I hang my helmet off the back of my bike and shake out my hair, then take the hair band from my wrist and pull my locks up into a ponytail.
“First, there’s no concrete proof that I’m related to Trevor or Fallon.”
“Yet,” he interrupts. “Trust me. You look just like them.”
I barge on. “Second, are you one of the ‘lost’ siblings?”
Knox laughs. “Me? Shit, I wish. Fallon’s good people. Who else do you know that would take three families in, no questions asked? I mean, come on. I was living in a shelter less than a year ago, and now I live in this.” He motions grandly with outstretched arms. “Trev and Fallon and the rest of the motley clan are inside. Come on.”
Knox reaches for my hand and pulls me along like a teacher would one of her first-grade students. He pushes against the massive double doors with his free hand until one opens, and calls out, “Trev! She’s here!”
The sound of running feet gets closer until a younger blond boy with thick, round glasses slides across the slick waxed floor like Tom Cruise inRisky Businessand stops in front of me.
“Damn. You’re hot.”
Knox gently whacks the boy upside his head. “Cut it out, Butch. Show some respect. Remember what Fallon told us.”
Butch lowers his head and mumbles, “Never disrespect a woman, and words can hurt worse than punches.”
“Now leave her alone and go finish your homework.”
“But it’s math,” he groans, looking so adorable in his Coke-bottle glasses, I melt a little.
“Tell you what,” I say, bending down so we are eye to eye. “I’m a whiz at math. Why don’t you finish what you need to do, and I can check over it once I’m done talking with Trevor.”
“Yeah?” Butch asks hopefully.
“It would be my pleasure.” I suppress a giggle as I watch him slip and slide down the hall like a deer on ice.
“That was really nice of you.” Knox is looking at me with a serious expression.
I shrug. “We hood rats have to stick together.”
“I doubt that,” he replies, looking me up and down, but it’s different than how Austin did it yesterday. Knox is doing it in a way that says he’s trying to figure me out, not get in my pants.
“Let’s just say I think we may have more in common with each other than you think.”
The air in the room suddenly becomes charged, like lightning heating and splitting the air molecules as it races down to the ground. It makes my skin prickle.
“This her?”
I liken Fallon Montgomery’s entrance into the room to that of an apex predator suddenly appearing. They are top of the food web for a reason. Fallon is a very imposing figure. And to use Butch’s turn of phrase, Fallon is hot. Okay, that may sound a little creepy since I’m more than likely related to him, but still. It’s apparent that one thing Phillip Montgomery passed down to each of his sons was good genes. And yes, I whole-heartedly agree with Knox. Seeing Fallon and Trevor side by side erases almost any doubt that we are related. The three of us look too much alike for it to be a coincidence.
“Seeing as I’m right here, why don’t you ask me yourself?”
Fallon’s lips twitch. “Yeah, she’s one of us.”
“That’s still to be determined,” I remind him, but I feel almost certain of the outcome now.
Knox walks over to Fallon and mutters something in his ear, then smiles at me. “See ya later, hood rat,” he says and runs up the steps of the enormous, curved staircase.
“Come on,” Fallon abruptly says.
I’m pretty sure he’s used to everyone jumping to attention to obey his every command. So, I decide to stand there. No one orders me around and tells me what to do. I may be the poor trash from the bad side of town, but I have enough self-respect to demand the same, even from rich pricks who think they are better than me.
He notices that I’m not coming, and that trying-not-to-smile lip twitch reappears. “Please,” he adds.
“See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
