Get Bucked (The Valentine Boys 4)

Darby’s head lifted so that he could meet my eyes.

“You have brothers and sisters?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“I tried to talk to them once, and the investment banker lost his shit. Mom asked me not to come around anymore,” I said.

“You refer to that man as an investment banker?” Banks snorted.

“That’s what you got out of her entire explanation? That she refers to him as an investment banker? How about the part where she said her mother asked her not to see her brothers and sisters?” Darby snapped.

Banks closed his mouth and lost the grin.

Darby looked back at me, his eyes intense.

“How old are they now?” he asked.

I rattled off guesstimated ages.

“I’m not actually sure,” I admitted. “When I was allowed to see them, I knew. But it’s been years now, and I’ve forgotten. That makes me a bad sister, doesn’t it?”

Darby shook his head. “I don’t even know how you live this life, Waylynn Jennings, but you amaze me.”

Candy’s ‘awwww’ made me look at her.

“Darby,” Candy said. “I think that was the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Darby’s eyes stayed on mine as he said, “Not that I don’t like you, Candy, but why are y’all here?”

Candy punched her husband in the shoulder.

“I appreciate you watching out for me out there,” Banks said with the utmost reluctance.

Darby’s eyes lifted to meet Banks’.

“When Paul said that you didn’t have a fighter, I told him I would do it because I don’t want you out there unprotected,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that I have to like you while I protect you.”

Banks nodded once.

“I know that,” he said softly. “But I appreciate it nonetheless.”

I allowed my eyes to flick back and forth between the two brothers.

“I’m gonna go get a shower,” Darby said as he stood.

“I just put Arnica all over you, Darby.” I laughed.

Darby’s eyes met mine.

“You can do it all over again when I get out,” he murmured.

Then he was gone, leaving me in the room with Candy and Banks.

I turned to survey his brother, who was now staring at the picture on the wall of a couple of white tail deer jumping over a barbed wire fence.

Candy was looking at her husband, looking as if she wanted to throttle him.

“He’s a really good man, you know,” I told Banks.

Banks’ head turned so that he could see me more clearly.

“You don’t give him a chance,” I told him bluntly. “You don’t see everything he’s doing. He’s literally killing himself to make everyone happy, and it makes me hate all of you because you don’t see that.” I stood up, crossing my arms over my chest. “I haven’t been in the picture long, but I’ve been here long enough to see that you’re going to lose him if you keep taking advantage of his love for y’all.”

Banks narrowed his eyes, opening his mouth as if to say something back, but I held my hand up.

“Y’all aren’t his parents,” I said. “You’re his brothers. He’s a grown adult, doing grown adult things. He’s working, has a real job, helps y’all every single morning requiring him to get up at the ass crack of dawn—I should know because I’ve been helping him do it. When he can’t do it, he works it out with the hands to get it done. He came back around at about nine at night the other day because he hadn’t been able to help riding fence that he promised y’all he would do.” I tilted my head. “Did you know that he ripped his side open on some barbed wire, duct-taped it up, and then went on working?”

Banks ran his hands over his face.

“We’re hard on him.”

I raised my brows at him. “Ya think?”

“He was an awful kid,” he explained.

I tilted my head at him and snorted. “You realize that he’s not that person anymore, right? From what I gather, Darby was an angry kid. And an even angrier teen. He hasn’t told me the all of it, though, but based on the stories that Gibson tells me, they were definitely wild. But Gibson told me that they hadn’t been wild for a long time. That, in fact, they’ve become people that he doesn’t recognize. People that neither one of them were when they were teens.”

Banks looked away.

“He threw a full can of Coke at a cop once,” he said.

I snorted. “He also told me that he apologized. Got right and straight, and now Nico loves him. Did you know that their kids call him their favorite uncle when you’re not around? Do they say that to you when you’re alone with them?”

Candy answered for him. “No.”

“Because apparently he spends a hell of a lot of time with them. Does his fair share of babysitting. Let me ask you this,” I said. “If Nico and Georgia forgive him, why can’t y’all?”