Page 50 of The Aster Valley Collection, Vol. 2

PROLOGUE

JULIAN

It wasn’t the first time Parker had snuck into my house in the middle of the night, but it was the worst.

He was already crying, and his clothes were covered in dirt. I’d left the bathroom light on by accident, and when the sound of the window woke me up, there was enough light for me to make out the smudges on his sweatshirt and debris in his hair.

Parker Ellis was awkward at the age of fourteen—tall and scrawny, all elbows and knees—but he was my awkward.

“C’mere,” I croaked, opening the covers so he could get warm. I was still half-asleep. Normally, I would have been annoyed at getting my bed dirty, but I could tell how upset he was.

As soon as he dove beneath the covers, I dropped the comforter and pulled him in close. He smelled like the cold night air and the dry leaves he’d probably had to wade through to get to my window. “What happened? What’d they do?”

Parker’s parents were assholes. They’d been assholes the entire time I’d known him, but it hadn’t been until the last two years of elementary school that he’d started sneaking over to my house when things got really bad.

In the beginning, it had been loud parties lasting late into the night.

But then his dad had gotten a job with lots of travel.

There was less partying, but there was also more neglect.

Parker’s mom had gone out with friends instead of having people over.

She’d forget to get groceries or feed him dinner.

Once my parents had figured out what was happening, they’d given him an open invitation to come to our house for meals anytime. They also knew he spent the night often, but since they had a “no sleepovers on school nights” policy, they simply looked the other way when he snuck in on a weeknight.

This had been going on for years, but lately, it had gotten worse.

Now that we were in middle school, his parents felt like Parker was old enough to be left home alone overnight, sometimes for weeks at a time.

His mom had gotten jealous of his dad’s travel and had insisted on joining him on his trips, leaving Parker on his own in a big empty house with no food and no one to help him with his homework or take him to and from after-school activities.

Watching Parker’s parents treat him like shit was the first time I’d realized even a kid from a family with plenty of money could suffer from hunger and neglect.

It wasn’t quite enough for anyone to call Child Protective Services and risk putting him in the system, since he was surrounded by families like ours who would take him in and make sure he had what he needed, but it still sucked.

“I hate them,” he growled, snuggling in closer to me for warmth. His skin was cold and prickly with goose bumps. “I hate them so fucking much.”

We had an important math test tomorrow, and Parker had been over earlier that afternoon so my sister, Hazel, could help both of us with our review homework. He’d walked home right after dinner the way he usually did when he came home with me after school.

“What happened?” I asked again. I rubbed his back through his sweatshirt, trying to help him get warm. Hot tears landed on my neck, and his fingers gripped the thin cotton of my T-shirt.

“My key didn’t work. I had to crawl around in the bushes to find that rock thing where we keep a hidden one, but that didn’t work either.

” He sniffed and took a breath. “So I waited for Mom to get home, but she never came. And then I walked down to the gas station to use their phone to call her. She said she…” His hand clenched tighter, accidentally catching one of the few hairs on my chest. “She changed the locks because she didn’t trust the house cleaners.

But she forgot to tell me, and then… and then she left to go to Chicago with a friend at the last minute.

She said not to break a window or I’d have to pay for it.

But my English homework is in there, and all my clothes, and… ”

I was so angry, I wanted to punch something.

Parker didn’t have any money. We were fourteen.

Every dollar he made trying to mow people’s lawns in summer and shovel snow in winter was spent on buying himself food or other things his parents neglected to provide for him, despite all the money they had.

“Did you talk to your dad?”

He shook his head. “How can he help? He’s in Florida at a conference. I’m just so embarrassed. I’m sorry for coming over again. I tried to sleep on the chair on the front porch, but it’s too cold without a blanket.”

I pulled his face out of my neck and held him by the cheeks.

“You listen to me, Parker Ellis,” I hissed.

“You never, ever need to sleep outside when I have a warm, safe place for you here. Okay? Don’t you dare think you have to stay there alone when you can stay with me.

