Nevaeh Stevenson was mine; she just didn’t realize it yet.
But it wasn’t like I could stake a claim to her. Not when she was only sixteen fucking years old.
The next two years were going to be pure torture.
Chapter 3
Braxton
Two Years Later
I knew it was going to be a shit day when I heard the thunder booming and my alarm hadn’t even gone off yet.
Sasha lifted her head, a whine leaving her, and I sat up so I could scratch her ears. My touch soothed her, and she began to relax again as she laid her head back down. Within minutes, she was back asleep at the end of my bed.
A soft tap on my door told me I wasn’t going to get to attempt going back to sleep. “Yeah?” I called, and Mia stuck her head in, the light from the hall haloing around her.
“I’m making breakfast. Do you want some?”
I glanced at my alarm clock. I only had ten more minutes before I had to get up anyway. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll be out.”
“No rush,” she said, flipping on my overhead light. “I just got a text that this storm has delayed our flight anyway.”
And there it was—the real reason this was going to a shitty as fuck day.
Mia and her cousin were flying back to California. It was only for the weekend, so Nevaeh could celebrate her birthday with her family, but it reminded me that their time with me was limited.
Even more so for Nevaeh.
She had one more semester, and then she would graduate. Her parents expected her to come back to Cali for graduate school, and she hadn’t argued.
Once May arrived, my sweet little kitten was going to leave me.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I groaned.
“We’ll be back Sunday night,” Mia reminded me, compassion in her voice.
“But Barrick and I aren’t going with you.” Tossing back my covers, I moved to the edge of the bed and reached for my prosthesis. The cold, wet weather was making my leg hurt even more than usual.
“Am I going to get a lecture from you, too?” she asked with an exasperated huff. “Look, Barrick is taking us to the airport, where Nevaeh’s grandfather’s jet is already waiting on us. Marcus is on board and won’t leave my side all weekend.”
It was a relief that one of her old bodyguards would be with her during this trip, but that wasn’t why I was having a hard time with them going without us this time.
Nevaeh was turning eighteen tomorrow, and I wasn’t going to be with her to celebrate.
We’d had a huge dinner the night before in her honor, with cake and a taco buffet in the kitchen. Lyla and her little family had shown up, along with a few of Nevaeh’s friends from school. Mia and I had spent the day making Nev’s favorite cake and decorating it.
Neveah had had so much fun that she’d passed out on the couch after everyone left. I’d carried her to bed, and it took everything inside me to turn and walk back out of her room.
I was so close to the finish line, I could taste it. But there was still a little bit more to go.
It didn’t matter that she was just days away from becoming legal. It wouldn’t have mattered if she were minutes away. She was still seventeen. I couldn’t touch her the way I’d been aching to.
Not yet.
And now, I had to fucking wait until she got back from visiting with her family before I could start showing her what she really meant to me.
“Are you guys going to eat or what?” Barrick called out from the kitchen. He sounded about as happy as I was, and I knew us not going with them was pissing him off just as much as it was me.