me with his golden eyes, his expression hard and completely unwelcoming. “Trying to scare her won’t do any good. She grew up nipping at the heels of a madman, so your threats are just child’s play to her. She knows what she’s doing and that she’s not wanted here. It doesn’t matter. She pushed and pushed until she got her way. I wonder who you learned that from, Ollie.”
I wanted to apologize. I wanted to tell him if there was any other way to break free, I would’ve done it. I wanted to promise to stay out of his way and out of his life as long as he let me make amends, but the words wouldn’t come. Those weren’t promises I could keep at this point in my life.
Vernon clearly wanted to ask about the madman comment, but paused when Huck suddenly moved.
All thought flew out the window, and words that were already difficult became impossible when he pushed away from the door, muscle and ink shifting enticingly as he grabbed his shirt by the collar and pulled it off over his head.
He had tattoos on each side of his ribcage: one was low on his cut, corded abdomen that disappeared into the waistband of his shorts. He had twin silver hoops decorating his nipples. He didn’t look like any lawyer I’d ever seen, prospective or not.
Nope.
This definitely was not the cute, chubby kid who played in the dirt and snuck forbidden sweets with me.
Huck was a man.
A beautiful, but clearly dangerous, man.
The look in his eyes told me that he knew exactly what I was thinking. I pulled my gaze away from him and lifted a hand to tug nervously on my lower lip. In my lifetime, I’d felt a lot of ways about Huck Snyder. However, the slippery, slithering heat that worked through my blood after seeing him half-naked was entirely new. Our relationship was already ridiculously complicated and tangled with the ghosts from before. The last thing it needed was another layer to define and navigate.
“Come on, kid. Let her get settled in and leave her alone. As long as she keeps to herself, we should all be fine. Like the old man keeps telling me, it’s only for a year. We’ve survived worse.” There was a warning in Huck’s tone and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I felt the weight of his stare, but I refused to look in his direction while he was dressed—or rather, undressed—the way he was. It was too much to process.
Vernon made a distressed noise and went to move past me.
Before I could think better of it, I reached out a hand and let my fingers skim his forearm. He paused and looked at me with curious eyes.
“Thank you.” I let the hand near my face drop and tried to force a smile. “Thanks for keeping an eye on my stuff while it was stashed here, and thank you for helping me move it all up the stairs.” He didn’t have to offer the slightest hint of kindness, but he had.
He was a good kid, and I was glad to know that Huck had seen something worth saving in him. It gave me a slight sliver of hope that Huck might eventually see that same thing in me.
Vernon tilted his head like a puppy and gave me a genuine grin. “No problem. I’m the only one around here willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, so don’t make me look dumb.” Did he ever look dumb? He was a genius, after all. “I have a couple of extra blankets stashed somewhere. I’ll dig them up, and you can use them until you get your room setup.”
He waved me off when I was going to protest, and used the back of his hand to smack Huck’s sharply defined abs when he walked by his friend. He haughtily told him, “A year can go by in the blink of an eye or feel like it’s going to last forever depending on the circumstances. Let’s all keep that in mind since we’re stuck with each other.” Vernon wrinkled his nose as Huck turned to follow him out of my room. “You stink. Go take a shower. Also, how did you make it up those noisy stairs without making a sound?”
Huck’s answer was lost as Vernon pulled the door closed behind them and they left me alone with my whirling thoughts.