Calmly, Carefully, Completely (The Reed Brothers 3)

She laughs. “You want me to meet your family?” she asks.

“If you think you can stand it. There are five of us. All men.”

“I’m not afraid of men in general,” she explains.

“Just the ones that touch you.” I run my crooked finger along her cheekbone, and she turns into my hand to kiss my palm.

“Your brothers look like you,” she says.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“I saw them when you got out of prison,” she says quietly.

“You were there?”

She nods. “My dad made me sit in the truck while he talked to you about camp.” She draws her lower lip between her teeth and bites down like she’s anxious about my response. “Sorry. I should have told you sooner.” She groans. “I kind of asked for you to be here. So I could see you.”

“I’m glad you did.” Never been happier about anything.

“Your brothers all have tattoos, too,” she says. She looks at the tattoo on my arm that’s for my mom. She picks up my hand and traces the tats that go up my forearm to my sleeve. “I want to look at all of them so I can find out what makes you tick.” She draws a circle around the American flag.

“That one’s for my buddy who died in Afghanistan.”

Her silky fingertips slide up the dragon on my inner arm. “And this one?” she asks softly.

“That one was a little too much courage one night,” I say with a laugh.

Her hand slips beneath the edge of my sleeve. “I guess I can’t go much farther,” she says.

I reach behind my neck and pull the shirt over my head the way guys do. She grins and gets an evil glint in her eye. But I move, lean back against the stall door, and pull her across my lap. “If you get to explore me, I get to explore you,” I warn. I tickle my fingers up the side of her leg.

But then her lips press against the words that line my collarbone. She suckles my skin gently. I groan quietly and move my hand to her inner thigh. Her skin is soft and silky, and I know I’m going to have to call a halt to this soon. I can only take so much in one night. She tilts her head to read the words she just tongued across my chest. “All for one, one for all,” she reads quietly. “That one is about your brothers?”

I nod. “I live for them. When I thought Matt was dying, I wanted to die with him.”

“Your brother was dying?” she asks. Her hands stop exploring, and she looks into my face.

“Matt had cancer. It was really expensive, and Logan had to come home from college. We were broke, and we were all afraid he was going to die.” I look into her face. “Do you want to hear about this?” I ask.

She nods and settles in my arms. “I want to hear everything.”

“Sam and I took side jobs with this guy in our neighborhood to make some extra money. It wasn’t really illegal.” I stop and growl. I can’t lie to her. “We knew it was illegal, but we needed money for Matt. That’s how I got arrested.” I’m not proud of it, but I can’t undo my past. That would be like putting toothpaste back in the tube.

“Desperation can make a person do things they wouldn’t normally do,” she says softly. “How’s Matt now?”

I smile. “He’s in remission.”

“Oh, good,” she breathes. “Tell me about the others.”

“Paul’s the oldest. He has a daughter named Hayley, and she lives with us half the time. And Logan is the one I told you about who goes to NYU.”

She counts on her fingers. “There’s one more, right?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Where’s he?”

“He’s away at college on a football scholarship.” He’s living the dream. My dream. Sam just wants to bake cakes. But Paul says we all have to finish college, so he went.

“Are you close?” she asks.

“Not as close as we used to be.”

“Can you remedy that?”

Can I? “I’m going to try.” And I will. As soon as I go home.

She tucks herself closer under my arm and settles there. After a few minutes, her breaths even out and she gets soft in my arms. I look down my nose at her. She’s asleep in my arms, and I don’t ever want to put her down. So, I pull the blanket over the both of us and hold her close to me, as close as I can get her.

Reagan

I wake up to a tinny, clanking sound. I sit up, sticky where I slept against Pete’s shoulder. We must have sweated together, our skin pressed close. And I might have drooled on him a little bit, too. Yuck. I wipe the side of my mouth and sit up. Pete stirs under me and then freezes. He lifts his head and looks around. He groans and falls back against the blanket. “Shit, I’m f**ked,” he grunts.

“You better not have been,” my dad calls out. He clanks the lid of the feed bucket as he scoops out sweet feed for the horses. Link helps him, and Dad’s making a lot more noise than Link is.

I close my eyes. Dad’s mad. I just slept in the barn with Pete. And he knows it. “Oh shit,” I say.

“Oh shit,” Link parrots.

Pete closes his eyes as he grins. “You better stop while you’re ahead,” he whispers with a laugh.

“Good morning, Pete,” Dad says, faking joviality as he walks by us carrying buckets. I start to sit up, but as I pull the blanket from Pete, I realize he still doesn’t have a shirt on. He took it off last night so I could explore his ink. This looks really bad.