Rance
Give us another shot. Let me take you to dinner this weekend. Or we can spend a day out on the lake.
I toyed with the corner of my thumbnail as anxiety pricked my belly. So much for honest conversations helping close the door.
“What does that jackhole want?”
I’d been so distracted by the texts that I hadn’t noticed Caden’s nearness until his lips ghosted across the shell of my ear.
I shoved my elbow into his side. “Mind your own business.”
“He bothering you?”
There was a strain to Caden’s voice that I didn’t miss. Because while he had firmly closed the door when it came to letting me in emotionally, he still felt like he had the right to play big brother number five. That fact only poured salt into the wound that was his defection.
“No, he’s a friend,” I whispered.
Caden’s eyes narrowed. “That didn’t look like someone who wants to be your friend.”
“We went on a few dates last month. It’s no big deal.”
Caden’s jaw hardened, and a tic started in the muscle. “He’s not good enough for you.”
I wanted to read far too much into those words. I wanted to hear jealousy and desire and a million other things. But they weren’t there. Even my traitorous heart knew that.
Because that day when I was fifteen had changed everything. Caden might have saved my life, but he had slammed the door on our friendship, taking away my secret keeper, my resting place, my person, and replacing him with a coolly casual acquaintance. So, when I’d woken up from the coma, I hadn’t just lost the normal future I’d planned for. I’d lost everything. Because I’d lost him.
2
CADEN
I watchedas Grae moved through the crowd, her tiny form slipping between team members with graceful deftness until I saw only a flash of white-blond hair before she disappeared altogether. An ache settled deep in my chest the moment she vanished, as if some invisible tether linked us together. It happened every time I watched her walk away, yet I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
A throat cleared next to me, and my gaze snapped to Roan. His eyes were hard as he took me in.Shit.Being away for so many years had dulled my reflexes. I was normally more careful about paying Grae too much attention in front of her brothers—beyond giving her a hard time.
I shouldn’t be doing that either, but I couldn’t resist. Riling Grae meant getting her attention, even if it was in the form of the sharp side of her tongue. I’d take that over her cool indifference any day of the week.
Nash walked up and cuffed me upside the head. “Stop egging G on. One of these days, she’s going to murder your ass, and I won’t be able to do anything to stop it.”
I grinned at my best friend as I stood. “What can I say? I like pushing her buttons.”
Maddie studied me carefully but didn’t say anything.
“She’s tiny, but she’s vicious,” Nash muttered. “I’d watch your back.”
He was right. Grae had a fight in her, unlike anyone I’d ever met. It was something innate, burned into her bones as if the Universe had known she would need it someday. It had helped her claw her way back from the brink of death all those years ago, and it gave her the gumption to keep chasing her dreams now.
My gut twisted as an image flashed in my mind: Grae pale and clammy as I ran down the mountain, her breaths shallow. The beep of the heart monitor as I watched her chest rise and fall in the hospital bed that was three sizes too big. Panic clawed at my chest, my ribs tightening around my lungs.
“Caden? You all right?”
Nash’s voice jarred me out of my living nightmare. “What? Yeah. Sorry, just spaced.”
His eyes narrowed. “Everything okay with your parents?”
Was it ever? But that wasn’t something I wanted to delve into here. “As good as they can be.”
Which meant they were shit.
