Then, one day, he was gone, leaving behind his fiancé and cutting all contact with everyone who cared about him. I was sixteen at the time and beside myself with grief.
My brother never understood why he disappeared, and eventually gave up trying to contact him.
Starving, I head to the dining table with a bundle of bananas, eating three.
“If I’d realized you were so hungry, I would have made something that didn’t take so long.”
My cheeks flush. “Sorry…I was in such a hurry to get here, I forgot to eat.”
“Yeah, about that.” Kell grabs the back of the chair opposite mine, and pulls it around, straddling it. “I need to know what kind of trouble you are in?”
“T-trouble?” I stammer.
“There has to be a reason you drove cross-country in the beater you have parked outside my cabin. It’s a miracle it made it up the mountain, or that your brother let you pull a stunt like that.”
“My brother didn’t let me go, but he was glad to see me leave—not that he doesn’t want me around. It’s just…” I look down at the table and unleash a shaky breath.
“Who hurt you?” Kellan growls.
My eyes dart to his. “No one hurt me.” I shake my head, dazed. “I just got to be too much for my parents.”
“Too much?”
“I wasn’t contributing enough, and they had to think about the future.” My fingers drum nervously on the table. “And I didn’t like what that future looked like.”
“Did they kick you out?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what the hell were they going to do?”
I swallow hard, praying I don’t break down. “They have a family friend. An older man with hard eyes who never smiles. He asked my parents for my hand, and…well…they didn’t give me a choice.”
For a long moment, there’s silence.
And then, rage.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kell snarls, eyes dark and savage. His massive chest rises and falls, muscles twitching under his flannel like he’s using every last ounce of restraint to hold himself back from my parents who are several states away.
The raw power in him should scare me.
It doesn’t.
Heat stirs low in my belly, pulling my mind to places it ought not go. I’d thought I’d gotten over my childhood crush years ago.
Apparently, I was wrong.
Tears threaten to pour down my cheeks, but I blink them back, determined not to appear weak.
“Why didn’t you try finding another job?” Kell finally asks.
“The few I’d be qualified for wouldn’t pay me enough to live on my own. Not with my condition.”
“Condition?”
“I’m dyslexic. Or, as my mother says, ‘a little dull’. I struggled in school, so my parents recommended I drop out to work more hours at the family restaurant. Now they want to sell it and pawn me off to their friend.”
He grumbles a slew of curses under his breath, his muscles so taut, they stretch the seams of his shirt.
