Above and Beyond (Twist of Fate 4)

Easy.

As I remembered the end of our lesson and the snowball fight that had broken out between us, my breaths began to come easier. I was leaning back against the seat of the truck but was too tired to move beyond turning my head just enough to see if the object of my memories was still where he'd been when the unexpected episode had begun. I had a habit of losing time when the panic attacks occurred. I knew that was what they were, but I wasn't particularly interested in giving them much thought beyond that. Words like trauma, survivor’s guilt and PTSD had been thrown my way countless times by all sorts of medical professionals, but I cut those conversations off at the knees before they could really get going.

Lucky was still sitting on a bench outside the campus’s student center. I let my eyes drink him in for a moment and then remembered why I wanted to murder my brother.

The kid before me was no longer that. At twenty, the only way to describe him was absolutely stunning. His baby face had morphed into gorgeous features that included high cheekbones and what looked like the most beautiful set of lips on anyone, man or woman, that I'd ever seen. Granted, I was too far away to see things like his eyes, but I'd memorized those a long time ago. Chocolate brown with flecks of gold and green in them. And long, thick lashes that drew you in and forced you to ponder everything the mirrors to his soul were saying.

The clothes he was wearing were loose-fitting, so I couldn't really make out if he'd grown into his body more in the last couple of years. My dick didn't really seem to care. Nor did it seem to care that the young man before me was practically related to me. Hell, he called my brother Uncle Jake. Fortunately, he'd never called me that, but maybe it would've helped if he had.

I shook my head as my cock thickened in my pants. Yeah, no way being called Uncle Zach would have changed anything except to make me feel like even more of a letch the few times I’d allowed myself to fantasize about the teen once he’d become legal.

I silently cursed my brother again as I watched Lucky interact with his friends. He laughed freely with the guys and girls surrounding him and I felt this odd sense of rightness go through me. The last time I'd seen him had been that fateful Christmas Eve after he’d turned eighteen. The memory I’d been left with had been his clear humiliation along with the tears that had slipped down his cheeks as he'd tried to calmly turn and walk away from me after I’d turned down his inexperienced advances. Lucky had let out this god-awful sob right before he’d reached the hallway that led to the back of the hotel his fathers owned, and I’d sworn I’d seen him take off running across the backyard toward his family’s house behind the hotel a few moments later.

While I was glad to see him so light and free among his friends today, it didn't lessen the memory of the things I'd said to him, of the things he'd said to me two years ago.

Since Lucky was clearly fine and I could honestly report that back to my brother, I reached for the keys in the ignition with the intent of starting my truck and heading to my hotel. I was just about to turn over the ignition when I glanced one last time in Lucky’s direction, hoping to absorb just a little bit more of his happiness so I could tuck it away in my mind in case I'd ever need it in the future. My fingers stilled as my eyes didn’t fall on a smiling Lucky. In fact, he was no longer sitting on the bench at all.

I hated that my breath caught in my throat a little as I quickly searched him out. My relief at finding him standing by a tree a few hundred feet from his friends was short-lived though.

Because he was no longer smiling… and he wasn't alone.

I didn't recognize the guy who was with him as one of the friends he’d just been chatting with. He looked to be about the same age as Lucky, but he had a much heavier build and stood a good four or five inches taller. I had no way of hearing what the pair were talking about, but it didn't really matter because, as always, Lucky's expression spoke volumes. He was clearly uncomfortable and had trouble maintaining eye contact with the guy looming over him. The only thing that kept me in my truck was the fact that there were other students in the vicinity. But none of them seemed to notice the way Lucky shrank back against the tree behind him. I supposed that to most people, it looked like nothing more than two friends having a conversation, but Lucky's body language said it all—he wanted to be anywhere but there. And while the guy with him wasn't doing anything outwardly obvious to stake his claim on Lucky, my instincts were telling me that the way he kept leaning in and appearing to keep his voice low at the same time that he crowded Lucky, staking his claim was exactly what he was doing.