Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,30

racier things than I was doing as a seventeen-year-old.

“Well, I have already seen your underwear, and bra might I add, so I think we’re a little more advanced than teenagers.”

“I don’t know what you were doing as a teenager, but nowadays, I’m pretty sure second base is akin to being prude. Get with it, old man.”

Keaton squeezes my hip, tickling me until I squirm away. “I might be thirty, but my old ass just climbed all the way up here and I didn’t even break a sweat. Plus, I was a total prude back then. The typical nerdy, advanced math kind of teenager.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I roll my eyes. “Look at you. You’ve got popular jock written all over you, even if you did like math.”

“I was better at science.” He shrugs with a teasing smirk. “But I did play baseball.”

My finger stabs gently at his firm chest. “See? I knew it.”

“What were you like in high school?” He takes another sip out of the bottle.

How do you tell the man you have a huge crush on that you were the loner in high school? The party girl who was more likely to be Ally Sheedy than Molly Ringwald.

“I had purple hair in high school. Cut class a lot to weave dream catchers and smoke. You think I’m a hippie now, you should have seen me back then. Lord, I thought I was so cool.”

Even I have to laugh at the moronic way I used to act.

“Purple hair, huh? I like the red better.” Keaton leans back in, resuming our kiss.

He’s pressed against me, so I feel it when his phone vibrates.

“Ah, hold on one second, I’m sorry.” He smiles apologetically and digs his phone out. “Shit …”

Keaton looks down at his phone and runs a shaky hand through his hair. With his face lit up by the screen, I watch as anger slowly replaces the lust I just put there.

I wonder what he just read, and if it’s something he is going to try to hide.

“It’s my brother, the youngest one, Fletcher. He’s … he has some problems. My brother Bowen, the one you met, needs my help. I’m so sorry, but I have to go.”

My heart believes him and stops itself in its tracks from jumping to too many conclusions. “Do you want me to come with you?”

He doesn’t even look at me as he makes his way over to the ladder. “No, sorry. This family stuff … it’s complicated. I’ll drop you at home, it’s on my way.”

Welp, guess that’s the end of our night. Responsibility and adulthood call, and Keaton is the first to jump to attention.

And even though I’m not going to be able to sleep thinking of the kissing, the burn of his refusal to let me into his life stings more than I thought it would.

18

Keaton

A flash of pain radiates down my spine, but I’m semi-conscious and want to turn it off.

Sleep. I need more sleep.

Except, a second later, more pain news at my back, and I’m forced to open my eyes and sit up. I look around to find that I passed out on Bowen’s couch, so it’s no wonder my back feels like it’s got about three hundred Charlie horses cramping it up. Thirty-year-old bodies cannot sleep on unsupported sectionals or climb water tower ladders without consequences the next day.

Christ, last night was a clusterfuck. After making out with Presley on the town water tower, which was definitely the highlight of the night, I’d rushed off to help Bowen drag Fletcher out of a shady-ass house on the outskirts of town. The guys he’d been with … they were dangerous. How my youngest brother even got involved with them, I have no idea. But it had taken brute force and a ton of paper towels to Bowen’s truck after Fletcher passed out on his floor and we’d had to scrub the puke from the floor mats of the cab.

“What time is it?” When I talk, it feels like my voice is treading over broken glass.

“Six a.m.,” Bowen says as he pours himself a mug of steaming hot coffee.

“Can I get a cup of that? Or an IV, preferably.” I rub the sleep dirt out of my eyes and shake my head as if that will solve the conundrum of my family.

Bowen walks across his open-concept first floor, past his kitchen island and into the living room I slept in. Where my house looks like it’s just missing the