Page 32 of Afterglow (Ottawa Regents #3)

They’re Not the Boss of You, I Am

Fletcher

October

The thought of Behraz Irani is ruinous.

From the moment I wake to when I lie to rest for the night, I feel her on every square inch of my skin.

She doesn’t need to be physically there.

Each spark lit by my functional neurons fires her name.

She’s so deeply embedded in my soul that if death tried to part us, it’d have to take me with it.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll live and die for this woman.

Behraz kisses the inside of my wrist across the cab of my truck. Her lips nip over the vein, drumming up excitement in my pulse. I shudder. “We’re gonna get into an accident.”

She nods and mmm s but doesn’t stop. “I can’t help it.” Her lips cinch around my skin, and my shoulder lifts, rolling a shiver down to the tips of my fingers. “You’re just so…cute and nibble-able.”

Pins and needles prickle up the same arm, and my warning comes out more like a plea for mercy. “Bea.”

“Pull over, Dreamboat.”

As if I’d ever say no to her. I throw on the hazards and park next to the highway, the roads nearly empty from the early hour.

Her seatbelt releases with a click, and her hand stays clasped to mine as she bends a knee onto the leather seat and faces me. “Fletcher.”

I stare ahead, afraid of falling apart. Even before the tender contact, I’d been distracted on the drive to the airport. Miller convinced me to come home for Thanksgiving, using Dad’s retirement and ailing health, and citing the stretch of time since my last visit.

“You should,” Bea said once I got off the phone with my sister. Leaden guilt pressed into my chest. Her head tilted toward me in comfort and understanding, the sweep of her hand over the slope of my shoulders softening the weight held there. “It’s family.”

“You’re my family.” My lips reached for her temple, cherishing its soft warmth.

“I know,” she cooed, “You’re my family too, but if you want and it helps, I’ll come along.”

I agreed. I’d go anywhere with her.

“Fletcher, look at me.”

When I don’t, she raises the console and climbs onto my lap, positioning my arms tight around her hips and cupping my face in her sweet hands. If she thinks this is a punishment, joke’s on her. This is exactly where I wanna be.

“I’m here, okay?” A wrinkle forms in my brow when our foreheads meet. I inhale her, her chaotic energy now a familiar calm. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve been uneasy this past week.”

Everything with my family makes me uneasy. Everything is overcomplicated. Meals, sleeping arrangements, fuck , the sheer number of people and the expected onslaught of comments about contracts and questions about the future of my career have my anxiety ready to flood out.

Instead, I dam it, burying my face in the crook of her neck, wanting to drown in rosewater and never come up for air. Her heavy sigh pushes our chests together. “What’s going on in that outrageously handsome head of yours?”

That cracks open my smile, widening against her skin, and she must feel it because she hums in approval.

“There it is.”

I knock my head into the headrest with a sharp, whiny exhale.

“I don’t wanna face them. It’s always…too much.

” My palms are sweaty just thinking about it.

“The noise, the constant talking, arguing, kids screaming, God …” The overstimulation requires many days of solitude afterward.

I let her go to scrub my face with both hands, surely leaving behind a red hue.

Her expression shifts, puzzled at the admission. “What do you do when you’re on the ice? How do you block the noise out?”

“That’s different.” My fingers scratch a spot behind my ear. “There’s separation. They’re behind the boards, and they’re strangers. I can drown them out.”

“You get into the so-called ‘zone?’”

“Yeah. And while I wish I could, I can’t really tune out my family.”

“Good thing I’m chatty and charming,” Bea’s shoulder lifts, eyes rounding, playful and coy. “I can field all the small talk.”

What a horrible job. My sisters are fine, if not overbearing in a well-intentioned way, but a cardboard cutout makes a more interesting conversation partner than Parker.

“That’s the other thing: bringing you into their wreckage. They don’t…” —one eye wrinkles shut in a cringe— “see me like you do.” I don’t want her to see the way they treat me. “I don’t want it to change what you think of me, I guess…”

“Nothing can change that.” Her palms slide to my chest, over the pumping organ that beats only for her. “I know, see, feel who you are. You’re my boyfriend. My Dreamboat. What they say doesn’t matter to me.”

“But—”

“ Shh .” The hush of her breath draws a long, shaky breath from me, neck going lax from the massaged circles into my nape. “We don’t have to stay, okay? If you’re not having a good time, we can visit for a bit and spend the night somewhere else. You can even blame it on me.”

I nod loosely. “Okay.”

