Proving Paul's Promise (The Reed Brothers 5)

I hear the door open behind me, and the hair on the back of my f**king neck stands up. It’s her. I always know when it’s her. Her scent hits me before I even see her, and she doesn’t say a word when she sits down beside me.

She’s quiet, and she just watches the movie with me. When the reel stops, the room goes a little brighter because the lamps are still on.

“That was fun. What’s up next?” she asks. Her voice echoes in the open room, even though she’s speaking quietly.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

Her hand covers mine. “Because you needed me.” She squeezes my hand gently.

“Go home, Friday,” I bite out.

But she doesn’t. She just sits there, quietly. “Why don’t you start another movie?”

“I don’t want to watch another movie.”

I lay my head back and close my eyes.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she asks quietly.

“I couldn’t figure out how to tell anyone.”

“Even me?”

“Even you.”

“Why?” Her voice is soft.

“Because I feel so f**king guilty that it’s like somebody is taking a knife and stabbing me in the gut over and over and over.”

“Guilty about what?”

“I lied, Friday. I f**king lied, okay?” I lied to the people I love, and they’ll probably never forgive me.

“Lied about what?”

“Dad didn’t leave. I threw him out.” I pick at a piece of lint on my jeans.

“Why did you do that?” Her voice is so quiet that I can barely hear her.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.” I feel her shift, and she climbs into my lap. She straddles me, one thigh on each side of my hips, and I reach for her bottom and jerk her against me. She yelps because I move so fast I scare her. But I need her. I need to feel her against me. I need her on top of me and f**king me. I need her. “It does matter.” She takes my face in her hands. “Why did you kick him out?”

“I came home in the middle of the day and found him in my mother’s bed with another woman. He was really careful not to bring women around us, and I had heard he was dating someone, but he hadn’t told us. But I walked in and found them together. I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“Keep going.” She touches the pad of her thumb to my lower lip, and I chase her thumb and try to bite it. She smiles and rests on my chest on her elbows.

“Mom had been gone for a year, but I felt like he was taking a knife to her memory.”

“I can understand that.”

“I got mad, and I was bigger than him, so I jerked him out of bed. He tried to explain, but I wouldn’t listen. I kicked the woman out, and he was really angry. He swung at me, and he missed, so I punched him in the stomach. Then I hit him in the face. I threw him out. I tossed him out like garbage. I didn’t even let him get a change of clothes. Nothing.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Then I told my brothers he left.”

“Oh, Paul,” she says quietly.

“They showed me the picture of his dead body. On his cheek is a slash. It’s from where I hit him with my fist. I was wearing my new class ring. I had just gotten it. I saw it across his face when I hit him. I saw it that day, and I saw it today. So, he died right after our fight.”

“Paul.” She shakes her head. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is my fault. I thought he would get over being mad and that I would, too, and then he would come back, but he never did. So I blamed him. And all that time, he was dead. Dead. Gone. Never to be heard from again. Not until someone found his f**king dead body in a freezer.”

A tear rolls down my cheek, and she catches it with her lips. She swipes my face with her thumbs to wipe my tears away.

“I kicked him out. It’s my fault. And now I have to tell my brothers that I did it. That he never left. That it was all because of me.”

“It’s perfectly natural to want to protect your mother’s memory. You didn’t kill him. He was a grown man. We have no way of knowing why or how he ended up in a freezer, but you didn’t put him there.”

“My last memory is a fight with him.”

“No, it’s not. If it was, you wouldn’t be here.” She looks around us. “This is your last memory, this perfect place, Paul, and those perfect times you had with him. You know that.”

“Friday,” I say. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You do what you always do, dummy.” She laughs. “You proceed with honesty and integrity. That’s what’s in your heart.”

“I have to tell them the truth.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Come here,” I say. I pull her against my chest. “I love you so much.”

We sit like that until I feel her lips on my neck. She purrs against my skin and nips me playfully.

“You fixed me,” I say.

“You weren’t broken.”

“I wasn’t whole until you, either.”

“Neither was I.”

“I want you.”

“I’m yours.” She sucks my earlobe into her mouth and nibbles it with her teeth, tonguing my piercing and rolling it gently. My dick starts to throb and presses insistently against my jeans.

She’s wearing one of those dresses she likes so much, so I lift the skirt and settle my hands on her hips. I bend my head and lick across the exposed flesh of her boobs. “I want to get to these,” I say against her skin.