But I wasn't in prison anymore. I was a free man breathing clean air. I made my own decisions. I came and went as I pleased. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted. No one told me what to do anymore.
"I'm not going back," I whispered harshly before I could stop myself. The idea that I’d just risked my freedom made me physically ill. The fucker beneath me was going to be the reason I went back to that little cell with no light, no air. Panic began to stream through my blood. I looked up at Curtis and shook my head, hoping he’d get it, hoping he could do something. He could be my witness. Maybe they'd believe him.
"He came at me," I said to Curtis, my voice sounding shaky even to my own ears.
"It's Brooks," Curtis replied. "It's Brooks."
If you’d told me I was sitting on God himself, I wouldn't have been more shocked. I jerked my head to look down at the man beneath me. "Brooks?" I said in disbelief. The man I’d been trying to choke into unconsciousness was Brooks Cunningham?
What the fuck?
Brooks had managed to catch his breath and was lying perfectly still beneath me, one hand still resting on his throat. I realized then that I was continuing to hold him down. And my body decided it was just as good a moment as any to notice that I was straddling Brooks and that my lower half was basically brushing his.
Unfortunately, my body also decided things weren’t already fucked up enough because it started to react to the intimate contact.
I pushed myself off Brooks and climbed to my feet. I took several steps back as Curtis helped his nephew to stand. I stood stiffly, on edge, waiting for him to attack again. I kept my hands loose and steadied my breath so I’d be ready if he decided to come after me for round two. I steeled myself as I watched Curtis whisper something to Brooks, presumably to ask him if he was okay, because a moment later he tugged Brooks's hand from his throat so he could inspect the damage I'd done. I was horrified to see dark bruises on each side of Brooks's neck.
"I'm fine," Brooks murmured as he gently pushed his uncle's hands away. "Call the sheriff," Brooks demanded as his eyes shifted to me. The brittle anger I saw there wasn't a surprise. Even if he hadn't ended up on the ground beneath me with my hands at his throat, he still would've looked at me that way. It was the same way he’d looked at me ten years ago. It shouldn't have stung, but it did. I kept quiet because I wasn't about to apologize to this man for anything. His family was the reason I'd ended up in that fucking prison cell in the first place.
Curtis began speaking quietly to Brooks, this time keeping his voice too low for me to hear. So I used the opportunity to study the man before me so I could try to reconcile the fact that he was the same boy who'd once followed me around his father's ranch like I'd been his own personal superhero. He was much taller now, of course, but the surprising fact was how much he'd filled out. He'd been scrawny, even the last time I'd seen him at the age of fifteen. He'd definitely grown into his body but from the strength I'd felt as I’d held him down, as well as the force of the punch he’d thrown, he'd likely become a regular at working out. When he'd been a kid, it hadn’t mattered what he ate, he'd never seemed to put on any weight. I hadn't minded, of course, because I’d thought he'd been perfect the way he was. But the Brooks standing before me wasn't bad at all, at least not to look at. If I hadn't hated him, I definitely would've been trying to figure out a way to fuck him.
I still couldn't hear what Curtis was saying to Brooks, but whatever it was, it had Brooks seething, then frowning. After several long seconds where the men seemed to be staring each other down, Brooks finally growled, "Fine." He shifted his eyes to me once again and muttered, "What is he doing here?"
It pissed me off that the men were talking about me like I wasn't even there, so I calmly said, "I work here, Silver Spoon."
The nickname I'd given Brooks the first time we'd met hit its mark. Brooks actually took a step toward me, which surprised me, because the Brooks I'd known never would have done that. In fact, when he’d started following me around a few days after I’d started helping my dad out on the ranch that Brooks’s father had owned, I’d called Brooks that very nickname and told him to go find someone else to bother. His sky-blue eyes had filled with tears and he'd quickly turned around and run off toward the trees behind the family's large house. I’d felt so bad that I'd ended up following him. I'd found him sitting with his back against a tree and a notebook open on his lap. He’d still been sobbing, but he'd also been writing in the notebook. I hadn't known how to apologize to him because apologies just weren't something that had run real deep in the Price family. Brooks hadn't paid me any attention when I'd sat down next to him. He'd been fifteen years old; I’d been sixteen. Though, admittedly, he'd looked more like he was twelve.