Worth It (Forbidden Men, #6)(50)

He kept his mouth against me and continued to hold me close, so I wrapped my hands around his forearm and clung back. Nestling onto my side so I could press my ear to his slowing heartbeat, I closed my eyes and enjoyed what I did have with him.

“He doesn’t hit us a lot, you know,” he said out of the blue. “I don’t want you to think he just wails on us every day.”

I turned my nose into his shirt and inhaled his clean, Knoxy scent. “Okay,” I said.

“As long as we stay out of his way, he pretty much forgets we even exist unless one of us really gets in his face, and then it’s just a single wallop, and he’s done.”

“And you got in his face?” I guessed, stroking my hand up the muscles in his arms.

He shook his head. “No, not this time. Someone stole a bottle of his Wild Turkey, and he blamed me.” With a snort, he added, “If he’d been thinking, he’d have known it couldn’t have been me, though, because I was at work last night when it went missing.”

“Who do you think took it?”

Lifting his shoulder into a half shrug, he guessed, “Rocket probably. But I’m not sure. I just knew it had to be one of the siblings, and since they’re all smaller than me, I took the punishment.”

My fingers wandered over his shoulder and up the side of his neck. “Do you do that a lot? Take the punishment for your younger siblings?”

After he gave another casual shrug, I decided he probably did. “You’re such a good big brother.”

“Meh.” He shook his head, disagreeing.

“Tell me,” I murmured, scraping my fingers over his prickled jawline. “How much of the money that you make at the plant do you save away, and how much do you spend on your family?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, shifting under me as if suddenly uncomfortable. “Maybe...fifty, fifty.”

“Errr.” I made the sound of a buzzer, telling him he’d given the wrong answer. “Try again.”

He sighed. “Fine. I probably squirrel away...twenty percent.”

My smile bloomed. “So I stand by my statement. You, Knox Parker, are an amazing brother.”

His eyes glittered as he gazed at me without responding.

My eyebrows lowered. “What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head but kept watching me in that thoughtful way.

“No. Tell me. Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“It’s nothing. I just...” His cheeks went flushed and my mouth fell open. What the heck? What had I done to make him blush? Finally, he glanced away and mumbled, “I just like being with you. You make me happy.”

I drew in a shuddery breath, tempted to spill giddy, girly tears. When I’d first bumped into him weeks ago and had daydreamed about his beautiful smile and windblown hair, I never in my wildest dreams would’ve guessed he’d be saying something like this to me, and look like he meant every breath of it.

I licked my lips, just...overcome. I really did need to do something to cool myself down, or I’d blurt out how much I’d fallen for him.

So I said, “That’s because I know kangaroos can jump higher than the Empire State Building.”

A grin cracked his lips, and he shook his head. Then he gave a silent laugh. “You’re delusional.”

I gasped in mock outrage. “What? You actually think the Empire State Building can jump higher?”

This time, he laughed out loud and grasped my hand. Staring at our interlaced fingers, he murmured, “I even live to hear your corny jokes.”

The brush of tree branches overhead as they swayed in the gentle wind seemed to creak through my bones. I stopped breathing, too afraid to ruin the moment with even an exhale.

He sounded so serious and reluctant to tell me this, so I knew he meant what he said, deeply. When he finally darted a glance my way—his eyes full of uncertainty and fear—I rushed out a breath. Oh, crap. I needed to say something back and quit swimming in my internal happy dance.

“I like being with you, too,” I whispered.

“I’m serious, City.” His gaze burned into mine. “Coming here every day to be with you is like...” He shook his head and glanced out between the trees. “It’s not even real, it’s so nice. It’s like some kind of dream.”

“I know what you mean.” Every morning when I woke, my first thought was to wonder if the day before had really happened, or if it’d just been a lovely hallucination.

With a sigh, he pressed his mouth to my temple. “What’re we going to do?” he said into my hair.

I stiffened because he made it sound as if we were doomed, but then I realized... maybe we were. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, about us.” Pulling back, he stared into my eyes with a worry that sparked my own fears. “Outside these woods, what do we have? I can’t meet you anywhere in public. Hell, I probably can’t even talk to you at school when it starts back up. Neither of our families would ever let us stay together. Your father would probably have me murdered. Mine would disown me.”

I hugged myself as the truth behind his words made me shiver with dread. “Are you saying you want to stop meeting?”

“No!” He tugged me closer against his chest, his eyes large. As he buried his nose into my hair, he murmured, “God, no.” Then he kissed my temple and smoothed stray locks out of my face. “Getting to see you is the highlight of my day. I don’t think I could handle not seeing you anymore.”