Change of Heart (Fostering Love 2)

If it hadn’t been for me, Alex probably would have been adopted right away when our mom died. Fortunately for me, the state hadn’t been comfortable separating a pair of identical twins, because if they were, I would’ve never seen my brother again.

So yeah, I’d been angry, pretty much all the time. Angry with our mom, and the foster care system, and the world in general, but since we’d moved in with Dan and Liz, I’d never been seriously angry at either of them.

I’d chafed at their restrictions as a teenager, but the love behind the rules hadn’t let me stay mad for long. I’d been irritated as fuck when Dan didn’t want to hand over the company to me—even though he’d been talking about it for years—but I’d understood it.

But watching him yell at Ani that night had busted something loose in my chest, and I’d wanted to reach across the table and knock him out of his fucking chair.

That shit scared me. I’d learned to hold my temper within two years of coming to live at the Evans house—and in thirty seconds all that self-control had completely evaporated and I’d wanted to hurt him.

I glanced over at Ani. She was sitting with her head tilted back, her eyes steady on the road in front of us. She hadn’t said a word since we’d pulled out of my parents’ driveway.

The fucked-up thing about the whole situation was that I’d started it at the kitchen table. Shit was getting worse and worse between Ani and me, and everyone was noticing. We weren’t arguing. We weren’t even looking at each other.

So when she’d made that crack about Shane playing in the sand, I jumped on it. It had given me a reason to snap back at her the way I usually did. It worked.

What she’d said was irritating as hell, but I’d known that Ani wasn’t implying that Shane’s job was unimportant—hell, we all knew that—but I’d just needed the excuse to get her going.

I hadn’t anticipated her trying to leave or my dad losing his shit. But I should have seen it coming. I knew how Dad felt about the military—especially his sensitivity to deployments and discussions about going overseas. He’d been a Marine in Vietnam. But I’d been so glad to finally get her bitching at me that I hadn’t stopped while I was ahead.

When she’d dropped back down in her seat, and her chest rose and fell frantically as she stared at her lap, I wanted to pick her up and drag her out of there. It hadn’t gone the way I’d planned.

I think I might have hurt her—or at least opened her up to be hurt—and that had never been my intention.

Fuck.

“You wanna grab something to eat?” I asked as we drove through town. “You didn’t eat.”

“Not hungry,” she said back quietly. “Thanks though.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Forget about it, okay?” she said, turning to look at me. “It wasn’t a big deal. I just don’t like to be yelled at.”

“I yell at you all the time,” I argued, for no reason except to make sure she kept talking, if only to contradict me.

“Yeah—but it’s different with you.”

“Oh, yeah? Why is that?” I asked as I changed lanes so I could go over a bridge that would bring us downtown.

“Because I’m usually yelling back,” she replied with a snort.

“True.”

“Can we just drop it?” she asked tiredly. “I just want to go, get a beer, and watch you sing. You’re singing, right?”

“Yep.” I cursed as a bicyclist cut in front of me with no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

“Jesus, does that guy have a death wish?” Ani asked, rolling down her window to yell at the bicyclist stopped at the light in front of us. “Hey, jackass! Watch where the fuck you’re going!”

I laughed as the bicyclist flipped her off, and locked the doors quickly as she tried to climb out of the truck.

“Just stay inside, psycho.”

“That dick just flipped me off!”

“Yeah, after you called him a jackass.”

“I could take him.”

“You probably could,” I agreed as we watched the spandex-wearing bicyclist take off at the green light, “but he’s got about fifty pounds on you, and you’d never catch him on foot.”

“Chase him in the truck?” she asked seriously.

“Nah, don’t want to be late. Jay likes me to kick off the open-mike night.”

“Fine,” she pouted, and suddenly the night was looking up.

It was looking up until we parked across from Jay’s bar and Ani immediately starting fucking stripping.

“What the hell?” I blurted, my voice coming out a lot higher than it had been since I was fourteen.

“What?” she asked in confusion, pushing her jeans down her thighs and off her feet.

“Put your damn pants back on,” I ordered, turning the truck off.

“No way. I’m not wearing those in there.”

“Why the fuck not?”