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Kelly gasps beside me, her hand over her mouth. “Holy shit,” she whispers into my shoulder, shaking her head. “Noah, do something. Don’t let him touch her.”
He’d be a dead man if he did and he knows it. Not by me, though I would surely stand up for her, but her dad isn’t having it. “That’s enough,” he snaps, grabbing Jonas by the arm. “Leave her be.”
Not only that but take a look at Justice and the set scowl directed at his younger brother. This isn’t over between them.
I stand next to Kelly, waiting to see if I’m going to break up another fight tonight.
Life and relationships, they’re messy. And we don’t make the right decisions half the time. I’m not saying Kelsey should have cheated on Jonas with his brother of all people, and I hate to be the one to side with Justice here, but that girl, she was his from the beginning. I feel like Jonas was just borrowing her.
I know what you’re thinking, that sounds awful given my disposition on Nick cheating on Xianna, but it’s the truth. I feel that way about Kelly and Maverick. From the beginning, Kelly was mine the moment she walked into my parents’ barn at six years old and told me to shove a stick up my butt. She wasn’t giving me her sweet tea I desperately wanted. I didn’t know I loved her back then, but I did. She was mine.
And Kelsey, she was Justice’s the moment she rode on the back of that 4-wheeler with him the summer she turned thirteen. It’s funny how it happens, how people fall in love in the strangest ways and that bond cements. There are cracks in it, sure, but they’re surface deep.
Justice takes a deep breath and steps toward his brother, eyes wild, lips curved in a sinister way. Justice is bad to the core. He scares even me sometimes. “Leave her alone. This isn’t on her.”
And Jonas, he’s the good kid. The one with a future that doesn’t involve prison, which one could argue is fifty-fifty with Justice. “Yes it is!” he shouts at his older brother, slamming his hand into his shoulder. “I can’t even believe the two of you.”
With a quick step, Justice shoves his brother into a nearby table. “Knock it off, you little shit.”
“I’m the shit? You fucked my girlfriend.”
A hardened expression passes over Justice’s face. “She was mine first.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Jonas screams, shattered and clinging to his pride. “She made a commitment tome.”
Cool and collected, Justice shrugs one shoulder and half laughs. “And she didn’t mean it.”
Kelsey grabs hold of Justice’s arm, attempting to pull him toward her. “Justice, don’t.”
Jonas backs away, his hands up. “Whatever. Wedding’s off. The bride’s a whore.”
And he’s on his ass. Justice punches him right in the mouth. “I told you if you said that again, I’d make you eat your words.”
“Boys!” Aunt Linda yells, rushing toward them as they wrestle around on the ground.
Justice and Jonas, they’re like oil and water. They don’t mix. Ever. They’re so completely different from one another you wouldn’t even know they were related, let alone brothers.
The fight’s broken up pretty quickly and Jonas takes off, leaving Justice standing there, blood soaking the front of his shirt and tears in his eyes as he looks to Kelsey for her decision. By the looks of her expression, I don’t think she knows what to do.
Justice might not be the better man here, but he was the one willing to fight for his heart.
Thirty-One
Where We Go From Here
(To bed, hopefully.)
I could tellyou all kinds of dirty details about the rest of the night. Like the fact that Justice didn’t wait for Kelsey’s answer. He pulled her into him and said, “I’m not the right one for you. I’ll fuck this up so many times, and you’ll be fifty and wondering if you made the right choice, but you will never ever have to doubt my love for you.”
It ended there. No, they didn’t get married, they’re far from that, but she did take his hand, for whatever reason.
Fisher, Kelly and Kelsey’s dad, he wasn’t having it and took to drinking and expressing his complete discontent for the situation. “Great, both my girls married dumbasses,” he mutters, finishing off a bottle of whiskey.
See? Told you he doesn’t like me.
None of that matters though because once I have Kelly upstairs and the kids tucked away in another room, I have my wife alone and I intend to show her how good make-up sex is. Have you heard that saying, you can’t fix a marriage overnight? It’s true, you can’t. You know what you can do? Fuck.
My palm finds her jaw. My thumb brushes over her cheek, keeping her under my tormented expression. My lips part, lids heavy, hers half closed. I’m tired but wanting to show her what she means to me, the only way I know how. “What do you want?” I ask, lowering my forehead to hers, pressing my eyes shut with force. “Please tell me you want sex because I just… sorry. I want you.”