Shift Happens (Providence Family Ties 2)

The big shit started laughing so hard that I begrudgingly lowered my legs to the ground. I might want amnesia, but I didn’t want a broken nose or to be missing my front teeth.

“How can you find this funny?” I demanded, clenching my thighs together when gravity added to the leakage problem I’d been battling.

“Because it is funny,” he shrugged, opening my bathroom door and waving me in.

Just as I went to pass him, I stopped and frowned at him. “Wait, if they know you’ve been staying here, why are you sneaking in through my window at night?”

“Because Sam told me you locked your bedroom door after they walked in on you by accident when you were getting changed.”

“Why not just tell me not to?”

Tapping me on the nose, he pushed me into the room and closed the door. “I’ll wait here while you clean up so you can walk without keeping your thighs together. But I’m coming in the shower with you.”

I’d just finished wiping when he said it. “Dude, no. Now that I know they know, I can’t… you know?”

Hearing the toilet flush, he opened the door and stuck his head around it. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. You’re twenty, baby, and they know we’re living together, so why’s this such an issue?”

When he laid it out so simply, he had a point. Sighing, I hung my head while I washed my hands, leaving him to turn the shower on to heat up for us.

I guess he was right, but it just felt so wrong. Then again, if my dads didn’t have an issue with him being over, then shouldn’t I be the same?

Taking a deep breath in and releasing my funk, I pulled off my t-shirt and brushed past him to get into the shower, smiling at him as I did it.

Before I was all the way into the large area, he stopped me and kissed me softly.

“I love you.” Three words said so bluntly that I knew, as I did each time he said them, that he was being brutally honest.

And, just like every time I heard them, they hit me in the solar plexus like an ax. I’d never get tired of hearing him say them, and I hoped there was never a day that came when he stopped feeling that way.

“I love you more than all the fish in the ocean need water.”

Leaning down so that his forehead was braced against mine, he stared into my eyes. “I love you more than all of the blood cells in an adult’s body.”

Before I could say anything back, the sound of a fist hammering on my bedroom door came over the noise of the shower. “Your dad won’t let me eat until you’re both out here. Get your asses moving.”

Only minutes before, Ryan doing that would have had me likely trying to squeeze out of the small window in my bathroom.

What a difference Jackson Townsend-Rossi could make it a matter of two hundred and forty seconds.

Imagine what he could do with a lifetime of seconds.

Chapter Sixteen

Jackson

“I’m amazed you’re still alive. I was sure they’d have run you over the second her dads found out you were staying here overnight.”

I scowled at Jesse as he tried to kill me off before taking a mouthful of his beer.

“Aren’t you needed somewhere else?”

Looking confused, he turned his head and glanced around us. “Where? Mom keeps getting me to do shit to help out, and I’m over it.”

Deciding that if he wasn’t moving, I would, I picked my bottle up and sauntered off to where Sasha’s cousins were talking to my other brothers.

I knew Malcolm, Gabby, and Benny vaguely from parties at the Adams-DeWitt house, of course, but I hadn’t spent any time with them until we’d come back for Christmas.

Malcolm, I was learning to like. Initially, he’d taken on the role of protective big brother firmly, and it was hard to get him to unclench so he could get to know me. That’d lasted all of three beers the night they’d first turned up, and now I could appreciate him as a person. He was a lot like Elijah, introspective and watchful, but with a playful side that could be coaxed out of him if he was in the right mood.

Gabby was awesome but timid when she was on her own, and I’d never watched my brother, Webb, work so hard to get someone to talk to him. The guy had never met a stranger in his life, but he also wasn’t very open and friendly a majority of the time, so it’d shocked us that he cared enough to try and make Gabby feel more relaxed.

Benny, though, was someone who reminded me of my cousin Cole. Not with the whole menophobia thing, but with how he used to be until he’d met Ebru—trying to be the happy life and soul of the party, while nursing a deep hurt that was eating away at him inside. I’d spoken to Sasha about it, but she said he’d always been like that.