Page 3 of The Sunday Brothers Novellas

If I’d lived with this man for months and I’d fucked up so badly, how could I trust myself anymore?

This realization was so distressing that I took a step backward, forgetting John was there. He put a hand on my back, so strong and warm that I felt it through my T-shirt. I took a shuddering breath and brushed past Martin into the apartment. “I have nothing to say to you. John, this is the couch.”

“Where’d you hire this oaf?” Martin demanded.

“He didn’t.” John folded his arms over his chest. “I volunteered.”

Martin pursed his lips like his martini was sour and set the glass down with a click.

“Well, well.” He looked John up and down. “I can just imagine how Teagan plans to pay you for your services. Well, lucky you. He’s talented. But I warn you… he’s effort.”

My jaw had dropped to the floor as I gaped at him, so hurt and… okay, yes, mortified that he’d said something like that in front of John… that for once in my life I was literally speechless.

John stepped in front of me, blocking Martin from my view, and folded his arms over his chest—he wasn’t overtly threatening, but he was way taller than Martin, and he made that perfectly clear. “By talented, I assume you mean that Teagan makes a mean sourdough?”

I clapped a hand over my mouth to restrain a wholly inappropriate, hysterical giggle.

I heard the rustle of fake silk as Martin shifted backward.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Martin said.

I poked John in the back. “Martin doesn’t eat carbohydrates,” I told him. “I’ve never baked for him. My talents would have been wasted.”

John peered down at me over his shoulder. “Sounds like lots of your talents were wasted on him,” he said gently. “But that’s on him . Not you .”

I blinked. I melted.

Then I heard a voice in my head that sounded like a cross between Mufasa in The Lion King and Fern on the phone saying, “Self-preservation, Teagan!”

So for once, I listened.

Well, mostly.

“John, I will bake for you bread every week for a year for the service you’ve done me this day,” I told him appreciatively. “It’s the least I can do.”

John shook his head, his gaze steady. “You don’t owe me anything, Teagan.”

“I want to do it,” I assured him, finding I meant it. “As much as you want.”

“You might not know what you’re in for,” he said dubiously. “You have no idea how much I like bread, T.”

It was probably pathetic, but the T thing twined itself around my heart.

I’d never had a nickname before, unless you counted Jace calling me “runt” after I’d stopped growing at five foot six.

Even my mom called me Teagan. And if you’d asked me, I would have told you that nicknames were absurd and reductive.

But it turned out that when John did it, it made me feel… important. Known.

My heart melted toward him a little more… and for the first time in my whole non-chilled life, the intensity of my emotions scared me because I wasn’t sure I could trust them. I wasn’t sure I could trust me .

So I took a step back. “M’kay. Sofa?”

John nodded.

“You know, Teagan, it’s incredibly immature to throw away a half-year relationship on the basis of a single indiscretion—” Martin began.

“Seems to me like you did the throwing,” John said mildly. Then he looked over his shoulder at me again. “Ready?”

“Unquestionably. I’ll take that end.” I moved around to the far side of the couch with the confidence of a person who moved his own furniture all the time.

John nodded. “Good call. That way I’ll be on the lower step while you control the pivot.”

“Precisely my thought,” I lied. “M’kay, count of three?—”

When John turned and crouched to lift the sofa, Martin saw an opportunity and darted around him to get to me. “Teagan?—”

With a speed I wouldn’t have expected of him, John blocked his path by settling a giant paw against Martin’s silk-covered chest. “I think you should back up.”

Martin took a single step back and smoothed down his robe. “And I think nobody’s interested in your ignorant mumblings. You’re here to lift things.” His eyes found mine. “Are you going to let him talk to me like this?”

John looked at me also, like he was waiting for me to decide .

I folded my arms over my chest, copying John’s earlier stance. “Absolutely, I am.”

John chuckled briefly, his eyes dancing, then looked back at Martin, and he sobered.

“For what it’s worth, I did my undergrad in applied math at Hannabury up in Vermont.

Graduate degrees—both of ’em—at BU. Doctorate at Covington, which is where I teach now.

” He shook his head in disgust. “But it doesn’t take any education at all to know how to treat people decently or to see that Teagan is a really special, vibrant, caring person who was badly hurt by your…

indiscretion. You had your chance. You need to own that, and you need to stand aside. ”

His words were soft, spoken with the quiet dignity that I’d been so incredibly unsuccessful at conjuring up, but they were effective… especially the last two, which came out in a near growl.

