The Deal Dilemma

I don’t know what supreme being I need to kneel before but send them my way, and I’ll kiss the man—or woman’s—feet.

Why, might one ask?

Because Crew Taylor is quite literally… possessed.

Obsessed.

Repressed?

Maybe. We’re not having sex, and I know he’s not out getting it anywhere else, but he is getting something. And that something is coming from me.

My first go at going down must have been more than decent as the man refuses to take his eyes off me. Hell, he can hardly take his hands off, so he makes sure I’m always at his side.

Last night, for example, Crew had to get back to work… so he took me with him, parked me in the seat behind the bar and kept one eye on me, the other on the customers across from it.

A couple hours in, he dragged us up the stairs and into the hall leading to the office, then pushed me against the wall and worked me at warp speed.

“A course on quick release,” he called it, speaking my language with a smirk.

I love the switch that flipped, but it’s dangerous for me as I too am addicted.

To his touch.

To his kiss.

To him.

I’ve slept in his bed nearly every night since we came home from the festival, felt his skin on mine more times than I can count, be it his legs, his hands, his lips.

Twelve-year-old me would die to know we made it this far.

Will twenty-two-year-old me have to mourn this man?

Only time will tell.

But, right now, we have more, so until the end rears its ugly head, I’ll soak up his attention, even if it drowns me in the process.

Crew flips his hat backward, so he can better see the biscuits he’s checking on in the oven.

Yeah, worth the looming loss.

He looks up, catching me watching, and the smile he gives me reaches deep, stirring emotions I’ve worked hard to keep in check. To keep buried.

This man is making it difficult to hide the way he makes me feel, the things he makes me want, and the hope I dare to think we could have.

He walks over then, Neosporin, alcohol bottle, and gauze in hand, dropping to his knees in front of me.

Without a word, he takes my hand in his, gently dabbing at the area below my thumb, taking special care as you would something precious. You wouldn’t even know I was cut if it weren’t for the three little stitches there, but Crew ignores me every time I tell him it needs no attention.

It’s kind of adorable, how a growly, possessive man like him is capable of such a gentle touch.

Spreading the Neosporin over the split, he looks to me, and before I realize it, I’m already leaning forward, my lips meeting his. His smirk is instant and I feel it along my mouth.

My phone rings, and I fully plan to ignore it, but Crew snags it from my side, accepting the call before we’re fully untangled.

“You there, honey?” my dad’s voice calls.

My mouth gapes, and I slap at Crew’s chest.

He grins, his eyes flashing my way briefly as he tilts the phone toward him. “How you doing, Mr. Franco?”

“Come on now, son. Just ’cause you don’t come home no more, don’t mean I’m mister again.”

A flash of guilt threatens to wash Crew’s smile away, but he holds it in place for my father’s sake. There’s a lot of love between them, even if the last handful of years have fractured it a bit.

“Heard you’re retiring soon?” Crew changes the subject.

“Heard you’re living with my baby girl?” My dad changes it again.

Crew doesn’t blanch. He doesn’t make excuses or find a way to explain our new housemate status. He smiles, and my stomach flip-flops. “Yes, sir, I am.”

“Hope you two are taking care of each other, I know neither of you likes to put much time into yourselves, but it’s important.”

Crew meets my gaze over the screen, a dirty promise in his grassy eyes. “I think we’re doing a real good job of taking care of each other, sir.”

“You tell her you love her yet?”

My eyes bulge.

Crew freezes.

My mother giggles, joining the conversation, and swiftly adds, “Kidding! Could you imagine what Memphis would have to say?”

At the mention of my brother, Crew sours, unable to hold his smile longer than a quick, “Good talking to you two, here’s Davis.”

I offer him a small smile, one he tries to reciprocate, facing the phone at the floor, so he can press his lips to my cheek and hand it over.

I watch him walk into his room and shut the door before bringing the screen up.

My parents sit together on the love seat in my childhood living room, both smiling at the screen, and my heart instantly warms at the sight.

“Hi guys.” A small laugh leaves me. “I feel like I haven’t talked to you in forever.”

My dad’s features grow soft as he takes me in. “Been a little over a week now. We been missin’ you.”

“I miss you guys, too.”

“Oh peanut, I just love your hair!” My mom scoots forward. “Every time I see it, I think how you were meant to be brunette. Don’t you think, honey?”

She nudges my dad, and my grin grows.

