Brazen and Breathless (Untouchable Book 6) Read online

  “No need to be so excited to see me,” I told him as I kept him going, feet stumbling until he hit the side of the building. “You put out the kind of invitation you did, you had to know we were showing up.”

  “Um…” one of the guys behind me said.

  “Did I stutter?” Jake asked.

  The sound of feet on pavement moving away answered that question.

  Noah’s eyes widened.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing…” Dude had balls, I’d give him that. He was still sputtering with my hand on his face, so I just tightened my grip until he shut up.

  “I don’t endorse violence,” I told him in a calm voice. I hadn’t been lying about being calm. I was not raging or furious.

  Not at the moment.

  I had a purpose here and a message to deliver.

  When Noah tried to speak again, I flexed my fingers against his face. The pressure contorted his mouth, and tears flashed into his eyes.

  “Better, now you’re paying attention. This is the point where I speak and you listen. You apparently didn’t hear us when we told you steer clear of my sister. Not only did you not listen, you decided to take pictures of our girlfriend and then use those as leverage to hurt Trina. This is not acceptable on any level. Are you following this conversation?”

  He made a grunting sound.

  “A simple nod or a shake of your head will do. This is not a difficult question.”

  Noah gave a little jerk of a nod.

  “Now, in addition to trying to hurt my sister, which is a no go, let us be blunt. You attempted to use my sister to hurt our girlfriend, because you were lashing out at us. Yes? Or no?”

  The kid cut a look past me, but resignation crawled into his eyes. Yeah, there was no help back there. I applied a little more pressure until Noah groaned and reached out to latch onto my wrist like this would save him.

  “Yes,” he squeezed out. “Stupid idea.”

  “On that, we agree.” I let go of his face, and he let out a choked breath and stared at me.

  “Man, I was just—”

  I slammed my fist out, and the satisfying crack of his cheekbone echoed through the alcove between the buildings where I’d pinned him. I didn’t give him time to drop before I plowed my other fist into his gut. When he went down this time, bile and blood spattered the pavement as he retched.

  Deep breaths. Deep cleansing breaths tucked the edges of my temper back as I paced a half-circle around him.

  “What was your first mistake?” Might as well make it an object lesson.

  “Telling your sister,” he wheezed.

  “Ehhh.” Jake made a buzzing noise from where he stood. “Wrong answer.”

  I hauled the guy back up and shoved him back against the wall. One arm braced against his chest to keep him place. I ignored the additionally vile scent of sour vomit accompanying the smoke clinging to him.

  “One strike. What was your first mistake?”

  Noah gave me a wild-eyed look, then again at Jake, like that was gonna help him, but he finally sagged again. “The pictures of your girlfriend?”

  “You don’t sound certain,” I mused. “Do you think that was your first mistake or not?”

  Sucking in a painful gasp of air, Noah nodded. “Deciding to get even with you by using her and your sister was my first mistake.”

  “Ding ding ding,” Jake said. “We have a winner. What do you know, he can be taught.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, still studying him. Sweat dotted the other guy’s forehead, and his breath came in sharp little huffs. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “What were second and third mistakes?”

  “Taking the pictures and showing them to your sister.”

  Close enough.

  “Do you feel like a big man now? Does that get you off? Making girls cry?”

  “Fuck,” Noah swore, grimacing. “No. I just—you fucking humiliated me, man. Treated me like dog shit.”

  “Yeah, we didn’t scrape you off, we just made some rules clear. Rules you apparently struggled to follow. Then you made it worse…and I’m not okay with that.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “You’re going to walk real carefully for a while. You don’t look at Frankie. You don’t even think her name. If I see your phone or the phones of any of your friends pointed in her direction, I know who I’ll be looking for.”

  Jake cracked his knuckles for emphasis.

  Noah swallowed again, then licked his lips as I took a step back.

  “As for my sister…”

  “I’ll forget I know her,” Noah promised, hands up.

  “And you’re going to apologize,” Jake said. “Publicly. You’re going to own up to being a big bag of dicks. No details. You take full responsibility. You don’t tag her, and you should probably steer clear of anything resembling a date until you figure out how to treat a girl right.”

  “Are you for fucking real?” Noah seemed to rally, and I chuckled.

  “As real as it gets, or do you want me to be the less than reasonable one you deal with?” Jake asked.

  I cocked my head to the side as the calculations went across Noah’s expression. His face was starting to swell, and I was pretty sure I’d at least fractured a bone there. He was still pale and sweaty.

  “Fine, what the fuck, man… I’ll forget your sister, your girlfriend. I’d really like to fucking forget all of you.”

  “I’m sure you would,” I told him. “Unfortunately for you, we have friends in your grade and the juniors. Trina’s gonna be at this school next year, and I’ll know if you go anywhere near her or anyone else. So…you just think about what stories you want us to hear.”

  I gripped his shoulder before I slammed my fist into his stomach again. The kid folded over my arm.

  “I don’t want to talk to you again, Noah. We clear?”

  “Crystal,” he wheezed.

  With that, I let him drop and then backed away.

