Priceless (Forbidden Men #8)(2)

When my sister surged toward me unexpectedly and wrapped her arms around my neck, I stumbled a couple steps back before I could catch my footing. We weren’t exactly the hugging type, so having her hug me now was...odd. But then she sniffed again, and her tears soaked through the shoulder of my shirt as she said, “I love you, Brandt,” and I found myself squeezing her back as my worry peaked.

“Seriously, Care. What’d he do?”

“Nothing I want to talk about.” She pulled away, wiping at her eyes once more.

Yep, I was definitely going to beat the shit out of Sander Scotini.

“Thanks for giving me my bed back.” She turned toward the ladder but before she could climb up to her bunk, Colton sputtered out a rattling cough in his sleep. Caroline stooped down to press her palm to his forehead. Sucking in a breath, she said, “He’s burning up. Did you give him any medicine before bed?”

“Yeah, but...” I shrugged. The medicine wasn’t working.

Caroline sighed as if she were seventy instead of seventeen. “I shouldn’t have left you home alone with him.”

I found myself shrugging again as if it were no big deal. The resentment I’d been feeling toward her all night for leaving me stuck with Colton just kind of slipped away. She was a kid too and shouldn’t have to put her life on hold just to take care of us. She should get to go out with a boy if she wanted to.

It was our f*cking mother’s job to take care of the sick eight-year-old, except Daisy hadn’t been home in...oh, was it four or five days now?

Who knew?

Who cared?

Life was easier when she wasn’t around.

“He’d still have a fever if you’d been here,” I said lamely, trying to make Caroline feel better.

She heaved out another sigh and rubbed her face. “I wish Noel was home.”

Me too. Our older brother might’ve been stricter on us than Caroline was, but he had kept an order to things. Bills got paid, groceries never ran out, broken things were fixed, and sick members of the family healed quickly. Though he sent home every extra penny he made since he’d left for college and called on the daily to check in on us, things around here were definitely slipping since he’d been gone.

“What? You think he could miraculously heal Colton?” I tried to tease. Noel was awesome, sure, but he wasn’t that awesome.

Caroline sent me a dry look. “At least I wouldn’t have to be the one to deal with this.”

It was funny, I realized, or maybe it was just sad. But neither of us wanted our mother to come home to shoulder the responsibility. We hadn’t even considered her as a form of help.

“Get some sleep,” I said, awkwardly patting Caroline’s arm. “Maybe it won’t suck so bad in the morning.”

“As if.” She snorted, letting me know she totally didn’t believe my words any more than I did. But she climbed up onto the top bunk anyway. “‘Night, bubba.”

“‘Night.” I helped pull the blankets up over her and then I stood there a moment, watching both her and Colton on their respective mattresses—safe and sound, for now—before I turned away and slogged from the room.

To the couch it was for me.

I had no idea how Noel had lived for eighteen years, sleeping on that uncomfortable hunk of junk. It was too short and hard as a rock. I didn’t even like to sit on the ratted piece of furniture.

Realizing the front room was too cold to sleep in without some kind of blanket, I shivered and rubbed my arms before I backtracked to the second bedroom in our single-wide trailer. But I paused just outside the door, hesitating to push my way inside. Daisy wasn’t home, yet it still felt strange going inside her domain to fetch an extra blanket where they were stored in her closet.

All the sex and drugs she did took place in her room. Noel had made sure she’d kept all her shit behind this closed door, and for some reason she’d followed his edict even after he’d moved off to college...or maybe she wasn’t aware he no longer lived here. Whatever. This room was Daisy’s den of iniquity, and it smelled gross.

I wrinkled my nose as I crept inside. No idea why I was tiptoeing; no one was here. But I did anyway.

Wanting to get in and out as quickly as possible, I dashed to her closet, slid open the door and yanked the first blanket-feeling thing I found down as soon as my fingers sought one in the dark. On my race back to the exit, however, I miscalculated in the dark and cracked my shinbone on the baseboard of her bed.

“Motherf*cker.” Dropping the blanket on the bed, I skipped in a circle on one foot as I bent my knee up to my chest and clutched my throbbing leg.

Unable to keep my balance, I plopped down on the edge of the mattress and hissed through my pain until I thought I could stand again.

Instead of pushing to my feet, though, I glanced back at the rest of the unmade bed behind me. All that expanse of available sleeping space...just going to waste. Most of the sheets were rumpled up in one corner and who knew what she’d been doing the last time she’d been here, but temptation seized me anyway. I didn’t even care how rank the place smelled of ass and stale alcohol. There was an empty, soft mattress right here, just waiting to be used.

The likelihood of Daisy returning home before morning had to be about one in, oh, a million. And the couch didn’t smell much better, anyway.

I was so tired, and my ass had already sunk into the lush softness. It would be easy to just stretch out and... Ahhh. Bliss. I tugged the fresh blanket I’d just fetched from the closet over me and closed my eyes, sighing as soon as my head hit the pillow.