Her face softens, and she blows out a breath. “I wasn’t judging you, Pete. Just trying to get to get to know you.”
I nod, unable to look her in the eye. “Have you ever been in love?” she asks. She’s smiling at me, though, and this question seems more benign than the last.
Not until now. But I don’t say that, because if I do, I’ll scare her with the depth of my feelings. “Maybe,” I hedge.
“What does that mean?” she asks. “Maybe?” She narrows her eyes.
“I don’t know,” I say. I feel things for her that I have never felt for anyone. Is it love? I just don’t know. It’s too new to tell. I need some time to explore it before I have to explain it. “What about you?” I ask. “Have you ever been in love?”
She shakes her head. “No.” She grins.
“What?” I ask. I scrub at my nose. “Do I have a booger?”
She laughs. “No,” and she brushes my hand down. “I have never been in love.” Her green eyes dart around for a second and then land on me. “Would you know love if you found it?” she asks.
I tilt my head from side to side as if I’m weighing the heaviness of her words. “I think I would.”
She smiles. “Can I keep asking questions or am I getting on your nerves?” she asks.
“Ask me anything.” Honestly, I’ve been locked up for a really long time. Being in jail is lonely, and I need a connection. I want that connection with her. And only her. “But I get to ask you questions, too.”
“That’s fair,” she says. She’s thinking hard about her next question. “Our first kiss,” she whispers. “It was epic.”
“Yeah, it was,” I agree.
“Is it always that epic? With every girl you have been with?”
I scratch the back of my head. “Most girls don’t have an orgasm when I kiss them.” I laugh. “Is that what you want to know?”
She shakes her head. “No. I mean…” Her face colors. “I know it wasn’t epic for you, but it was pretty damn epic for me.”
I lean close and press my lips to hers because I just have to. “I know. I almost came in my pants just watching you.” I kiss her again, and she hums against my mouth. It’s a happy sound. But then she covers her face when I look her in the eye.
“You talk about it like it’s nothing.” She’s embarrassed.
I tip her chin up. “What I’ve done in the past with other girls was nothing. What we did tonight? That was far from nothing.” I tweak her nose because I’m about to rock my own world, and I want to ease the blow if she rejects me. “I have real feelings for you, Reagan,” I say quietly. “I can’t explain them. And I don’t want to. But don’t try to push what happened between us tonight off as common. Because it wasn’t. It was big. And I want to keep doing it. I want to learn all about you and have you learn all about me. I want you to meet my family. I want to go on a date with you.” I look around. “This place is nice, but…seriously?”
She laughs. “You want me to meet your family?” she asks.
“If you think you can stand it. There are five of us. All men.”
“I’m not afraid of men in general,” she explains.
“Just the ones that touch you.” I run my crooked finger along her cheekbone, and she turns into my hand to kiss my palm.
“Your brothers look like you,” she says.
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“I saw them when you got out of prison,” she says quietly.
“You were there?”
She nods. “My dad made me sit in the truck while he talked to you about camp.” She draws her lower lip between her teeth and bites down like she’s anxious about my response. “Sorry. I should have told you sooner.” She groans. “I kind of asked for you to be here. So I could see you.”
“I’m glad you did.” Never been happier about anything.
“Your brothers all have tattoos, too,” she says. She looks at the tattoo on my arm that’s for my mom. She picks up my hand and traces the tats that go up my forearm to my sleeve. “I want to look at all of them so I can find out what makes you tick.” She draws a circle around the American flag.
“That one’s for my buddy who died in Afghanistan.”
Her silky fingertips slide up the dragon on my inner arm. “And this one?” she asks softly.
“That one was a little too much courage one night,” I say with a laugh.
Her hand slips beneath the edge of my sleeve. “I guess I can’t go much farther,” she says.
I reach behind my neck and pull the shirt over my head the way guys do. She grins and gets an evil glint in her eye. But I move, lean back against the stall door, and pull her across my lap. “If you get to explore me, I get to explore you,” I warn. I tickle my fingers up the side of her leg.
But then her lips press against the words that line my collarbone. She suckles my skin gently. I groan quietly and move my hand to her inner thigh. Her skin is soft and silky, and I know I’m going to have to call a halt to this soon. I can only take so much in one night. She tilts her head to read the words she just tongued across my chest. “All for one, one for all,” she reads quietly. “That one is about your brothers?”
I nod. “I live for them. When I thought Matt was dying, I wanted to die with him.”
“Your brother was dying?” she asks. Her hands stop exploring, and she looks into my face.
“Matt had cancer. It was really expensive, and Logan had to come home from college. We were broke, and we were all afraid he was going to die.” I look into her face. “Do you want to hear about this?” I ask.
She nods and settles in my arms. “I want to hear everything.”
“Sam and I took side jobs with this guy in our neighborhood to make some extra money. It wasn’t really illegal.” I stop and growl. I can’t lie to her. “We knew it was illegal, but we needed money for Matt. That’s how I got arrested.” I’m not proud of it, but I can’t undo my past. That would be like putting toothpaste back in the tube.
“Desperation can make a person do things they wouldn’t normally do,” she says softly. “How’s Matt now?”
I smile. “He’s in remission.”
“Oh, good,” she breathes. “Tell me about the others.”
“Paul’s the oldest. He has a daughter named Hayley, and she lives with us half the time. And Logan is the one I told you about who goes to NYU.”
She counts on her fingers. “There’s one more, right?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Where’s he?”
“He’s away at college on a football scholarship.” He’s living the dream. My dream. Sam just wants to bake cakes. But Paul says we all have to finish college, so he went.
“Are you close?” she asks.
“Not as close as we used to be.”
“Can you remedy that?”