Bea scoots from my lap but keeps one set of our hands entwined. “Now,” she begins, wearing a naughty grin, “are you ready to drive to the airport or would you rather me suck the life out of your cock so we can have a relaxed flight?”

When we get to Charlottetown, I detour onto Route 1, driving the rental Chevy on the scenic way to Summerside. And it’s so worth it.

Bea’s smiles and excited giggles quite literally clear the rainclouds from the shore. It lightens the worry on my face, too, and I loosen my shoulders, relaxing into my seat.

I don’t recall appreciating the foamy surf smacking against those magnificent red cliffs, the rolling green hills in the distance, for a long time.

Maybe since I was a kid. Once I left, the lush island’s scenery was a reminder of weighty responsibilities rather than a thing of beauty. Perspective is funny like that.

Behraz makes everything wondrous and joyful. I’ll never get over having her by my side.

“I feel like I’m in Green Gables!” Her arms stretch over her head before she bunches one sleeve of her sweater to her elbow, then lowers the window to stick a hand out, moving her palm like a wave through the cool airstream.

Dark strands whip across her cheeks, getting tangled in her eyelashes.

“You’re totally Gilbert Blythe.” When the waves ebb into the ocean, the wind rustles the leaves.

“Oh, yeah?” Wait until she hears my family’s favorite nickname for me.

She returns a single enthusiastic nod. “He was my very first book boyfriend.”

“Typically, I’d be very jealous of that esteemed position,” I tease, my hand squeezing the soft flesh of her upper thigh. “But he’s fictional, and I’m not.”

“I like when you’re like this,” she snaps back. “Makes it more fun to fuck the sass right out of your pretty mouth.”

I choke on my own spit, the heated blood from a fiery blush searing the surfaces of my neck and face. And much lower. “Please, gorgeous.” The side of my fist knocks some clarity into my throat. “If I show up at home as hard as I am now, I’ll never be able to live it down.”

Almost an hour later, we pass Chelton Beach. “It’s a red sand beach!” Bea ooh s and aah s. “And the blue picnic benches?” She swoons against the truck door. “You literally grew up in the cutest place ever.”

I point ahead, through the windshield, at a cluster of tall trees beyond the grass edging the sandbars.

“That’s where I’d end up after about twenty minutes.

In the shade. Sunscreen and a rash guard weren’t enough.

” I shake my head through a half- smile at the countless visits spent sunburnt— or trying not to be —at the beach.

“My sisters would run around the shoreline, alternating between sunbathing, hitting a volleyball back and forth, and going for a swim. Parker would pop open a couple of nets and shake a couple sticks overhead, yelling at me to play him in beach hockey.” A chuckle vibrates at the base of my throat.

“I’d pretend not to hear him and hide behind A Wrinkle in Time or The Giver or whatever I had picked up from the library that week.

Or I’d lie and say Piper told me to watch Harper and Hunter make sandcastles.

” My smile widens at the memories. Life here wasn’t all bad.

“Then Mom would show up after her shift with juice boxes and start an assembly line to have us make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.”

She sucks in a whistled breath through pursed lips.

“Sounds better than summers with my granny quizzing me on multiplication tables or listening to her make politically incorrect and borderline racist comments about our neighbors.” Behraz shoots me a mischievous smile.

“When she dozed off on the couch, I’d steal strawberry hard candies from her purse.

I thought I was so sly, but she always knew. ”

I slow the engine when turning onto the street where my parents live.

Bea gasps. “This is beautiful, Fletch. This is your childhood home?”

“Nah, I bought it for them as a rookie.” I was worth more than I am now, fresh out of the juniors. The team had high hopes, I guess.

The historic, Craftsman-style house sits in the heart of Summerside, slate grey paint keeping up from last year when I got the exterior done. “It’s walkable to the pier and to Mom’s store, plus it’s got six bedrooms, which is hard to come by unless you do a custom build.”

We pull into the long driveway that ends in a detached two-car garage. There are already three vans and two cars parked, which means I’m the last of my siblings to arrive.

“This is all you, huh?” Bea’s mouth wrinkles in one corner. “You’re a really good son, you know that?”

I turn to squint at the wraparound porch, stalling. “Not sure they’d agree.”

“Well, they’re not the boss of you.” Her pointer finger wags in the direction of the house, then jabs into her sternum. “ I am.” There’s not a trace of joking in her tone, but I can’t help but smile. She harrumphs. “And I say let’s go inside and set them straight.”