Saturday, May 2, 2015

Brendon Walker

I’d been fighting the urge to leave the impromptu welcome-to-the-neighborhood—or town, as was the case here— party for the last half hour. Ever since Cheyenne walked into the room, looking good enough to eat. Chestnut hair with subtle red highlights, green eyes and flawless, tanned skin had never looked so good. On anyone.

But leaving wasn’t an option. Not unless I wanted to listen to my father ride my ass for the next two days about my attitude. Yep. Been there, done that, the T-shirt didn’t even fit anymore.

The old man had apparently had enough of my shitty mood and had decided to tell me so. One thing Curtis Walker wasn’t was subtle. Just a month earlier, the man, in no uncertain terms, had informed me that I needed to get my shit together and mighty damn quick.

“Boy,” Pop greeted when I walked into my parents’ house after being summoned by my mother that morning.

“Pop,” I replied, watching my father closely before glancing around the room, wondering where my mother was, but unable to ask before he started talking.

“Have a seat,” he stated as he eased into his recliner.

I opted to sit on the couch, although I would’ve preferred to stand. I hoped this wasn’t going to last long, and that I’d be on my way in the very near future.

“What’s up, Pop?” I inquired when my father didn’t launch into the reason I was summoned over. “You wanted to talk?”

“I do.”

“About?”

“About you.”

Well, wasn’t that just fucking great? A lecture.

“This mood”—he swung his hand around as though encompassing something—“it’s beginnin’ to worry your mother and me.”

It was beginning to worry me, too, but I didn’t speak up.

“Is there somethin’ we can do? Somethin’ to help you move forward?”

“Move forward?” I asked, incredulity ringing in my tone.

Was my father serious?

“We know you’ve had a hard time with Braydon movin’ on with his life, but the way you’re treatin’ others ain’t sittin’ right with me, boy.”

Shit.

I knew my attitude these days left something to be desired, but I was having a hard time snapping out of the funk I was in. I’d tried. Oh, how I’d tried, but as it turned out, without much to look forward to, I was having a hard time merely putting one foot in front of the other.

“Bren, I get that it’s hard. But you need to get your shit together, move forward. Find somethin’ for yourself.”

“I know. I’ve tried.”

“Well, how ’bout this? Why don’t we try together?”

“And how do you suppose we do that, Pop?” I retorted snidely.

“How ’bout you start with a smile. That might help.”

“How do you figure that?” I sighed.

“Just give it a shot. Then we’ll go from there.”

Part of me had been pissed—the bigger part—at being treated like a fucking recalcitrant child. The other part of me had understood exactly where my father was coming from, and as it turned out, the smiling thing actually helped. More so when my father and I went out to the barn that day and many days to follow. Keeping busy had turned out to be the best thing for me. It was almost amusing how much my brothers had been tiptoeing around me for the last year without ever riding my ass for it. And that, as well as my father’s straightforwardness, told me that I’d been acting like a dick.

God, had it fucking been that long? A whole year since my twin brother, Braydon, had hightailed it down to Devil’s Bend to wrap his mind around the fact that he’d fallen in love with Jessie and didn’t want to share her with me anymore?

Where the hell had the time gone?

Oh, well, that was easy. I knew exactly where the time had gone. It had been drowned in a bottle. Many bottles, to be exact. Jack, Jim, Jose, Johnny… They’d all become my good friends for months on end.

As I sat on the wooden chair that acted as seating in the large living room, I frowned at the beer in my hand.

No, I didn’t have a problem, even I knew that much. And it wasn’t denial talking, either. Sure, I’d indulged in too much liquor for far too long, but I’d stopped without a problem. A lot of that was due to driving headlong into a fucking tree, but that was beside the point. How I’d managed to avoid a DUI for that one, I still wasn’t sure, but I was grateful nonetheless.

These days, I still had the occasional craving, but I limited myself to beer and rarely even that. Lifting the brown bottle to the light, I saw that it was still three-quarters of the way full, and I’d been nursing the damn thing for almost an hour. Ever since I had arrived at Cheyenne’s house with the rest of my family and prepared to surprise her with a housewarming party.

Did I want to be there? Yes and no. More no than yes.

Okay, that was a big whopping fucking lie. I wanted to be there more than I wanted the goddamn beer in my hand, that much was true. More than I wanted to inhale the same air as Cheyenne. More than I wanted to take her in my arms, pull her small body against me and never let her go.

Hell, I wanted to be there more than I wanted my next fucking breath. And that was a helluva lot.

Not that I had any intention of admitting that to anyone.

Ever.