  “You should probably get a move on. The bell rings in thirty.”

  Pivoting, I walked away from the little ink-stain and stripped off my gloves as I walked.

  “Not bad,” Jake said as he fell into step. “You were really calm.”

  “I told you I was.”

  He chuckled and slung an arm over my shoulder. “You need to change your jacket.”

  I glanced down at the blood on the front. Fuck.

  “Yeah.”

  I stripped it off and put it in the trunk along with the gloves. It was frigid outside, but I had on a long-sleeved shirt. It would do.

  Once we were back in the car, Jake rolled his head from side to side. “Feel better?”

  I thought about it. “Yeah,” I said. “I do. I’m glad he decided to be reasonable.”

  Jake invited me to join him and Frankie at the gym for her first “boxing” lesson, but I’d had to focus a little more on Trina and Mom over the course of that week. Not that I didn’t want to spend the time with Frankie. I’d managed to slip back over a couple of nights and steal into her bed after she was already asleep, whether it was Jake, Bubba, or Archie sleeping in there.

  We were still waiting to hear from the attorney on what was going on with Frankie’s so-called trust. Archie didn’t trust it at all. Neither did I. But he had more resources for handling that one, so I just kept tabs on it.

  Trina had gone to her first therapy session with Mom, and I’d been waiting at home for them with dinner. Not that Sis wanted anything to eat. She’d basically grunted at me and vanished into her room, without her phone.

  She was still grounded from it, since Mom took it away after everything that happened. There was no mistaking the tired around the edges as Mom sat at the table with me. “You didn’t have to bring us dinner.” The chastising seemed almost perfunctory, the tired in her voice betraying her.

  “I know. I wanted to be here for both of you. I know that can’t be easy.”

  “No,”
she admitted. “But your father showed up and he put some effort in, so maybe this will work.”

  “I hope so, but I really want Trina to focus on her and you to focus on you.” ’Cause, honestly, fuck Dad.

  “Sweetie,” Mom said as she started to stand, and I waved her back to the table. “I was going to get the wine.”

  “I can open it,” I told her and got the bottle out from the fridge.

  “We’re not going to discuss how well you can do that.”

  “Just like we don’t discuss the first time I got drunk,” I said over my shoulder as I worked the corkscrew in. “Or the second.”

  She sighed. “You always told me when you and the boys planned to drink. Usually, you all stayed at Archie’s and you had Frankie with you at least until last summer.”

  That had me giving her a look. “What does Frankie being there have to do with anything?”

  “She kept you boys in line. Most of the time, you thought twice about every decision if she was there. You have since you were a little boy. Last summer, not so much…”

  Yeah, we had gotten a little stupid over the summer. I couldn’t argue that. I poured her glass of wine and then carried the bottle and glass over to the table. “Mom,” I said as I sat down opposite her. “I’m fine. I’m good. I’m worried about Sis. I’ve been worried about her for a while but this…”

  “I never wanted you to know,” she said abruptly, and I frowned. “Your father told me that you found out. He also told me you hit him.”

  “Apparently not hard enough.” Why the fuck was he telling Mom that?

  “Don’t get mad,” she said, though it was a little fucking late for that. “He wanted to apologize to me…and it’s the first time since everything happened that he apologized for making choices that hurt me.”

  Huh.

  “And choices that hurt you and Trina.”

  I didn’t really have a comment on that, so I just pulled the lasagna open and started dishing it out to her and to me. I’d picked it up from the one Italian restaurant I knew she liked. Garlic bread too.

  “Coop, look at me.”

  I met Mom’s gaze.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, Mom…”

  “I do,” she argued with me, then raised a hand to stop my disagreement. “I do. Because I leaned on you pretty hard after I threw your father out.”

  It was the first time we’d tackled this particular subject. He’d left, that I’d always known. And the fights, those had started over an affair. But I hadn’t known the finer details.

  Part of me hadn’t wanted to know. I’d gone to Frankie’s to get away from it, sometimes taking Sis with me to spare her.

  “But I did that, and that’s on me. You didn’t have to be my sturdy boy and prop me up, and you did it anyway.”

  “You’re my mom,” I told her, as if it summed it all up. “You weren’t the one who messed up.”

  “We all mess up in different ways, and don’t look at me like that, Cooper. I’m not excusing his choices. I’m not even comparing them. I’m just saying that I also made some questionable ones. Now…we didn’t really talk about this Frankie thing that night.”

  I took a bite of the garlic breadstick and eyed her. Eating at least kept me from saying anything snappy, and I preferred to listen to everything said before I formulated a response. But the crap with Noah and Trina this week had left me on edge. So far, the little shit had done exactly as instructed, and Trina even admitted he’d apologized to her over a text message and that was the last contact she’d had from him.

  I’d let it go.

  “I’m not comfortable with it,” Mom said. “The idea all of you boys are having that mature a relationship with one girl. I don’t know if it’s fair to you or to her.”

  After dipping the breadstick in the sauce, I took another bite.