Can I? “I’m going to try.” And I will. As soon as I go home.
She tucks herself closer under my arm and settles there. After a few minutes, her breaths even out and she gets soft in my arms. I look down my nose at her. She’s asleep in my arms, and I don’t ever want to put her down. So, I pull the blanket over the both of us and hold her close to me, as close as I can get her.
Reagan
I wake up to a tinny, clanking sound. I sit up, sticky where I slept against Pete’s shoulder. We must have sweated together, our skin pressed close. And I might have drooled on him a little bit, too. Yuck. I wipe the side of my mouth and sit up. Pete stirs under me and then freezes. He lifts his head and looks around. He groans and falls back against the blanket. “Shit, I’m fucked,” he grunts.
“You better not have been,” my dad calls out. He clanks the lid of the feed bucket as he scoops out sweet feed for the horses. Link helps him, and Dad’s making a lot more noise than Link is.
I close my eyes. Dad’s mad. I just slept in the barn with Pete. And he knows it. “Oh shit,” I say.
“Oh shit,” Link parrots.
Pete closes his eyes as he grins. “You better stop while you’re ahead,” he whispers with a laugh.
“Good morning, Pete,” Dad says, faking joviality as he walks by us carrying buckets. I start to sit up, but as I pull the blanket from Pete, I realize he still doesn’t have a shirt on. He took it off last night so I could explore his ink. This looks really bad.
“Where’s your shirt?” I whisper. I look around in the lump of blankets and don’t see it.
“Oh shit,” Link says again. He pops his head up beside mine and holds up Pete’s blue T-shirt.
“Oh, blue shirt,” Pete says.
“Oh, blue shirt,” Link parrots.
Pete takes it and pulls it over his head. He reaches out to ruffle Link’s hair, but Link steps to the side. “At least he’s not saying shit anymore,” Pete says.
“Shit,” Link says.
I groan and run a hand through my hair.
“Lincoln!” Dad barks. “Bring me that bucket.”
“Bring me the bucket,” Link says. He scampers off to get Dad’s bucket.
“Good morning,” Pete says quietly. He turns to drop his feet to the floor and stands up, stretching tall. He shows a small strip of his abs, and I want to lean forward and lick him. God, where did that come from?
“Morning,” I mutter. I lick my lips.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Pete whispers.
“Like what?” I whisper back. But a grin tugs at the corners of my lips. I can’t help it.
“Like you want lick me like a lollipop,” he says. He adjusts the front of his pants, and I can’t help but notice the bulge there. “Stop looking at it,” he hisses.
I look for my dad, but he’s gone outside the barn. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at!” I complain. Pete takes my hand and presses my fingertips against the bulge of his erection. He gasps in a breath as my fingertips explore the ridges of him. “Reagan,” he groans. He turns his hip and puts up a knee to block me. “Would you stop it? I’d like to walk out of here sometime today.”
“Licking it like it’s a lollipop?” I ask, unable to get the idea out of my head. “You can do that?”
He grins and scratches the back of his head. “Well, I can’t. But you could.” His voice is gravely and kind of nasally since he just woke up. “Never mind,” he says. He pulls me to my feet and presses a quick kiss to my lips.
“Uh,” I say, brushing him away. “Morning breath.”
“I don’t care,” he says, leaning to kiss me quickly. I give him my cheek. “Give it to me,” he says. I pucker my lips and touch his quickly, careful not to breathe on him. “That’s better,” he croons. “Should I go talk to your dad?” he asks.
It’s really sweet that he would even think of that. “I doubt that’s a good idea.”
I hear a horse blow, and I remember the whole reason why we slept in the barn in the first place. I step onto a bale of hay and look down at Tequila. She’s on her feet and apparently, I was wrong. False alarm on the foaling.
Pete drops an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close to him. Dad bursts back into the barn with the slam of a door. I jump. Pete doesn’t let me go.
“Pete, don’t you have somewhere to be?” Dad asks. “Like in your own cabin in your own bed?”
Pete nods his head. “Yes, sir,” he says. He turns to me. “I’ll see you later?”
I nod. My belly does a little flippy-floppy thing, and he touches his lips to mine.
“See you later, Mr. Caster,” he calls.
“Not if I see you first,” Dad calls back.
Dad slams around the barn for a few more minutes while I feed Tequila a carrot. I totally missed the birth. I’m so relieved that things went well.
“Have a nice night?” Dad barks. He doesn’t look up from whatever he’s doing.
I smile. My belly drops down toward my toes at the thought of it. “I did, actually.”
“Reagan,” Dad breathes.
“Yes, Dad?” I say sweetly. He’s mad, but I can’t make him un-mad. And I probably deserve it for spending the whole night in the barn with Pete.
“Don’t make me have to kill that boy,” Dad warns.
“Yes, sir,” I say, dipping my head so he won’t see my smile. “You should know that we didn’t do anything wrong, though. He was a perfect gentleman. He just…” I square my shoulders. “He just held me.”
Dad draws in a quick breath. I don’t let anyone touch me, and Dad knows it. So in this situation, I might as well have said, “he just f**ked me all night long.” The level of intimacy is about the same in my dad’s mind. I’m sure of it. “All right,” he mutters. He throws hay to the horses, one flake at a time.
“Dad,” I call out. He stops and looks up at me. “Is it okay that I might be falling in love with him?”
Dad’s eyes open wide, and he blows out a breath. “Reagan,” he says quietly. “You should go and talk to your mother about this.”
“Okay…” I say.
“If you want to talk about the best way to knee him in the nuts,” he says, pointing to his chest, “then I’m your guy. But if you want to talk about feelings and emotions and birth control and stuff, go talk to your mother.”