Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 474(@250wpm)___ 395(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 474(@250wpm)___ 395(@300wpm)
“Crew, look, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
I stood in the doorway of Gage’s bedroom, wondering what the fuck was going on.
My brother with my girl.
Her dark hair was spread across his lap, a smile on her face by Gage. I’d never felt so torn, furious, and destroyed at the same time.
“I can’t believe what I’m fucking seeing here.” I took a step back to prevent myself from ripping my brother to shreds, thinking maybe there was a logical explanation. I hoped to God there was some sort of easy way to explain this without it being what I thought, what I feared, it was.
“Her parents got shit-faced one night a couple of months ago and she called me in hysterics—”
“They didn’t touch her, did they?” My stomach tightened immediately. I’d kill the crazy fuckers if they hurt her. I looked at Jules, sitting on his bed, her eyes wide. “Did they hurt you?”
“She was okay, more or less, but she had to get outta there,” Gage said, watching me start to lose my shit.
“So what? You thought you’d fuck her to console her?” I bellowed.
“Crew . . .” Julia whimpered. She buried her face in her hands and my stomach sank right along with it.
“Come on, Crew,” Gage sighed. “Don’t act like that.”
I looked at him like he was fucking crazy. How in the hell could he have the nerve to tell me, “Don’t even act like that”? After seeing him with my girl? Fuck. That.
My anger rose, boiling white-hot, and I had to find an outlet. I slammed my fist through the door, the wood splintering around my knuckle. “Why in the fuck did no one bother to tell me this shit? Huh? Didn’t any fucking one of you think maybe I’d like to know that you two were together?”
I paced a circle, not sure how I walked back into a world I didn’t seem to even know. How so many things, so many important fucking things, were different. How my life as I remembered it wasn’t even my life anymore.
“I did call you, Crew,” Julia whispered, “but you didn’t answer.”
“I’m not that fucking hard to get a hold of.”
“I called you all the time for months,” she cried. “You never answered and when you did, you had like five minutes to spend talking to me. I stopped bothering to call you months ago. Months, Crew. Did you even realize that? How was I even supposed to know you cared?”
Gage put his arms around her and I wanted to flip him across the fucking room. Brother or not, the sight of my girl touching someone else was more than I could take.
“What were we supposed to do? Just sit here and wait on you to bless us with your presence? Should I have asked her dad to wait to beat the fuck out of her until you could take a second to answer your phone?” Gage asked.
“No!” I shouted, glaring at him. “I just—”
Gage stood from the bed, standing straight, getting the most of the three inches of height he had on me. “What did you want us to do?”
“Well, fucking my girl wasn’t on the list, asshole.”
“It’s not like we decided to be together. It just happened.”
“What? You tripped and your cock fell inside her?”
“Crew.” Julia’s mouth hung open in shock.
“It’s not like we planned this,” Gage sighed. “I brought her here that night and she was afraid to go home. For fuck’s sake, Crew, she’d stayed here so many times before that—”
“With me!” I took a step towards him, my blood boiling.
“Crew, stop this,” Julia said, springing off the bed. “Just stop! You two are brothers. I won’t come between you. This is all my fault . . .”
“No, it isn’t,” Gage said. “We didn’t plan on being together.”
“You’ve said that already.”
“Then let me fucking talk and I won’t have to repeat myself. You’ve moved on. You jetted outta here and did your thing and didn’t bother to call, send a fucking letter, let anyone know what was going on with you. But you expect her to be sitting here waiting on you to pop in?” He ran his hands through his hair. “I was going to tell you before you came home, but I didn’t know you were coming.”
“It was a surprise.” I snorted. “Surprise fucking surprise. Joke’s on me.”
“She’s going to move on, Crew. It’s not fair to ask her not to. And if you don’t like that it’s with me, then I’ll figure that out. You’re my blood.” His shoulders sagged. “But I love her. She needs someone to protect her, to give her the entire world. That girl deserves it, and by God, I want to try to give it to her.”
I turn into a park and drop to the ground, busting out a set of burpees.