He's Coming in Hot (Salacious Summer Singe #6) - J. D. Light Page 0,9

who saw me walking one day and offered to give me a ride." He shrugged. "From then on, I would walk to her house in the morning and she would take me on into town."

I watched his handsome face the whole time he talked, each expression causing his glasses to fall further and further down his face. When I just continued to stare at him after he finished, he cringed and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

"And this is why I don't have many friends. You did not need to hear about that."

I blinked for a moment before reaching out and pushing his glasses back up his nose. "Why? Because sometimes the people who gave you life, suck?" I chuckled, pointing at myself. "Did you forget who my family is? Every one of my brothers––with the exception of Cole––have similar stories. I do too."

His mouth opened slightly, and he nodded, licking his lips. "Yeah. I guess that's true."

"I'll tell you mine sometime, but not right now. It's a little dark, and I don't want to bring things down. I just want to enjoy your company."

Right then was not the time to talk about a drugged-out mom who was killed by a john in the house we were living in at the time and left for me to find when I got home from school.

"Let's talk about this picture Maggie once showed me of a young man lying in the middle of a pile of puppies getting mauled."

He coughed out a laugh, his face immediately brightening. "That was the day Maggie got Banjo." He shook his head. "Seventeen is entirely too old to be lying in the floor, giggling while wiggly puppies chewed on his hair and ears. One actually bit my armpit."

"Uh, I'm going to argue with you there. You are never too old to lie in a puddle of puppies."

Chapter Three

September

It was chocolate milk and a declaration of friendship. It was not a ring and a marriage proposal or even a suggestion that he might want more than someone to hang out with at work and a friendly neighbor, so I didn't know why I was getting all worked up about it. Day dreaming was not only pointless, it was absolutely childish, and I didn't have time for it. I had a class to prepare for.

The milk hadn't even been particularly good chocolate milk, since the stuff I used to drink in high school had actually just been the stuff my aunt bought for me when she'd done the required questioning of likes and dislikes when I'd first moved in, and I'd said chocolate milk was my favorite thing to drink. I hadn't specified what kind, and I'd definitely not had the heart to tell her after that the stuff she'd bought was kinda bland, so she'd kept buying it and I'd kept drinking it.

The woman had been one of the sweetest beings in the world and living with her for that year had been the best year of my life. I was always careful not to do anything that might make her want to send me on my way. Not that she would have. I knew that now, but at the time, I'd lived with so many family members, I was sure she was going to be just like the rest.

In a way, I guess she had been, though my being taken away hadn't been her choice, and she'd come and visited me every chance she'd gotten. When she'd gotten really sick in the end, she'd showed up at my house to say goodbye. I didn't know how she'd made it all that way by bus, but I hadn't let her leave when she'd tried, and I'd stayed by her side every chance I'd gotten until her last breath. I missed her so damn much, and sometimes living in the house she'd left me was almost too much to handle. Every inch of the place reminded me of her, and though it was hard sometimes to know that I didn't have her anymore, I wasn't ready to take all the memories away.

The chocolate milk Lawton had bought really had tasted like the stuff Maggie used to buy, and somehow that made it the best fucking chocolate milk in the world.

He'd admitted that he looked for the other brand all the time out of habit, and when he saw it, he thought of me. After all these years, the man not only remembered me, which seemed like a miracle