“I got tired of him laughing at my ambitions, and he wouldn’t open up to me about certain things that made me uncomfortable.”
“I say that’s about as done as it gets.”
Just as we pulled up into the driveway of my home, my father took my hand. My father wasn’t one for physical gestures with other people, so when I felt the warmth of his calloused hand against mine, I whipped my gaze over to him. He was studying me closely, like I could always remember him doing to Mom, and in an instant, I knew what he was going to say.
“You deserve someone who believes in you, and that person isn’t Logan.”
“Landon.”
“Whatever,” he said.
I smiled and giggled before I leaned over and kissed his cheek. The two of us stepped out of the truck, my eyes sweeping over the vast view of the mountains from our porch. The Trents and my family were the only people settled on this mountain. I drew in a deep breath as I panned my gaze over to their house. I knew they were here. I could tell by all the pictures they had been sending me over the course of my plane ride.
But something inside me was disappointed they weren’t out here to truly welcome me home.
I had missed all of them when I moved to the city. We were very close growing up. Partially because we were neighbors, partially because of the death of my mother and the toll that took on all of us, and partially because we were thirty minutes outside of town and no one ever wanted to trek up the mountain to visit us. The heavenly peaks reached for the skies, displaying their light gray cascades and their dripping white snow havens, but these picturesque hills were no match for the beauty that was the Trent’s home.
If only because I knew who was already there.
In high school, I had a crush on all of them. Not one of them, and not some of them, but all of them. They were gorgeous, but I had to admit that Carol was right about that picture they sent me. Their muscles had bloomed, and their strength had grown. The beards on their faces accented their eyes and lips in ways I didn’t really know were possible. I missed their closeness and their unique personalities. Each one of them always had a way of making me smile and laugh in the best ways possible. It’s what made all of them so important to me.
It was the bond I realized I was missing with Landon.
“You coming?” my father asked.
I let out a sigh, watching the steam rise from my lips before dissipating into the cold, winter dusk that was settling over the mountains.
“Yeah. I’m coming.”
I knew my old bedroom was waiting for me to unpack my things, and as my eyes lingered on their house outside my window, I couldn’t help the tears that rose to my eyes as a thought crossed my mind.
I don’t want to go back.
CHAPTER TWO - OWEN
I’d been watching the windows for the last fucking hour. The moment I heard Mark’s battered fucking truck echoing down the crevices of the mountain, I’d settled onto the couch and silently waited for them to pull up.
All I could think about was Kyra coming home.
I’d had a crush on that fucking woman for years, ever since puberty did her body some good. She was petite in areas that were delicate, and filled out in areas that called to my fingertips, and there were nights where all I could do was have wet dreams of the things I wanted to do to her.
When I figured out she was getting married, I was depressed for days. I automatically didn’t like the guy. Not one fucking bit. He was tall and lanky. A typical city boy with no strength or smarts about him. His worth to a woman was dependent upon how much money he could make in an hour, which didn’t mean shit when it came to a woman like Kyra.
She didn’t care about money or gifts or expensive shit. What she needed was someone who gave a shit and supported her. Someone who could take care of things around the house when she broke them and kept apologizing. She needed a man who wasn’t afraid to slide his hand along her ass in the middle of a store just to make her feel beautiful, and she sure as hell needed someone who had no issues running his lips along every other crevice of her body when they weren’t in public.
I watched Mark pull up into the driveway, and the moment Kyra got out, my heart started to race.
“Guys! Tinkerbell’s home!”
I went running through the house, knocking on the doors as the guys slowly rolled out of bed. We all told ourselves we would take a nap so we could stay up and chat with Kyra
into the early morning hours. That was the thing she loved to do the most. The window of her bedroom faced our home, and it was easy to climb up onto the second-story wrap-around porch that led into her bedroom. As kids, all of us would use a ladder to get up there, throwing ourselves over the balcony before knocking on her door to wake her up. We’d all gather around and sit down, talking for hours until the morning sun started piercing through the trees.
We didn’t have to pull that shit now, but we still wanted to stay up and talk with her.
I made sure all of them were up before I strode across the lawn. I’d traversed these lawns on countless occasions, walking these same steps during our childhoods. Back and forth, we would all go between the two houses, always up to something and always getting into trouble. We called ourselves the Lost Boys, too wild to be tamed and too loud to be silenced. And Kyra had been our fairy princess.
Our gorgeous guide.