Vicious Rebel (82 Street Vandals #2) - Heather Long Page 0,53

back, landing a pair of blows before he crashed into the sofa, and then they were both knocking it over and landing on the far side.

Sidestepping the pair, Rome reached for me, and I gaped at him. A part of my brain was trying to process what the hell happened, and the rest of me couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to intercede.

Liam was a jerk, but he was his brother, right?

And Jasper?

I sighed. Jasper was Jasper.

The two were trading punches. Jasper took more than a couple in the gut, but then Liam swore as he narrowly missed Jasper’s knee slamming into his crotch.

“This is ridiculous.” I started forward, but Rome scooped me up by the waist and curled me to him as he walked us toward the kitchen.

“We can’t let them just beat each other up.”

“We can,” he said, disagreeing with me, and then pressed a kiss to my nose. “It’s good for them. Lets them get out all their feelings.”

Once in the kitchen, he set me on the counter. It was the exact same position I’d been in earlier that evening. The night before? What day was it? But the same spot he’d kissed me for the first time. I wasn’t the only one thinking about it, because his gaze dipped to my lips and his eyes warmed.

With his thumb, he traced my bottom lip. “Coffee? Or do you want to just go back to my room?”

My whole body clenched at the offer. We’d fallen asleep on the sofa in between trading long, slow lazy kisses and little stories about things that didn’t matter and were still safe to talk about. A crash from the other room burst the bubble around us, and I glanced toward the living room. Liam had Jasper pinned to the wall. But it didn’t last long. Both of them were bleeding too.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t stop this?” Another blow had me wincing.

“It’s how they process their feelings,” Rome told me, resting his forehead to the side of my head and bracing his hands on either side of me on the counter.

“With their fists?”

“It works for them.” Rome shrugged. “I paint. You dance. We all have our process.”

Flicking my gaze back to Rome, I sighed. “You know me almost too well.”

“I’ve watched you for a long time.”

I almost laughed. “’Cause that’s not creepy at all.” In so many ways, it wasn’t funny, but Rome’s sudden smile pulled my laughter free. There was just a hint of red to his cheeks too, and it was the sweetest thing.

“Are you two for fucking real right now?” The grunting, panting explosion of sound came from Jasper, and I pulled my gaze from Rome’s rather reluctantly to find Liam and Jasper both leaning, bloody, shirts torn, faces puffy in a promise to bruise. Both were also glaring at me and Rome.

“Yes,” Rome said. “We were sleeping, and no one invited you two.”

“It’s my fucking place,” Liam snarled.

“And you brought my damn girl here,” Jasper finished.

I blinked at Jasper’s description, and I wasn’t alone in that. Rome cut Jasper a look that held not one ounce of friendliness. “She’s not a possession.”

“You know what I meant,” Jasper said with an aggrieved sigh. “Get your things, I’m taking you back.” The last was directed at me.

“What if I don’t want to go?” Because while I had chosen to go back to the Vandals, most of them didn’t know it. Jasper didn’t seem the type to keep it to himself if he had heard. I was also sick and tired of being talked about in the third person and ordered around.

“Then you don’t have to,” Rome and Liam answered almost in perfect sync. It was eerie and sweet. Their voices were so alike, and yet the cadence and the emphasis were different. I didn’t think I’d mistake one for the other. Not again.

Right now, with Liam’s cut eyebrow and busted lip, it would be extremely difficult to mistake him for Rome. Twisting around in front of me, Rome folded his arms and leaned back against the counter with one of my knees pressing against him on either side.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jasper said, sounding all at once as tired as I felt and as weary as Liam appeared. But the tightness of Liam’s stance and the way he shifted his weight said he was ready to tear back into Jasper, despite how bad they both looked. “I’m not the damn enemy. This is Bay Ridge Royals side of town.” The last