“Why do you wish you hadn’t?”
Logan takes a seat in the opposite corner of the couch, throwing his arm over the back. His long legs stretch almost to where I’m sitting. “I keep thinking about that moment you arrived at the front door… you must have had a really low opinion of me. You must have wondered what we felt about your dad.”
I shrug. “I didn’t know that you existed until after it happened. I think I was mostly just overwhelmed at the situation.”
“I loved him,” Logan says solemnly. “He was a great dad. We’re all fucking lost without him… just trying to keep going with normal day-to-day things.”
Tears burn in my throat, but I swallow them down and breathe out a long breath through pursed lips. “We all deal with grief differently,” I say. “The people left behind have to find a way to carry on. You guys seem capable of doing that, and it’s not a bad thing.”
Logan nods in agreement. “He raised us to be independent. I don’t know if he had a feeling that he wasn’t going to be around or if it was just his way.”
“Maybe he worried. I can understand why he would. There were so many of you relying on him and he knew you’d already been let down in your lives. He wouldn’t have wanted to do that to you again.”
Logan nods. “As long as we’re okay… you and me?”
“We’re okay,” I smile.
Harley, Hunter, and Reggie are the next to join us in the den. Then the rest drift in too. The television is fired up, and they ask me to pick a movie for us all to watch. I joke with them, suggesting many chick flicks and getting a ton of groans in response. It’s so funny that I’m almost tempted to demand we watch some cheesy Vampire romances back-to-back. In the end, I’m not so cruel, and we opt to watch an 80s teen movie that I know is awesome. The drapes are closed, and there’s lots of laughter. I end up sitting next to Sean, who halfway through the movie, throws his arm around the back of the sofa. As I would have expected from him, there’s no embarrassment there. He turns and grins down at me, the whites of his teeth flashing in the darkness, almost daring me to object, but I don’t.
Instead, I snuggle against his chest, letting him play with my hair, and then stroke the soft skin at the back of my neck. The film passes but my whole body is primed by his touch and the mesmerizing beat of his heart against my ear. I know his brothers are watching us. I can sense eyes on me in the dark, but it doesn’t feel awkward. It feels as though they are rooting for us.
If we have a chance of getting to where Danna and the Jacksons are, there are going to be lots of moments like this. We will all have to be open with our minds, our hearts, and our bodies.
This feels like a crazy journey, but I’m going to give it enough of a chance to see where it’s going to lead me.
13
I don’t notice my foster brothers drifting from the room until the movie gets close to the end. When I glance around, it’s only me and Sean left. I tip my face up to him, and his green, catlike eyes. There’s something mesmerizing about the way he looks at me. “I think I have you all to myself,” he says.
“I think you do,” I whisper.
His hand rests under my chin, tipping my face. When his lips find mine, it’s like a sigh of relief. Soft and teasing, then firm and deep. Sean possesses my mouth like I imagine he’d possess my body. My hand grips the back of his neck, the short dark hair like velvet against my palm.
“I knew we’d be good together,” he whispers in my ear, sending a shiver up my spine.
“How?”
“I just had a feeling. You have a spark in your eyes… something that says you can handle yourself.”
“And is that what you like?”
Sean nods, pushing back strands of my long wavy hair from my face. “I like a girl with some sass. I like a girl who has enough strength to hold me down.”
I didn’t expect Sean to be so open about what he needs, not because he isn’t confident but more because he seems like the kind of person who buries his truth beneath layers of bravado. If I could be more like him, maybe things in my life would have turned out differently.
“Did you guys draw straws in the kitchen to decide who would try to seduce me first?”
Sean grins, using his thumb to stroke over my bottom lip. “We don’t vote about fucking,” he smiles. “That’s a first-come, first-served type situation. I was just lucky enough to get to sit next to you and had balls enough to kiss you.”