Martin rocked his jaw from side to side for a second before he took a step back, threw his chin in the air, and retreated to the kitchen. “Fine, then. Do what you want.”

“Oh, he will,” John said firmly, then looked at me and shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. That should have been your line, but I was on a roll.”

“You delivered it so well.” I couldn’t hold back my grin, but tears pricked my eyes, too, from relief and gratitude and… ugh . Attraction. Overwhelming, all-encompassing attraction, not just to John’s height and his muscles but to everything he was.

Everything I thought he was, I silently corrected, Fern’s warnings echoing in my head.

We got the sofa out to the truck without further incident, and both of us stayed silent on the ride back to my new place, which was not usual for me, but even the silence with John felt comfortable.

It wasn’t until we arrived back at the lobby of my new building, with John carrying most of the weight of the sofa between us, that he finally broke the silence .

“Chips,” he said firmly.

“Chips?” I frowned. “Oh! Oh my gosh, you must be hungry. I am the worst .” I darted a glance back out the front door of the lobby, wondering where the closest convenience store was. “Let me buy you dinner. We can?—”

“No.” John grinned and shook his head. “I mean your philosophical… whatever you call it. I was thinking about it on the way back here, and my answer is chips.”

I stared at him, shocked. He’d been pondering this all that time?

“The chips might seem like they’re plain without the guac,” John explained, like he thought maybe I was staring at him because I disagreed.

“But really, that subtle flavor makes them versatile. A dependent variable, if you will. They don’t need the guac the way the guac needs them, which ultimately makes them better, as a food. ”

He cleared his throat when I continued to stare at him and said nervously, “Or did I completely misunderstand the question?”

“No,” I whispered. “No, that’s… that’s the perfect answer.”

I could fall in love with this man , I thought. I might be falling already .

And six months from now, I could be moving this couch out of his apartment.

I forced myself to look away from him. “This is getting a little heavy, so maybe we could…”

“Oh, fuck. Right.” John snapped to attention. “Okay, let’s turn so you can go up first. You said you were upstairs?”

“Yeah, I— Actually, hang on. Can we set this down for a second?” I put the sofa down to shake out my hands, which were genuinely cramping. “I know it’s hard to tell from my incredibly defined musculature, but I don’t do heavy lifting all that often.”

“Believe it or not, neither do I. Not since I left my moms’ farm, anyway. I’m just built this way.” He winked, inviting me to share the joke. “To lift heavy things.”

But I didn’t find it funny. I grimaced. “About what Martin said?—”

John waved a hand. “T, I couldn’t care less what that guy said, and neither should you. He cheated on you. He’s an idiot.”

The words were so simple but said with a confidence that soothed me. “Yes, well. I was deluded , which is every bit as bad. I fooled myself into seeing him as something he wasn’t. Into thinking we had a connection.”

John took a seat on the stairs and regarded me steadily. “Or it means that the Optimism Fairy gave you a gift for believing the best of people and situations, because life is hard enough, and it’d be even worse if you went through life expecting it to shit on you.”

My eyes flew to his. That was maybe the kindest thing anyone had ever said about me. And also…

“You, uh… you really heard that whole speech I gave Fern, huh?”

“Yep. Pretty sure.” His grin was probably supposed to be apologetic, but his sparkling eyes gave him away.

I sniffed. “You probably think it was very extra ?—”

“Yeah, extra- awesome ,” he interrupted.

His steady brown gaze held mine. “People who don’t get that shouldn’t get to have you in their lives, Teagan.

And let me just tell you, if I ever run into Martin at a coffee shop, I am one hundred percent not letting him cut me in line, no matter how long the wait is or how much of a hurry he’s in. ”

I sputtered out a laugh… then realized he was serious.

Holy fuck, John Curran was a Disney princess in a snap-back hat.

And, even holier fuck, it was working for me in a major way.

“You’re so… nice ,” I said, because it was the highest compliment I could think of. He was smart and he was funny, and his smile was perfection, but there was this feeling of goodness coming off the man that made me want to curl up beside him and bask in his warmth forever.

And I really, really hoped I wasn’t imagining it.

“Oh.” John’s smile faltered a little. “Yeah. Thanks. You, ah… you good to keep going?” He stood and dusted his hands before tilting his chin up the stairs.

I smacked my forehead. “Jeez. Yeah, otherwise I’ll keep you here all night. Let’s go. Two more flights.”