Jules’s eyes flutter shut, and she tucks her head against my chest. In moments like these it’s hard to tell if she’s still acting. Until she grabs a handful of my ass and purrs. “Aww…I’m excited, too, Snooky Poo.”
Startled, I leap, growling by her ear. “You always have to take it too far…” I complain in a whisper, wrenching myself out of her grasp.
She snickers under her breath. “PDA was part of our deal, Pumpkin Pudding. Clause four. Remember?”
Right then, Rocco strolls by chuckling, the disassembled pieces of the bookshelf clutched in his hands. “Break it up, lovebirds. We have work to do, and I don’t have all day.”
I fight off my own smile as we all get back to work. Julissa Mei Lannister will be the death of me. She was right—I probably should get my will in order.
Once we’ve filled the moving truck to capacity, Jules and Laney start piling things into Laney’s car. By the way Jules is going in circles—checking and re-checking the bathroom cabinet, the kitchen drawers, under the bed—I can tell that she’s stalling. She doesn’t quite seem ready to move out of her home with Laney. So I decide to give the two of them some space.
Rocco and I jump into the truck, and I tell the girls to catch up to us back at my place.
“Damn. Lincoln and Jules sitting in a tree, huh?” Rocco muses as I’m steering the truck away from the curb.
“Yeah. Definitely,” I say admittedly not in the most convincing tone. “We’re in…love.” I try not to gag on the L word.
My brother quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah, in love.Andgetting married.”
I nod wordlessly, keeping my eyes on the road as I turn at an intersection.
“You don’t really look all that sure of yourself for a man who’s in love,” my brother remarks.
I roll my eyes. Rocco is a notorious playboy. He’s never had a real girlfriend. He can hardly commit to a damn haircut, let alone an actual relationship. Yet, here he is, giving me shit.
“Don’t start with me. What the hell do you know about being in love, anyway?” I bark out, defensive as fuck.
He just laughs. “Fine, I’ve never been in a committed relationship. But I’ve seen Easton. Now,thatis a man in love. Have you seen him with Alba? When Alba walks into a room, Easton gets this goofy-ass look on his face and he can’t stop grinning and he acts like every word out of her mouth is gospel.” He scoffs. “When Jules walks into a room, you both look like hi-tech robots doing your best to replicate human emotions. It’s weird.”
I speak through gritted teeth. “Shut up.” Then I think up something diplomatic to say. The sort of thing our mom would say to us when we were growing up. “Everybody shows love differently. It’s what’s in the heart that counts.” I pat a hand over my chest to make my bullshit more convincing.
“Right…” Rocco mutters, clearly not believing me.
I change the subject. “So what’s up with you? How’s work?”
My brother’s demeanor shifts automatically. “Work is…complicated.”
“What? What’s going on?” I ask, noting the suddenly serious atmosphere in the truck.
It alarms me. Because Rocco is the most unserious person I know. But when it comes to his job, he doesn’t play around.
“I just…I, um…The thing is…” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I think it’s almost time for me to move on.”
“As in, quit?!” I bark out in shock.
He sort of shrugs, sort of nods.
“Rocco, you love your job. You love working with the Saints.”
“I love working as a trainer,” he corrects me. “Working with the Saints is optional. There are other teams out there.”
Now, every single alarm in my head is going off, because leaving this job is something he would never take lightly. When Easton pulled the strings to get Rocco hired, the guy walkedaround cheesing for a month non-stop. I was seriously afraid he’d split his face open from grinning so hard. And now, he’s quitting?!
After spending a lifetime cleaning up my younger brother’s messes, I’ve become an expert at separating their tiny problems from their nuclear-level disasters.
Thisis nuclear-level.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I demand, shifting into oldest brother mode.