My parents love you. They wouldn’t want you to stay there by yourself, even if you had a key. ”

He sniffed again. “Yeah, I know. Okay.”

I grumbled about his asshole parents while he nestled back against my shoulder.

“I like staying with you,” Parker admitted softly a few minutes later. “Everything’s better when I’m with you.”

I let out a snort. “You just like the snacks my mom gets.”

He pinched my side. “Yeah, so? I also like that I don’t have to care about what I say and do when I’m with you. I can just be… regular me.”

“Same. It’s more fun when you’re here. I wish you lived here all the time.” And I meant it. Parker was my favorite person, and if I could have him with me every minute, my life would be just about perfect.

“Yeah.”

“No matter what, we have each other, right?” I said. “No matter what, it’s you and me, together.”

“Always,” Parker added with a nod.

He got out of bed, grabbed my math notebook and pen from my desk, and scribbled something on it before tearing off half of a page and handing it to me with a flourish.

You and me. Always.

“Remember what we learned in English? Once you make a pledge in writing and agree to it, it’s pretty much law,” he said before settling back down under the covers. “At least, it will be for us.”

My dad had always implied he wanted me to get a law degree one day and join him in running our family’s mining business.

I definitely didn’t know much about the law yet, but I was almost positive there was more to a contract than just writing it down.

There were supposed to be signatures involved. And a judge, maybe.

But I didn’t say any of that, because this promise was about something more important than laws; it was about friendship. And intention. And love.

After reading the words several times over with reverence, I put it on my bedside table. “I agree.”

We got quiet again, but after a while, Parker started talking. This was normal for him. I called it the daily download. He needed to get all of the thoughts off his brain before he could fall asleep.

“What did Hazel mean when she said Erin was her best friend?”

“Huh?” I’d started to fall asleep again, so it took me a minute to try and figure out what he was asking.

“Tonight at dinner. She called Erin her best friend. It just seemed weird.”

“It’s not weird. They’re close like we are.”

He let out a snort. “Not like us. They’re not best friends. They’re…”

“Erin is Hazel’s closest friend, and Hazel is Erin’s. That’s what it means, Parks. Best friends.”

Parker sat up and peered down at me. “If they’re best friends, then you and I are more than best friends. You’re my… my…” He paused while trying to think up a word.

“Go on,” I teased. “I’ll wait. Pretty sure it’s just called best friends.”

Parker got an evil grin on his face. “You’re my lil’ Peanut.”

“Oh, no you didn’t. That nickname needs to die , Shortbread.” I launched myself at him, pinching and wrestling and yanking his hair, all the while laughing and secretly coveting every moment of close contact with him.

When we finally pulled away from each other, both of us breathing heavily and me half-hard, I scrambled off the bed toward the bathroom. “Gotta pee.”

I closed the door behind me and shoved my hand down my pajama pants to squeeze my dick. This had happened before. Both Parker and I had gotten hard around each other, but we’d ignored it or joked around about it.

We’d always been closer than most friends.

When Parker first spent the night at my house in second grade, there had been a really bad thunderstorm.

After a scary crack of thunder, Parker had scrambled from the other twin bed into mine, and we’d held hands until the flash of lightning lit up the entire room.

We snuggled together, holding each other tight until the storm finally went away.

The next morning, Mom had found us tangled up together in my bed for the first of what had turned out to be many times.

After that, it was easy being physically close to him.

He was touch-starved anyway, according to my mom.

So we all made a point of giving him lots of hugs, and I used every movie night as a chance to hold his hand or snuggle with him on the sofa.

When a birthday sleepover with six guys last year had resulted in us breaking both of my beds, my parents had replaced them with one queen-sized bed.

“You and Parker will just have to make do,” Mom had said with a shrug. “You were already getting too tall for those little beds anyway.”

We hadn’t minded. The queen was plenty big for our two tall but scrawny bodies.

But lately, it was getting harder for me to sleep tangled up in him without wanting to touch him that way. I already knew I liked guys, but I also knew that telling Parker I liked him like that could make things really weird between us.

I didn’t want that. I didn’t want anything screwing up what we already had together.