Page 66

Thirty-Four
Conner
Without a muddy, backyard brawl with my dickhead brother to distract me, changing the oil in my mom’s Bronco takes me about thirty minutes. I stretch it out for as long as I can, replacing her sparkplugs, checking her fluids, and changing out her fuel filter but that only adds another twenty minutes. Before I know it, I have nothing left to do unless I want to detail her car and rotate her tires.
And I’m considering it.
Quit being a pussy. She kissed you—big fuckin’ deal. You’ve literally fucked thousands of women and you go mental over a kiss. There wasn’t even tongue involved.
But I didn’t have to ask her to do it.
We were standing up and our clothes were on and my mother was six-feet away and like a big fucking girl, I can’t stop myself from wondering what it means. Hoping it means something I know it doesn’t.
Can’t.
Henley isn’t sticking around, genius. She came here to check on her drunk dad and to lose her V-card because she heard the stories of your sexscapades from her dumbass, big-mouth brother and wanted to know if you lived up to the hype.
I slam the lid to my mom’s Bronco closed and cross the backyard, wiping the majority of the grease and grime off my hands on my way up the porch steps. Tucking my shop rag in my back pocket, I open the door, expecting to see my mom and Henley, still at it but the kitchen is clear. I can hear them in the living room, talking to my dad.
Half relieved, half disappointed, I take the back stairs to the second-floor. Ducking into the bathroom I used to share with Declan, I take a quick shower, scrubbing away the dirt and grime before I dig out one of my dad’s old razors and scrape off about a weeks’ worth of facial hair. It’s not a particularly close shave but I feel marginally more human when I look at myself in the mirror.
Now you’re shaving for her? What’s next? Mani/pedi? Gonna ask Cap’n if you can borrow one of his candy-ass suits?
I never realized until now that my inner-voice sounds like Declan.
The realization makes it easier to ignore.
Slinging the towel around my hips, I head down the hall to my old room. I didn’t bring a change of clothes this time, but I have a few—
Henley is sitting on the floor, in front of my bookcase, books spread out around her. Her head bent, face tipped over the one in her lap. A plate of cookies on the floor next to her. Completely and totally absorbed in the book in front of her.
She used to do that sometimes. I loved it when she’d lose herself in a book. The way she chewed on her bottom lip when something in the story she was reading made her nervous. The way she leaned forward just a bit when it excited her. Sigh when it aggravated her. I could watch her for hours when she was like this. It was my form of meditation, way before Tess’s dad slapped a wrench in my hand.
Stop staring, fuckface.
I push the door closed before turning my back on her to dig through my old dresser. It takes a while, but I finally find an old pair of track pants with an elastic waistband and a drawstring that look like they might work. Dropping my towel, I shake them out and step into them, pulling them up and cinching the drawstring as tight as I can. I weighed myself yesterday. I’m still down eight pounds from my trip to CooCoo-Banana Land. I’m going to have to eat pancakes, morning noon and night for the next few weeks to—
I hear a soft gasp behind me and my dumb cock jerks in response because it doesn’t know the difference between an ohmygod, I want you to fuck me gasp and an ohmygod, I hope he doesn’t think he’s going to fuck me gasp.
Shit.
I force my shoulders to relax, aim a look over one of them to find Henley looking up at me from her seat on the floor. She’s got her finger stuck in the book she’s reading to mark her place, face pale under her light brown freckles. Gaze glued to the number she did on my back. The welts aren’t raised or red anymore but there’re scabs scattered from my shoulders to my ass from where she pushed too hard and broke the skin. Made me bleed.
Because you practically forced her to, you fucking psycho.
“Sorry.” Pants secured, I turn my head and focus on finding a shirt and getting the fuck out of here. “Thought you were lost.”
Don’t be weird, weirdo.
She clears her throat. “Lost?”
“Yeah.” I grab a shirt, one I haven’t seen since high school but at this point I don’t give a shit. I just need to put it on and leave. “You know—” I stop talking long enough to tug the shirt over my head. “How you used to get. Nose buried in a book—the apocalypse could start, and you’d never even know it. I used to watch you for hours when you were like that.”
No, that’s not weird at all. Good job, fuckface.
I smooth the shirt into place. It’s old. Worn thin. The collar is stretch out and the seams are tight across my shoulders. I immediately want to take it off, but I don’t. I keep it on because if I go downstairs without a shirt on, my mom will see my back and freak out on me.
Jesus Christ, I’m so fucked up.