“Thanks, Mom. I think I’ll leave it this way a while.”

“How’s Crew like it, hmm?” She wiggles her brows.

My mouth drops open, and I chastise her with my tone. “Mom. What’s gotten into you?”

“Honey, knock it off,” my dad follows.

“What?” She shrugs. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the fine man he’s turned into.”

“He’s been fine since the day he moved in next door,” I say coyly.

My dad frowns so fast, we both laugh.

“I feel like I stepped into girl time,” he grumbles. “And I’m the one who made the call.”

Laughing, I bring my knees up. “I’m teasing, Dad.”

Creases deepen the wrinkles along his forehead. “Uh-huh. Now, how’s your résumé coming along?”

Crew emerges right then, slipping into the kitchen with our cups from last night.

“It’s… slow.” As in, I haven’t touched it.

My dad continues, “I told you, honey, get it done and into Paul ASAP. We’d have you back home before the end of summer.”

The glasses Crew was holding clink hard against the sink.

“Oh, and you know Gavin graduated too.” My mom smiles wider. “Been home about a week now.”

“Your mama and I went to lunch with Susie and Paul last week,” my dad says. “Had to sit and listen to a story about you and that boy for thirty minutes.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah, she told us all about the two of you getting cozy at the graduation party before you left for school.”

Crew’s head snaps up, and I don’t have to look up to know he’s glaring.

I can feel the heat of his stare.

I roll my eyes. “I don’t know what story he told them, but he kissed me for a whole two seconds before I backed away.”

“Best two seconds of his life, way he tells it.” My mother practically fawns.

“That’s sad if so, Mother.”

“Or romantic,” she singsongs. “Hurry and send your paperwork in. I’m ready for my baby to come home!”

Guilt spreads like warm water, heating my skin. “Mom…”

She hears it in my tone, my father, too, and both their faces fold with an ache I imagine only parents with an empty nest could.

“Oh, baby,” she says, her voice a little softer. Sadder. “You decided to stick around there a while, then?”

My eyes slide over the screen on their own accord, connecting with Crew’s, who happen to be waiting.

His are tight, sloped, and guarded, leaving me to wonder what he’s thinking, yet leading me to share what I am.

I swallow, my smile small. “Leaving is the last thing I want.”

I should add “right now” or “so soon” or something that alludes to something else, for their sake, for my heart’s, but I don’t because the way Crew’s looking at me right now tells me I said exactly what he hoped I would.

Is that the last thing he wants, too?

“Davis?” my dad calls.

It takes a moment for me to bring my attention back to him, and when I do, there’s a question in his gaze, only I’m not sure what it’s asking and he doesn’t voice it.

He does, however, sit forward, washing my mom out of the shot completely. “You worked hard to get to where you are, Davis. Make sure you’re taking the right steps for the future.”

“I am, Dad,” I tell him, and it’s the truth.

I did work my butt off to graduate, to earn a degree they wanted for me in a subject I enjoy. I’ll figure out what to do with it, eventually, but right now, the “right steps” are pointed in one direction and one direction only.

Toward the brown-haired, hazel-eyed man before me.

Something in his gaze sharpens, and then he’s headed right for me.

“Hey, guys, I have to go—”

The phone is pulled from my hand, hung up, and my lips are met with liquid, lavish ones.

Crew kisses me senseless, and when he pulls away, it’s with newfound determination in his gaze.

I just wish I knew what it was he wanted so much.

I wish it was me.

Crew

Growing up in the Franco’s house was a confusing, frustrating fucking time, but if I went back, I’d still stand at the front of the courthouse and tell the judge the same thing, that their home is the one I wanted to be in. And it was.

At first, things were simple, and then they weren’t.

I never would have thought the love I had for my best friend would hurtle into hate, just like I never expected my best friend’s little sister to become the one I wanted.

In the beginning, we were both young, then she was too young, and then suddenly, she wasn’t.

I knew the minute I kissed Davis on that fair ride, I’d lose myself in her if I got too close. Willingly. Pathetically.

I’d have stopped chasing the calm I heard so much about, that I saw in her home when I first moved in, and, at the time, I couldn’t allow that to happen. Not when I had so much to prove, so much to learn about what being a man worth a damn meant. My dad was shit for a role model, but Garratt Franco was a great one. He taught me more in my four years under his roof than I learned in my fourteen years with my own.

