Crazy Heifer (The Valentine Boys 2)

Or I would be now.

I just had to convince my brother that he was doing it with me.

The dickbag and his wet blanket walked past us, the wet blanket speaking loud enough for us to hear her as they passed.

“We’ll have to go get more,” I heard Marjorie whisper. “That’s our only book of checks like that. Damn, it’s going to cost us another hundred bucks.”

I found my mouth twitching.

“I hate her,” the woman growled.

I hadn’t much cared for her when she was my brother’s girlfriend, and I certainly didn’t care for her now.

“Me, too.”Chapter 3Does refusing to do cardio count as resistance training?

-Callum to Ace

Callum

“I don’t know why we’re doing this,” my brother grumbled for the fifteenth time. “I get enough working out at home.”

I looked at Banks, then back at the road.

“You’re doing it because I asked you to, and your stomach is starting to look a little flabby around the middle,” I teased.

Ace, my oldest brother, snorted from his seat next to me.

Banks, my twin, and elder brother by a whole two and three-quarters of a minute, looked at me from the back seat as if I was smoking meth right in front of him.

“You’re one to talk,” he teased. “Wasn’t it you I saw that had to go buy more jeans because yours wouldn’t button?”

“That was because Darby did the washing and fucked them up,” I shot back. “Not because I’ve gotten fat.”

“Sounds like a convenient excuse to me. Why else would you want to go to the gym?” he questioned.

I sighed.

“I met a girl yesterday at the diner,” I said. “Ace, did you know that Mal was married?”

Ace shrugged.

“Yeah.” He paused. “But I also heard that he got a divorce, too. That the chick was a piece of work.”

I started to get angry, which wasn’t rational since I’d known the girl a whole five minutes. After the two jackwads had left last night, so had she. She hadn’t even said thank you or anything. Not that she needed to since she’d already said it once. But I’d expected a smile or a ‘good job’ or something. Yet I’d gotten nothing. “Actually, it wasn’t her being a piece of work. It was him being one. The girl is super sweet… and just so happens to be friends with your Codie.”

Ace looked at me in surprise. “How do you know that?”

“I went by the feed store on the way home from eating yesterday,” I answered as Ace took a turn a little too sharply. “Asked around about her. Found out that Desi and she were best friends way back then and still are now.”

Ace made a sound in his throat that I knew for a fact resembled interest.

“And I found out that they’re going to be training for the Spartan race that Colt’s teaching the boot camp for at the gym,” I continued. “Did you know that?”

Ace didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, I thought we could run it, too. And just pop in when they’re there,” I continued when there was still silence in the cab of the truck.

“Why am I here?” Banks asked.

I rolled my eyes. Banks and his loner self never surprised me anymore.

“Because I wanted you to be.” I shrugged. “And because I thought you might want to do the race with us?”

Banks shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you, while y’all work out, I’m going to take the truck and run over to the Newsome’s. I need a haircut. And I like working out alone, not with a bunch of women in the gym to distract me. I’ll run the race, but I’m not doing the whole social working out shit.”

When Ace pulled to a stop in front of the gym, we all hopped out and Ace handed off his keys. “Sure?”

Banks answered by getting in the truck and pulling out without another word.

“What’s up with him lately?” Ace asked, watching the truck practically peel out of the parking lot.

He was acting even worse than he normally did.

Which was saying something since not only did Banks have PTSD from when we were children, but he also picked up some pretty nasty scars from when we were in the military.

“I don’t know, but I plan on finding out,” I answered. “I just have to get him in the right frame of mind to talk.”

Ace snorted. “That’ll be the day.”

It would, actually.

It had to be in the day, because there would be no talking to him at night. His nightmares always seemed to get worse as the sun went down.

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” I said. “But I have to do that after I talk to Darby.”

“Darby?” Ace asked as he walked toward the front door, his workout bag over one shoulder.

“Darby.” I sighed.

Darby was our youngest brother, and the biggest pain in the ass on the planet.