  “That said, I also don’t know that it’s unfair because all of you are being honest with each other, and I have to admit I’m not entirely sure how you’re all doing that. Talking to boys at your age was hard enough, and even now, after everything or maybe especially because of everything, your father and I never seem to be able to get our point across easily. At least until this thing with Trina.” She frowned. “He seems very determined.”

  “Okay,” I said around the bite of food I chewed. “I’m glad he’s being there for you guys. Sis loves him, and I think she feels his absence more than we do.”

  “She’s younger,” Mom admonished me. “She’s a daddy’s girl and it’s hard for her, especially now that she knows. Part of why I never wanted either of you to know. Another fail on my part…”

  “Mom,” I said and shook my head. “Stop it. You’re human. Maybe you didn’t hang the moon and you can’t catch a star, but you’re still the best mom ever. You’re human. You’re allowed mistakes.”

  “So are you,” she said softly.

  “Frankie’s not a mistake. What we have…it’s never been a mistake. It’s always been her, it’s always going to be her.”

  “But can it really be that serious or that invested if she can’t commit to one of you?”

  “We’re not asking her to,” I said simply. “I know she’s committed to me. I know she loves me. I know exactly how important I am to her. Just like I know how important the guys are. And she’s… She makes everything better, Mom. She makes me better. She makes them better. We’re stronger together. All of us.”

  “I don’t understand that.” She sounded almost sorrowful. “I want to understand, baby, so I can be there for you.” She took a sip of her wine, then licked her lips as she shook her head. “I’m so worried this can’t possibly work. Someone always gets hurt…especially if she decides one of those other boys is better for her. Not that you’re not perfect…”

  I chuckled. Honestly, this was a way better reaction than I’d hoped for, so I could roll with it. “None of them can be a more perfect me.”

  Mom eyed me.

  I spread my hands. “Seriously, Archie’s awesome, Jake’s got skills, and Bubba’s not bad, but none of them are me. None of them have my history with her. They can’t do for her what I can. Just like I can’t be them.”

  Staring at me, Mom swirled the wine in her glass. “I don’t know what I did right with you, baby, but I hope this works out the way you want it. I love Frankie too, and I want you both to be happy.”

  “Right back atcha, Mom.”

  A couple of days later, I ran into Archie and Bubba in the parking lot. We didn’t always arrive home at the same time, but I’d been running deliveries and they’d both had plans or work. Course, Archie had probably been building something or plotting the takedown of the civilized world with his grandfather.

  Still, it was amusing, right up until we let ourselves in the apartment. The lights were on in the living room. Text books were open and laptops abandoned. Hell, the television was even on, and Tiddles sat atop the television stand, staring at the characters moving on the screen.

  A second later, a soft cry echoed through the apartment, and I grinned. “Hell yes,” I said, dropping my shit and tossing my keys. “See you boys later.”

  With that, I headed straight back to the bedroom and pushed the door open. Not only was it unlocked, it wasn’t even closed all the way. Frankie sprawled on the bed with Jake’s face buried between her thighs, and I grinned.

  Closing the door behind me, I announced, “Player three entering the game.”

  Her laughter and his was all the welcome I needed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  You Make Loving Fun

  Frankie

  It had been a long week in some ways and blown past me in others. Ian and I were working on new songs, even though we hadn’t heard anything from the producers about the demos he’d submitted. Most of the time, I blocked out that we were waiting to hear so I didn’t throw up from anxiety. There were so many things we were waiting on. Including submitting our acceptances to the various program
s.

  Archie and Jake continued to be secretive about their project, and Coop had been tied up with his family. I wanted to be there for him more, but I also didn’t want to get in the way and they needed to focus on them. If not for the fact that Coop kept showing up to sleep with me, I would probably chase him down.

  The weird thing about being so busy—we were all busy—we still managed to find time for each other. Not as much as before, sometimes it was just all of us hanging out rather than one on one, but we made the time. When Jake sprang going to the gym with me to work on my boxing, I’d actually been excited.

  We went to the gym he and the team used, which I left me with a flicker of doubt. It was hard not to since what happened with some of the other guys on the team. But Jake promised it would be fine. It was more than fine. There were a few other guys there doing weights and stuff, but other than calling out greetings, they totally ignored us.

  I mean like utterly ignored, didn’t even look in our direction. Course, Jake stripped down to just shorts and taped his hands, and I forgot why the hell we’d come here, too.

  “Um, do I need to change?” Not totally drooling. Yet. But damn.

  He grinned, sweeping a look over me. Since he’d said gym, I’d worn a tank top, sports bra, and yoga pants. It was too frigid for shorts, but I could strip down further if he needed me too. “Damn, Baby Girl, don’t tempt me.”

  Yeah, so that thing about there being other people present? I didn’t really care anymore. I slept with Jake near nightly and showered with him several times a week, but there was just something panty melting about him standing in the middle of the chilly gym in nothing but a pair of workout shorts and nothing else.

  It was a good look.

  “Okay.” I did my best to not sound disappointed. Pretty sure he wasn’t buying it.

  “Be good, Baby Girl. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

  I cocked my head as he began taping up my knuckles. “What if I don’t want to be good?”