Page 31 of Unexpected Love

There is someone out there who deserves her beauty and grace in their life. It would be a shame to see her give up on that because of whatever happened in Boston. She can get past that. The fact that she showed up on my front porch proves she can.

I’m pulled from my thoughts by the passenger door opening and my brother Asher climbing into the front seat. “Hey! I thought you were at school?” I say, shocked to see Asher instead of Leo.

Asher’s in his second year at the University of Maryland College Park on a lacrosse scholarship. While the school isn’t too far from Ashford Falls, he’s normally too busy to come home all that often during the semester.

“I had a rare weekend open. Thought I would come home for a visit while I could.”

“Why didn’t you call when you knew you were coming home? I would have made time to hang out.”

Asher smiles at me. It’s a smile that tells me I’m being ridiculous. “I knew you would be here today for your normal hike with Leo. I figured I could just tag along.”

Before I can say anything, the back door of the Jeep opens. “You suck,” Leo says, glaring at Asher.

“Not my fault you weren’t ready to go when I walked out the door.” Asher laughs, turning in his seat to look at Leo.

“How is it fair that you get to sit up front when you’re the one crashing my day with Gage?”

“You go on hikes with him regularly. I rarely get to spend time with him these days.”

“It’s not my fault you decided to go to college.” Leo shrugs.

“All right. Come on.” I know they’re both giving each other a hard time, but if I let it go on long enough, it’ll turn into a real argument. While there’s a thirteen-year age gap between Asher and me—often making me feel more like an uncle than a brother—there’s only a three-year age gap between Asher and Leo. And even though they have different moms and spent half their time with them, Dad worked it out so he got all three of us at the same time, making sure we stayed close.

I shift in my seat so I can look at both of my brothers. Even though we’re half-siblings, there’s still a lot of similarities between the three of us.

At twenty, Asher is starting to look more like a grown adult every day. He’s started letting the light stubble grow into a full beard—something he’ll likely shave once the lacrosse season starts. Same with his darker brown hair that he’s let grow into more of a shaggy look. His eyes are where we differ the most, though. Asher inherited our father’s hazel eyes. Same with Leo, making them look less like half-brothers.

Leo turned seventeen a few months ago and is only recently starting to lose that baby-face look we always tease him about. And if I’m being honest, I’m not sure he’ll ever look his age. Where Asher and I both started growing facial hair early, Leo only recently needed to start shaving on a regular basis. Though, I’m sure if he styled his dirty blond hair shorter all around, he would look a little closer to his age.

Leo falls back into his seat, buckling himself in. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

I chuckle as I turn in my seat, putting the Jeep in drive and heading back down the driveway and out of town toward Oaks Peak Trail.

It’s not a hard trail—about six miles—but it’s one of my favorites. It’s got a great rest stop with beautiful views of mountains in the distance about halfway through. It’s a trail Leo and I often find ourselves hiking on these shorter day trips.

“How’s the semester going?” I ask Asher.

Asher turns to look out the passenger window, but I catch a glimpse of a smirk before his face is completely out of my view. “It’s fine. Nothing all that interesting.”

“What was that smirk?”

“What smirk?” He turns back to look at me, his face now totally void of any emotion—an indication he’s hiding something.

I narrow my eyes and glance at him quickly before focusing back on the road in front of me. “You know what smirk I’m talking about. What’s going on?”

Leo leans forward between the two front seats. “Come on, Ash. You know you can’t hide anything from our deputy brother.”

“Jerk,” Asher grumbles, pushing Leo’s face away from us and making Leo laugh.

I chuckle at their antics. “All right, now you’ve gotta tell me. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Asher turns back to the passenger window.

“He met a girl.”

“Shut up.” Asher glares at Leo.

“Oh yeah?” I ask, a smirk forming on my lips now.

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