help matters that I couldn’t really afford to make any of the bazillion repairs that needed to be done or any cosmetic improvements, but Brant and I did what we could to make it our own.
I’d just gotten to my favorite part of the song and was singing the Woo Woos at the top of my lungs—nailing the notes, I might add—when the obnoxious voice for my over-protective big brother broke through my enjoyment.
“Christ, squirt. It sounds like a bag of cats is being tortured to death by Satan himself in here.”
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the little remote off the kitchen counter and hit the button to kill the music. “Did I just imagine that whole conversation where I handed you that key and was all, ‘hey big bro, this is just for emergencies, so please don’t use it to barge in whenever the hell you feel like it’? Because I could’ve sworn that really happened.”
“I heard what I thought were the sounds of you being brutally murdered. That constitutes an emergency, right? How was I supposed to know you were such a godawful singer?”
I curled my lips between my teeth, biting down to keep the words I’d been swallowing for the past few months from spewing out, mainly that he would have known had he been in my life long enough to find out anything about me. Instead, he’d bailed out when I was only eight years old.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my brother with all my heart, but as much as I loved having him in my life on a regular basis now, his return had brought up old resentments I hadn’t realized were lingering beneath the surface.
When Jensen had shown up out of the blue a few months back, rocking my world to its foundation, Cannon had called Stone. My brother packed his shit, hopped on his bike, and made the trek from San Francisco to Redemption to have my back, and I loved him dearly for it, but with having my back came an overwhelming protective streak that tended to grate on my nerves. Gavin “Stone” Hendrix took overprotective to extremes, causing us to lock horns more often than not because he felt it was his right to have a say in how I lived my life. I disagreed. After so many years of only having him through phone calls and emails, I felt he’d lost all right to boss me around.
Now, every time he made a comment like that, I was reminded of just how little he knew me and how much hurt I was still harboring since he left. But hashing up all those feelings wouldn’t do any good. As it was, my brother was only visiting. I had no idea when he’d leave to go back to San Francisco so I didn’t want to risk tarnishing any of the time we had left together.
“Not that I don’t love your company, but are you here for a reason? You know, besides to be a general pain in my ass?”
“Can’t a brother just want to spend some time with his little sis every once and a while, squirt?” he asked, using the nickname he knew I hated.
“Ugh!” I groaned, dropping my head back dramatically. “For the love of God, please stop calling me that!”