Sky had somehow managed to get through the angry scowling face that I initially used to avoid people trying to get close to me. With my brothers I was far more open, still quiet and happy to not be the center of attention, but I felt like I could at least be somewhat myself around them.
Sky, on the other hand, made me fucking laugh, and I found myself enjoying her company and listening to her talk about the things she was interested in and passionate about. She really was like a ball of positive energy, and after what she’d been through as a child, I admired her strength and resilience to not let that taint her and make her angry at the world.
She rounded the table and bumped me with her hip. “How was your day?” she asked happily.
“Pretty damn good actually,” I told her, before pointing across the table at Jake who was observing our interaction intently. “This is my brother, Jake.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Oh wow! I’m really sorry to hear about you getting hurt, but I’m glad you’re doing okay.”
He smirked. “Well, thanks… Sky, was it?”
“Sky or Skylar, either is fine,” she said with a nod before looking down at me. “I have to go help Jess get dinner started. I’ll catch up with you later?”
“I think I’ll go order takeout,” I murmured, but it didn’t go unnoticed, and soon there was a sharp pinch underneath my arm. I almost shot out of my fucking seat. “Holy shit, woman!” I cursed, my hand going to the spot and rubbing it furiously to try and ease the ache.
She was already backing away with a delighted smile, pointing at me sharply. “You will eat it, and you will like it, so help me God.”
The doors to the kitchen swallowed her, and my brother didn’t waste a single second now she was out of sight. “I’m sorry, did I miss the part when you got an old lady?”
Lifting my beer to my lips, I rolled my eyes. “Sky isn’t my old lady,” I muttered, cringing before I even managed to say the other words. “She’s a club girl.”
Three, two, one.
“You are fucking with me, right? You fucking like her, I can tell. But she’s a damn club girl!” I knew he was going to notice that things between Sky and I were a little extra than what she was like with the other boys. You know what, I didn’t give a shit. I figured Jake would give me shit, try to talk me into making shit official.
But I could actually see the fire blaze in his eyes, one that I really hadn’t seen alight too often.
“Any girl in the world and you pick the one who has had every single one of your friends’ dicks inside her,” he spat at me across the table in a mixture of disgust and shock.
Leo scowled at Jake. “Not every one of the boys have—”
“Have you?” Jake threw back, and a chill went up my spine because I knew that Leo at some point had been with Sky, but now that he had Hadley, it was as though the rest of that bullshit was wiped free. We didn’t speak about the girls’ pasts. Harmony, Chelsea, and Hadley at some point had slept with brothers, but not one of us would ever call them on it or make them feel like they didn’t deserve happiness because of what they’d done.
Yeah, Sky was still a club girl and did that get to me a little? Yeah, it did. But I didn’t think any fucking less of her because of it. It didn’t make me want to spend less time with her. In some ways I guess it made me want to spend more time with her, because I was getting to the point where I was wondering if it was worth pursuing something more, just to see where things could go. And the more time I took up, the more I hoped she might see things the same, and the less time there was for my brothers.
“Jake!” I growled with a serious warning in my tone, hoping he would shut his fucking mouth right now because Leo was staring at him with such intensity that a weaker man would have made a run for it.
“Hadley was a club girl, you think I shouldn’t be with her because she fucked my brothers?” Leo asked, his tone tight but I could tell he was trying not to just rip Jake a new one out of respect for me.
Jake’s back went a little straighter, but his voice softened slightly, the disgusted look on his face turning to one that resembled sadness. “Look, I’m not here to judge what they do. But I want to make sure the person that my brother is having some kind of feelings for, isn’t the type of girl who just likes to be the center of men’s attention and is gonna drag him along by his dick while she’s off having her fun elsewhere.”
Leo looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
We were both thinking the same thing.
This had nothing to do with Sky and everything to do with something going on inside him.
Jake held up his hands and forced a grin. “I’m sorry, okay? I’ll try to keep my opinions to myself next time,” he joked, searching for his crutches. “Now how ‘bout you show me to where I’m gonna be sleeping so I can lay down before dinner.”
I stood with him, helping him get his balance. “Come on princess, better get some beauty sleep ‘cause I think I can see a wrinkle on your forehead.”
He tried to hit me with one of his crutches, but I jumped out of the way. “You just wait, brother o’ mine.”
And like that, things were back to normal.
I missed him, more than I thought I did.
I just hoped he was telling the truth when he said he was going to keep his opinions to himself. Because if he says that shit around Sky, he’s really going to put me in a place where I don’t want to be.