“I need money,” I snapped. “Some of us don’t have it so good, Gunner. Some of us are just barely scraping by. We can’t all afford Mustangs and iPhones.”
“C’mon, Tanya,” Gunner said. “I’ve got a few years on you. You’ll be where I am one day. Hell, maybe you’ll do even better.”
I shook my head. “Whatever.”
“Doesn’t matter, anyway,” he continued, “because you’re not paying one red cent for those meds. I’ve got you covered.”
I groaned. “You can’t be serious. I don’t need any charity.”
For a second, my stepbrother went quiet. Behind his lips, he ran his tongue over his teeth. When he stopped at a red light, he said, “It’s not charity if I owe you.”
I shook my head again and tapped my best friend’s number onto Gunner’s screen.
Chelsea—it’s Tanya. Apartment fire yesterday. Not coming to the club. Let Gino know.
It wasn’t until I was sitting out in the parking lot of the CVS while Gunner ran my prescription inside that I heard back from her.
OMG!!! Saw the news! U ok sweets?
I texted her back.
Hand is fucked up. Be careful what u say. On my stepbro’s phone.
Her answer was one I’d expected.
Uhhh who??
But I didn’t have time to explain, or even the inclination to. Not over text, anyway. I sent her back a dismissive text reminding her to let Gino know I wouldn’t be in, then promised to call her later once I’d gotten a phone of my own.
Then I deleted all our texts, because the last thing I needed was Gunner asking me more questions about my job—like what kind of club his baby sister was “waitressing” at.
It’s none of his damn business, anyway. We all do what we gotta do to survive. Some of us run. Some of us stay behind and clean up the mess. And then we find some way—any way—to make things work.
Running apparently paid off a hell of a lot more than staying did, though, because when we finally made it to Gunner’s house, I could see that life had been a lot kinder to him than it had been to me. First off, he actually had a house. It was little, sure, but it was nice—a cutesy bungalow that didn’t look at all like I’d have expected. The teal door matched the shutters and the soft, canary yellow of the façade reminded me of that time our family had gone to the Keys. Maybe that’s what the house was supposed to remind Gunner of, too—happier times.
He pulled into the drive and cut the engine. “Home sweet home.”
“Firefighting pays well, huh?” I asked bitterly.
Gunner shrugged. “Well enough. It’s just me, so...”
He got out of the car, but before he could come around to my side, I opened the door and got out on my own. It was a little fuck you to whatever ideas he had about being my big hero. Of course, it didn’t help that I’d told him he was just yesterday.
Gonna have to watch my mouth while I’m on those pain pills.
“I got the door,” Gunner said, bounding ahead of me with his keys in hand. I sighed through my nose, looking up at the swaying trees dotted around his property.
No place I’d ever lived had trees. Not since Jim’s house.
“C’mon in,” he urged me. “I made up the spare room for you already.”
I climbed up onto the stoop. “Thought you said you had a pull-out couch?”
“I do. But my baby sister needs a room of her own, yeah?”
I rolled my eyes. “Jesus, Gunner. Stop fucking trying so hard.”
A fight was brewing. One that’d been overdue for a long damn time. But then I noticed something in his front yard. Something I couldn’t take my eyes off of once I’d seen it.
“Holy shit.” I pushed past him. “You got a dog?”
I practically jumped the chain-link gate to get to it. Fuck, that was a handsome creature if I ever saw one. Big, brown eyes. A perfectly soft, silky coat of cocoa-colored fur. Those black patches glimmered in the sun as he bounded toward me, all ears and paws.
“Shit, Tanya!” Gunner hissed, pulling me away from the dog with my back against his front. “Keep back. He’s my guard dog.”
For just a second, the warmth and the hard planes of my stepbrother’s body sent chills racing up my spine. He had to be ripped. Every muscle was evident. Every bulge. Including, I noticed, the one between his legs. The one pressed right up against my ass.
“Knock it off,” I said, wrenching away. Gunner stepped around me to intercept the dog but it just ducked under his arms and came straight for me.
I didn’t worry for a second. Maybe we’d never had one growing up, but I knew a thing or two about dog behavior. And this one was absolute shit at protecting anybody. Or maybe he just knew I was cool.
“Jax!” Gunner grumped when his dog leapt into my arms. “Leave her alone!”
I took some snide satisfaction in knowing that Jax didn’t give two shits about what his owner had to say. That dog was all over me, kissing my face, twirling in circles, and wagging his tail so hard it hurt.
It was all fun and games until he accidentally whipped his tail into my injured hand. Then my stepbrother grabbed his collar and hauled him back toward his doghouse while I stepped outside the gate.
“Sorry,” Gunner muttered when he returned. “Jax gets too excited sometimes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Especially around women.”
“Sounds like the perfect dog for you,” I answered.
Finally, I turned and stepped inside his house. The inside was just as nice as the outside, quaint and homey, not at all like the Gunner I knew. There weren’t many pictures, though. Not of people. Just some art that looked like he’d picked it up at a garage sale, or maybe the Goodwill.
Hardwood floors, though. Those were spiffy. “These the originals?” I asked him.
“Yup,” he said, closing the door behind us. “This little bungalow was built back in the twenties. It needed a fair bit of reno, but it was a steal.”
So, my stepbrother fought fires, saved lives, and fixed houses. Of course he did. His competence infuriated me.
Who the hell was he to go off and have a full life while I stayed home with his piece of shit dad—the one who’d become my responsibility when his son just walked out on him all those years ago?
“Must have been nice,” I said, peeking my head into the kitchen. I wasn’t surprised to find it just as quaint as the rest of the house—though it made me no less furious. From what I could tell he barely even used the thing for how clean everything looked. “You got to enjoy living for yourself all these years.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, and I heard him stop short behind me. I wanted to smile, a sick sense of satisfaction filling me as I felt the proverbial knife cut right through his little hero act.
“I just meant that not having a drunk, lazy, deadbeat dad holding you back must have made things really easy, that’s all.”
I couldn’t stop myself, a feeling a sense of vindication began rising up inside of me the more I let myself talk. It was like I’d opened the dam holding back years’-worth of resentment.
“That’s not fair,” Gunner said, his voice wavering slightly. It was almost like he’d expected me to just forgive and forget after all this time—after all, he pulled me out of a burning building; what was a decade of abuse and loneliness compared to that?
“Fuck fair,” I snapped, turning around in one swift movement. “I don’t give two fucks about what you think is fair, Gunner. You don’t get to talk to me about what’s fair when I had to spend my fucking childhood cleaning up the mess you left behind.”