Page 34 of Brother In Arms

“That why she sold her part to you?”

“Yes, but the provision in the will was that she had to sell it for fair market value, which is why it took everything I had to buy her out of it. I wanted it to stay in the family while she was willing to offload her piece to just anybody. We actually had a big fight about it, both ended up crying our eyes out before she realized how much Blue Hills meant to me.”

“And Philip?”

I snorted, “God, he hates anything our parents remotely love. He wants to raze the farm to the ground and build some sort of amusement park on the land. Some big developer tried to get my dad to sell it before he died and he said no… Honestly, Blue Hills was just about the only thing Daddy and me agreed on…” I sighed, “It’s the only thing we really shared. So yeah, I want to keep it. It’s the only real link to the good times I had with my dad. Our love of horses.”

“Dad sounds like a cold piece.”

“Pretty sure he would have been a lot happier if I was the one born a boy instead of Philip.”

“Let me guess, your brother’s the spoiled rich kid of spoiled rich kids?” He bobbed us in the water and I still clung to him, comfortably suspended in his arms.

“Pretty much. He hit his teenage years and it suddenly became all about drugs and partying with his ‘friends.’” I took my arms from around his neck just long enough to make air quotes around ‘friends’ and Rush eyed me critically, his hands automatically drifting to my back to hold me up until I could do it for myself again.

“What about you?”

I snorted, “Too busy trying to stay an A+ student and make my parents notice I existed. Didn’t matter, though. Philip still got all the attention.”

“The squeaky wheel usually is the one that gets the grease, babe.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, and tried not to let the hurt show. I lost track of how many achievements of mine my parents missed completely because they were off trying to clean up one of my brother’s messes. I seriously just wanted them to see me… and now that was too late now that my dad was gone. I shoved down the hurt with a little more anger at my brother and just tried to be grateful that my mom was coming around, as weird as that felt.

I mean, talk about confusing. She hated everything biker related. Had railed against it my entire life. Going on about how her sister could do so much better and about how my uncle was a no good criminal and how he was dragging my cousin Dray down the same path. It was like every foundation I had ever stood on had been thrown into the air and I was falling, falling, falling, with no direction and nowhere to land that wasn’t going to obliterate every part of me.

I was grasping at anything to catch myself on, and there was just nothing. It was supposed to be Blue Hills… but Philip was intent on taking even that from me.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked softly.

“What?”

“Pick me out of every other guy in that bar?”

I put on a brave smile and said, “Seemed like a really good idea at the time,” I tried.

He nodded, and said, “It’s okay; you ain’t got to tell me right now.”

I swallowed hard and nodded and he leaned in, hand grazing the side of my face, drawing me closer. I went and kissed him, because for some reason, kissing him made everything feel like it made sense right now, and it was, at least, something to grab onto.

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