Ryan (Mallick Brothers 2)

I smiled at that, barely noticing the way doing so made my eye and cheeks and lip hurt. "I'm Dusty," I supplied.

"Dusty. Pleasure is mine. And look, I made it just in time for breakfast!" he declared. "Two bottles of champagne," he noticed, looking over at Ryan's liquor cabinet. "Well you won't be needing two of those later. Mimosas?"

And that was when I pretty much decided that I needed Eli Mallick in my life. In a friendly capacity.

Ryan gave me a look I couldn't read then went back to the eggs, switching on the stove, then chopping up veggies to put inside.

"'Sup, you flat-faced freak," Eli said, snapping my attention back from where I had been staring at Ryan's back to find Eli standing at the island pouring orange juice into flutes... with Rocky rubbing up against his arm. Rubbing against him.

"He hates men," I blurted out, mouth parted. "Half the time he hates me," I added on a head shake.

"Now, see, if I weren't in mixed company right now..." Eli started with a wicked smile, "I would make a comment of the risqué nature."

I snorted at that, knowing exactly what kind of comment that would be.

"So, Dusty," Eli said as Ryan started filling the pan with egg. "What do you do?" he finished, handing me a mimosa.

I started for a second, feeling caught before my brain started working and I remembered I did have an answer for that. "I write."

Ryan's head swung over his shoulder, his brows drawing together, his eyes questioning. And it was then that I realized that while I had gotten closer to him than I had anyone else in years, while he saved me twice and patched me up and kissed me and slept with me (the G-rated meaning of that phrase), we were still virtual strangers to each other.

"I can read," Eli said with a smirk, making me smile again. "What do you write?"

"Teen paranormal."

"Vampires and witches who are all angsty and have love triangles?"

"So you've read my work," I laughed as he toasted my glass.

Then we all ate omelettes and drank mimosas while Eli held up most of the conversation with a little help from me because Ryan was suddenly quieter than usual.

And it was easy.

It was like I wasn't horribly out of practice.

Maybe the ease of it could be attributed to Eli and his laid-back kind of conversational skills, but no matter what the reason was, I was having breakfast with two men who weren't my uncle or Bry and I wasn't feeling like an awkward, anxiety-ridden mess.

To progress.

That was what Ryan had toasted me to in my apartment on Christmas.

It was almost like it was some kind of premonition.

I couldn't hope for magic cures.

I couldn't hope for miracles.

But I damn sure could hope for progress.NINERyanEli was hard to predict.

Like Hunter, Eli had never been truly cut out for the family business. He was always a little softer, calmer, more artistic. He wasn't the one starting shit on the playground like Shane or Mark. He wasn't the first to jump in when a big brawl broke out in high school. He wasn't someone for whom violence came easily.

But violence was instilled in us from a young age.

As such, because it wasn't natural to him, wasn't something that was a part of him, that he could learn to control slowly through lower levels of it, his anger was much more explosive than any I had ever seen.

So when it came up for Eli, it came up in a wild, unstoppable wave. He had his triggers sometimes, like walking into my apartment and seeing Dusty all busted up. But, just as often, he could just flip it on when the need came.

That was why he was our 'last resort' with difficult clients. When they didn't cough up money with my firm suggestions or Mark's warning or Shane's fierce beating, well, that was when Pops called on Eli. Usually, he couldn't go alone. Because most of the time, he needed to be pulled off before he killed someone.

But it went off like a switch.

He walked in, saw Dusty, started to freak, took a picture in case he ever needed to show a cop why he was beating a man half to death for what he did to her, then shut it right back off.

And Dusty responded to him.

While, like me, he had never been the slut that Shane and Mark had been, he definitely had a charm that most women reacted to. He paid attention to the small things and could always seem to keep things from getting too awkward. That, for Dusty, was huge. If the conversation slumped for even a second, you could visibly see her tensing up, watch as her eyes went slightly panicked, like she was trying to think of a way to keep things light and easy, to not show that she wasn't the best at social situations.