Is that why he freaked out when his hands touched my stomach?
I’m too confused to get my thoughts together, especially when I’m still a little stoned. So I just put my hand in his, and he yanks me to my feet in one pull. I stumble, and he steadies me, then releases my hand and snags the beer cans, dumping the backwash over the side of the roof and crushing the two cans in his hands while I climb down the ladder. He follows, then strides off across the street without waiting for me.
twenty-seven
Maddox North
I can’t have her.
I keep reminding myself that, cursing that I let it get as far as it did. She shouldn’t matter. She’s just another hole. There are a hundred girls waiting by the phone, praying it will ring so they can race over and jump on my dick. She’s no different.
Except sheisdifferent.
She’s different because if I stick my dick in this one, it will ruin my family. And fuck if I’m going to let that happen, to let any chick come between me and my brother, to cause our mother any more grief than she’s already gone through.
Sure, it would fuck me up to see my brother lose it again, like he did that one time. Despite our differences, it’s my job to look out for him, as the “big brother,” just like it’s both of our jobs to look after Mom. If something tore us apart, a girl or some disagreement about how to run the crew, I could live with it. It would kill part of me, but I’d live.
What I can’t live with is knowing what it would do to Mom. She couldn’t live with it, with having her sons torn apart and her family broken. And I couldn’t do that to her, couldn’t be the cause of it. She’s suffered enough already—more than enough.
Nothing will tear us apart though. That didn’t, and this won’t. No girl is going to be the cause of that kind of grief in our family, no matter how soft her skin is, no matter how willing her body feels when it trembles against mine, no matter how ready she looks with her pouty, pink lips and her dewy, do-me eyes blinking up at me with their gold flecks and fluttery lashes. I’ll just jerk off in the shower like I have every fucking night since she moved in. I’ll picture it’s her hand around my cock, stroking my shaft, fisting the head as I cum. I’ll picture her touching me, but I won’t touch her.
“I… Guess I’ll take a shower,” she says uncertainly as we step through the back door, which Mom always leaves open for us when one of us is out, even though I’ve told her a million times it’s not safe.
“Fine,” I say, striding off down the hall. I throw myself on the couch and grab the remote, too pent up with sexual frustration to go to bed. I’m not going to jerk off with Lennox across the room anyway. Not when I’m thinking about the girl he wants as much as I do. I’m not that much of an animal. I’ll wait until she’s done, and I’ll fuck my hand in the shower like a civilized person.
I won’t listen for her breathy little cries, the ones I heard that first day she used the shower here, when she didn’t know I was home to hear her. I won’t think about her in there, thinking about me. I won’t think about her peeling her clothes off the way she did at the pool that day last summer, except this time, she won’t stop with a bathing suit on like a tease. This time, she’ll shed all her clothes, leaving her smooth, creamy skin bare. But I won’t think about that. I won’t think about the hot water sliding over her skin when it should be my hands. I won’t think about it making her pink silk nipples pucker when it should be my mouth. I won’t think about her fingers between her legs when it should be my cock.
Fuck.
I throw the remote down and grab my head in my hands and squeeze, like that will make it go away. Make her go away. End the fucking torture I’m in every fucking night that she sleeps across the hall andI. Can’t. Fucking. Have. Her.
I hear the soft pad of her footsteps in the hallway and pray she has the sense not to poke the tiger right now. She’s so fucking good at that, at provoking me until I think she’s doing it on purpose, that she wants me to bend her over and fuck the spark right out of her.
“Maddox?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. Her fingers touch my shoulder tentatively. “You good?”
That’s my question, and hearing her ask it does something fucked up to my head. She noticed. She remembers.
I wrench my hands through my hair and straighten. “Yeah,” I bite out. “I’m good.”
Instead of leaving the way she’s supposed to, she circles the arm of the couch and sits down next to me, pulling one leg up and folding it under her while the other dangles off the edge of the couch, not even reaching the floor. Her hair’s a wet tangle, and she’s wearing a tiny pair of pink pajama shorts with yellow flowers on them and a white cotton tank with pink spaghetti straps and one flower on the front. It’s not lacy like she’s trying to look sexy. It’s something a kid would wear.
I tell myself that, so I won’t look at the water trickling from her mess of towel-dried hair and slowly wetting the edge of the tank. It’s so girlie and unlike her usual, casual t-shirt and jeans style that I can’t help but stare, that’s all. How long until the water gets to her nipple, and I can see it through the wet fabric?
Fuck.
No. No. No.
I’m not doing this to my family. No girl is worth losing my brother, my blood.
“Need something?” I ask, swiping the remote and switching off the TV. The blinds are down, and living room is dark, but I can see her in the pale the light filtering in the kitchen window behind her.
“Maddox,” she says, reaching over and taking the remote from me. She sets it on the coffee table and straightens, squaring her shoulders. “Can we just talk for a minute?”
“We talked all fucking night,” I say, gesturing toward the kitchen. A rectangle of pink light falls on the linoleum floor from the east-facing window, where the sunrise is coloring the sky.
“Well, I just wanted to tell you one more thing,” she says, balling her hands into fists on her bare thighs. I know she’s digging her nails in. I’ve seen the marks on her palms. But I don’t stop her. “I—I’ve never done that before. Talked to someone until the sun came up. That means something.”
I let out a snort of breath. “It doesn’t mean shit, little girl. Trust me on that.”