Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,99

my little brother, I was reminded that seldom was anything perfect.

“What’s he doing?” Dahlia asked, eying the trim blond man over her sunglasses.

“Still giving Marisol a hard time,” Little Bird said with a sigh.

“Aw, yeah, he’s a stickler for the rules,” Dahlia said with a wicked smile of her ruby red lips.

She was dressed totally retro in a black fifties style two-piece swimsuit, her skin shining softly with a sheen of sunscreen making her tattoos almost iridescent in the light of the sun. She eyed Tic-Tac sharply and cocked her head.

“I suppose I owe you one,” she said with a sigh, and I turned my head to look back at her. She rolled her eyes at me, but not unkindly.

“Girl, if you’re going to be Maverick’s queen of this MC, you need to learn how to not take any shit off these guys. For example,” she craned her neck slightly and called out, “Hey, Tic-Tac!”

“What?” he called back without looking and she turned to me with this look like, well?

I sighed, hating confrontation and called out, “I need to talk to you.”

“In a minute.”

“How about now?” I asked tersely.

He turned from the little impromptu soccer match and demanded, “What’s your problem?”

“You!” I cried back. “You’re my fucking problem. You and your goddamn attitude. Fucking get over yourself! I made a mistake, not sure why the fuck you can’t let it the fuck go!”

All activity ceased and the guys all turned.

“I’m not going away,” I grated. “So, you better get used to it.”

“Bravo,” Dahlia said under her breath with a smile. Tic-Tac opened his mouth and Dahlia stepped up, so to speak, and said, “Don’t even try it!”

Tic-Tac shut his mouth, turned around and my little brother laughed at him and kicked him the ball. Maverick was grinning from his place on the sand, his sunglasses over his eyes making the emotion in them unreadable but judging by the fact he didn’t get in my shit, I had to guess he was some kind of impressed or proud.

I leaned back in my beach chair with a huff in my black bikini and Dahlia handed me a drink.

“To never being a doormat, ladies.”

“Here’s to being a badass,” Little Bird said and held out her plastic Solo cup and we clinked plastic.

“That felt really good,” I confessed.

“Had to feel better when you put your grandma in her place,” Dahlia said dryly. I nodded.

In some ways it had, in other ways it’d been utterly terrifying.

I had a lot to think about on the beach as the afternoon wound down. We were staying in this odd little hotel made up entirely of vintage travel trailers, this time. Several of the guys manned this huge grill when we got back to it and the liquor and beer was flowing. Mateo had his own trailer near ours thanks to Maverick, and as soon as I got him fed and checked his insulin pump, I got him put to bed.

“Marisol?” he said right before I went to leave the trailer.

“Yeah, buddy?” I asked.

“Am I ever gonna see Abuela again?” he asked.

I went back to his bed and sat down beside him.

“I honestly don’t know,” I told him. “Does that make you sad? I mean, do you miss her?”

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I like Maverick and the rest of the guys. Their nicer to you than our abuela ever was. I don’t understand why she hated you so much, it made me sad.”

“It’s all grown up stuff, Mateo. You don’t need to know why, you just need to know she loved you very much, at the very least and it’s okay to miss her.”

“I missed you too, when you were gone,” he said. “A lot more than I miss her.”

I smiled and kissed the top of his head.

“You don’t have to say things like that to spare my feelings, little bro.”

“I know, it’s true though.”

I sighed.

“You good?” I asked.

He nodded happily.

“I love you,” he said and I smiled.

“I love you, too.”

I got up and went to the door, halfway out of it he called out to me, “I love you!”

“I love you, too, Mateo. Now, try to get some sleep. We have a long ride back tomorrow then we got to get you ready for school.”

He huffed out a sigh, patently unhappy that I was sticking to my bedtime guns and said, “I know.”

I shut the door tightly to his little Airstream and went and found Maverick by the firepit.

“Hey, baby.” He pulled me down into his