Ancient history bullshit, anyway.
I shoved all the unwelcome thoughts off, rolled my eyes as I ruffled Aly’s messy hair. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t have a whole lot of room to talk there, Aly Cat. You look like you got about as much sleep this weekend as I did. Livin’ up to your name?”
Dark bags sat heavily under her green eyes, and her near-black hair was all tangled. She was wearing an old stained up t-shirt that had to be Jared’s because the girl was swimming in it. Still, my sister was beautiful. Inside and out. No wonder my dumb ass best friend couldn’t keep his hands off of her.
She groaned a little, but somehow the sound was filled with pure affection. “Ella decided she was hungry every twenty minutes last night. I have no clue how I even got out of bed this morning. I feel like a walking zombie.”
Jared suddenly appeared behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist as he tugged her against his chest. He buried his face somewhere in her neck. “Apparently Ella likes her mommy as much as I do.”
I’d just about lost my goddamned mind when I found out these two were hooking up. Not because I didn’t like Jared. He’d been my best friend since I was a little kid. Sure, we’d fought like brothers, messed with each other until one of us was crying, but bottom line, we were thicker than blood. Brothers. We were always the first to have the other’s back.
Until the day Jared caused that car accident. The one that stole his mother’s life. That accident had stolen my best friend, too.
An old kind of pain hit me, and my chest tightened. That car accident had stolen everything. Changed everything. None of us had come out looking the same.
Afterward, the guy had fucked away his life, landed himself in juvie then disappeared for years. I never expected to see him again. When he showed up here last summer, there was no question he was still haunted. I recognized it immediately, because I recognized the same bullshit in myself.
Then he’d gone and taken a liking to my little sister, and all hell broke loose. He and I were too much alike, and I wasn’t about to let him bring my sister down. She deserved so much better than that.
Of course the guy had proven me wrong in every way. He loved her. Wholly and completely. Loved her in a way that girls like Aly deserved, with respect and care and devotion.
How could I stand in the way of that?
Didn’t mean it didn’t make me a little sick to my stomach. I took it upon myself to razz the asshole every chance I got. “Watch yourself, man, no matter which way you cut it, that’s still my little sister.”
He nuzzled her more, this time lifting his gaze to meet mine, the mischief in his blue eyes meeting the challenge. “And no matter which way you cut it, she’s still my wife. This girl belongs to me.”
Aly grinned wildly and leaned back into his hold.
My chest tightened more, because it made me happy to see her this way. Happy she got to have this. Not many of us did. Love like that didn’t come around often and she’d snatched it up when she saw it, even when it’d seemed dangerous and impossible. But she knew it was worth it.
I’d been the fool who’d let that kind of crazy love go. Didn’t matter that I’d been just a stupid punk kid, barely sixteen, or that we were nothing alike and the entire world was against us.
None of it mattered. Not at fucking all. The only thing that mattered was it’d been real.
Cringing, I put a cap on those thoughts, because I wasn’t about to go there. Stupid shit that I couldn’t deal with. Nor did I want to. All it did was leave me feeling pissy and sorry for myself, scorned by a girl I’d always thought would be mine.