Swink (Landry Family 5)

Then things changed.

I don’t know when it happened, but it did. She became not just a girl I was fucking but someone I looked forward to seeing at the end of the day. I made sure there was sorbet, something I didn’t even know existed before her, in my freezer. It was her voice I wanted to hear before I laid down.

Cam makes me feel things I haven’t felt before. Give a fuck about things I didn’t know I could care about. Like the fact that she made it home at the end of the night or had enough cold medicine when she wasn’t feeling good.

When things got to this point, I don’t know. But when she asked me to meet her brother and I could see that it mattered to her . . . I felt like I mattered to her.

That’s why they say feelings are dangerous. They take a quick fuck and turn it into visions of something a year, two years, ten years later. The shit that’s on the television right now.

I click it off and down the rest of the lukewarm brew.

My eyes start to close when a knock at the door brings them open. Wincing as I get to my feet, I set the bottle down and get to the entry. Looking through the hole, my heart almost stops beating.

I can’t get it open fast enough.

Her face is streaked with mascara, her beautiful sky-blue eyes watery and puffy. It takes one look, not even a question, before she lunges forward and wraps her arms around my waist.

“What the hell happened to you?” I ask, pulling her inside and shutting the door. My heart thunders in my chest as I try to see her face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She nuzzles against me, her words muffled by my shirt.

Scooping her up, her legs hanging off one of my arms as my other cradles her back, I carry her to the sofa. As I sit, I place her on my lap. “Okay. What’s going on? Why are you crying?”

She takes a deep breath and it shakes as she comes down from the crying high. A quick, easy smile that touches her eyes settles some of my nerves. “I don’t want to talk about it, Dom.”

“I really don’t care if you want to talk about it,” I laugh. “We’re going to talk about it.” Gathering her hair and twisting it together, I place it over one shoulder. “Tell me. Did I do something? I mean, I probably did, but . . .”

“It wasn’t you.”

My features fall. This changes things. “Okay. Who did?”

“Graham,” she whispers.

“Your brother? He made you cry?”

“Yes.”

I move in my seat, finding it impossible to get comfortable. She tries to climb off my lap, but I keep her in place. I need her here. With me. On me.

“I threw Graham out of my house,” she says quietly without looking at me.

“Why?”

Her shoulders rise and fall. “He just . . . he was being irrational.”

I watch her face. There’s a sorrow there that burns me to the core, and suddenly, I get it. “It was because of me.”

“Dom . . .” she pleads.

I’m right. “What did he say?”

“Nothing. Just that he’d talked to Ford and Lincoln and either put it together or someone told him, I don’t know, but he found out you’re Nolan’s nephew.”

“Of course he did,” I mutter, feeling my head begin to pound. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” She tries to cup my face with her hands, but I shake them away. “Dom, listen to me, it’s not your fault.”

“I know it isn’t my fault I’m related to Nolan. Clearly. But I’m sorry I put you in this position.”