I wanted to see Cheyenne, even if it meant staring at her from across the room, watching the easy way she talked to my family, admiring the smile on her perfect pink lips as she spoke. Which was what I was doing now.

Yeah, I fucking wanted to be there.

But I didn’t want to want to be there, and that was the problem.

“You okay?”

I pulled my gaze away from the mesmerizing country star who had somehow, without even trying, inserted herself right smack-dab in the middle of my life, and looked up to see my future sister-in-law, Jessie, peering down at me, concern marring her pretty face.

“Perfect,” I lied.

“Sounds like it.” She took a seat beside me in another hard-as-hell wooden chair that—surprise, surprise—needed a good sanding and a coat of varnish. Not to mention, it didn’t even match the one I was sitting in.

The chairs were lined up side by side as though we were at a high school dance, so when Jessie sat down, she pressed up against me from hip to knee. A year ago, just the feel of her against me would’ve had my dick screaming halle-fucking-lujah. Certainly not the case anymore.

These days I was tempted to move away from her. Wouldn’t benefit me to incite my twin’s possessive side, something I hadn’t fucking known Braydon even had in the first goddamn place.

Sighing, I took a sip of my warm beer and pretended Braydon’s fiancée wasn’t staring at me as though I was minutes away from being admitted to the loony bin.

I wasn’t, but my family certainly didn’t know that. Not with the way I’d been acting for the last year.

“She’s beautiful,” Jessie said softly.

I glanced over at her and frowned.

She simply laughed at me. “What? She is.” Jessie leaned closer, her shoulder bumping mine. “And you, of all people, should know that, considerin’ you’ve been starin’ at her for the last half hour.”

Sipping my beer, I pretended she wasn’t talking, but once more, I found my eyes homing in on the beautiful, dark-haired woman who was standing toe to toe with my brother-in-law, Beau, their arms linked together as they each took a shot and then laughed. I smiled. Their arms twined together like that reminded me of a twig wrapped around a ninety-year-old oak tree.

Lord have mercy, the woman’s laugh made my balls tingle. My overzealous reaction to the petite beauty was fucking absurd was what it was, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what the hell to do about it.

The problem was, Cheyenne Montgomery didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

Not like that anyway.

When it came to Cheyenne, my idea of getting to know her consisted of having her small, curvy body spread out on my bed, naked and writhing while I gripped her slim hips and pounded my dick into her sweet, wet pussy.

She, on the other hand, was thinking I could take a long walk off a very short pier.

Not that I blamed her. I’d earned the title of World-Class Dickhead for how I had reacted to her in the past and I would be the first to admit it. The way I’d treated her—calling her names and making unsubstantiated accusations—was the equivalent of me taking that title belt and flaunting it like I was a fucking prizefighter, holding it high in the air and shouting to the world, “I’m a giant fucking dickhead and I’m proud of it!”

But I wasn’t. Proud, that is.

I hated myself for the way I’d handled my attraction to her, and that had only added to the depression that had consumed me for longer than I could remember. I’d been on an emotional roller coaster ride for the last few months, ever since the Sunday dinner when Cheyenne showed up at my mother’s request. We’d sat together that night to eat, but it hadn’t been until Cheyenne asked me to talk to her that I’d realized how much I had to atone for.

“Are you really okay with me bein’ here?” Cheyenne asked when we stepped outside.

“Why should that matter?” I countered, instantly going on the defensive, as I always did with her.

“Because it does. You have to understand, I’m not here to piss you off, I promise. Travis is my friend and your mother invited me. I can’t seem to tell her no.”

“And you shouldn’t,” I replied, sighing as I did. “Look, I get that I’ve been an asshole and I understand that you don’t like me, but I’m doin’ my best to stay out of the way.”

Cheyenne’s eyes narrowed as she studied my face, and the words that followed might’ve changed the course of my life. “I don’t want you to stay out of the way. In fact, I’d kinda like it if we could find a way to be friends.”

Friends. That was what Cheyenne had proposed that night.

As much as I’d wanted to tell her that the last thing I wanted was to be her friend, I hadn’t. I merely nodded and promised to make an effort to do exactly that. In my head, I’d made a bigger promise, although that one had been to myself. Even if it killed me, I was going to do my best to prove to Cheyenne that I wasn’t the world’s biggest dickhead.

Between that vow and my father’s heart-to-heart, I didn’t have much choice but to figure out a way to move on and stop bringing everyone around me down.

I wasn’t quite sure how well I was doing on that front, but I had to give myself props for trying. After all, I’d once heard that admitting you had a problem was the first step.

And I certainly had a fucking problem.

And she was five feet one inches of sexy, breathtaking female.

Yep, my attraction to Cheyenne Montgomery was my only damn problem these days.