We spent hours in the garage, taking Memphis—or Davis’s now—truck apart and putting it back together, weeks learning how the engine worked and what made the wheels spin. How to cook a steak and how long you had to work to afford one.

I learned it took maximum effort to get the things you wanted, was taught what responsibility and respect could do for a man. I began becoming one under his roof, found myself looking back at my life before them, worrying about my brother, after my parents took off with him, and knowing an easy, worthless path wasn’t one I wanted, while hoping like hell Drew discovered the same.

I wanted to build a life I could be proud of, like Garratt did. For the first time in my life, I began to believe I could.

The longer I was with the Franco family, the more peace I felt. They were strongly and solidly in my corner, and slowly, that feeling of being an outsider, the one I tried not to feel but couldn’t help, faded. The last thing I wanted was to be a burden to another family when I spent all my life before that feeling like one in my own. That was gone too.

I belonged, and they made sure I didn’t doubt that, but then things with Memphis started to change. Unfortunately, no amount of fosterly love could change the fact that no matter how much they cared for me, I wasn’t their son, and he was.

When shit got dark, those protective parental reflexes—the ones my parents never gained—kicked in without a hint of realization. They didn’t mean to look at me and see fault, it was simply natural, and I understood the facts, even as a teen.

Memphis was the son of a correctional sergeant and third grade teacher. He had scouts in his sophomore year and played for the USAA travel baseball team. He loved his sister and his best friend was a poor kid he treated like an equal, who his parents took in for no other reason than they were good-ass people who cared for him, a bastard of a boy who used his fists to speak too often, was decent at ball, but had no real future to speak of—me.

No way would their son be the one to pinch a pint from the neighbor’s RV and get the girl down the street so drunk she blacked out. And he definitely wouldn’t leave the poor thing alone after, without calling for help to make sure she was okay. And he would never get the idea to break into a vacant house down the road and squat there with a keg for the weekend… but me? Seemed more likely, considering I came from a thieving drunk, right? After all, a few good years with a good family doesn’t change the stripes you’re born with. A zebra’s still a zebra when sheltered in a stallion’s stall.

I don’t blame them for looking at me and seeing what I came from. Like I said, it was natural and unintentional. They’re incredible people, and they do have love for me. But again.

Memphis was their son, and the problems he found himself in led to the inevitable.

I became the mistake maker, the bad influence, and eventually… the problem. Of course, none of that came without the lies from Memphis.

He got really good at making me the fall guy… because I let him.

He never outright said it was me, but he was really good at insinuations that led to me as the culprit.

“You’ve got no one to disappoint, man. Think about what this’ll do to my mom if she finds out,” he’d say, as if it didn’t pain her to see me fail. It did.

That woman, and her husband both, gave me all they gave to their own blood. They wanted me to succeed, to have a better life, that’s why they took me in. But I understood what he meant, and at the end of the day, it was me who didn’t want to see the pain a fucked-up son could cause in his loving parents. In his doting sister.

The sister he didn’t deserve, who I craved but couldn’t have.

Who I’d never be good enough for, by my, and maybe their, standards.

So, yeah. I let them look at me and worry I could only be what I came from rather than standing tall and showing them all their efforts and time weren’t wasted on me.

I was better because of them.

I did grow under their care.

And I wouldn’t waste the opportunities they offered me.

Back then, though, what I wanted and what they needed didn’t match.

I knew it hurt them to see me make poor choices, but that hurt was nothing compared to the pain they’d have felt if they knew their son was the senseless one.

They would worry themselves sick, and that worry would have trickled down to Davis.

I couldn’t stand the thought of that, so I let him lie and looked his father in the eye, saw the disappointment pointed back at me and listened to every lecture with rapt attention, wishing the only man who acted like a father to me knew I wasn’t the failure he tried to shelter me from.

Of course, as we became adults, their parents were forced to face his lies, but Davis is a different story. I used to think she simply saw the good in people, when really, she was blind to the bad, at least that was the case where Memphis was concerned.

Running my knuckles along her arm, she stirs in her sleep, her lips curving into a small smile, though her eyes don’t open.

I heard the tone in her dad’s voice today, the comments her mom made.

What would they say if they knew what we were doing here?

What are we doing here?

Faking?

Falling?

Faking like we’re not fucking falling?

Who knows.

Who fucking cares?

When it comes to this girl, I’ll take what I can get.