Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy (7 page)

“You’re back?” I ask.

She nods, turning her head to kiss my
palm.

“For how long?”

“Always.” She smiles. God, she can undo me
with that smile.

“Promise?” My heart is pounding in my
chest.

She nods and draws a cross over her chest. “I
swear it.”

“What about your father?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk
about my father right now.”

“I’ll never survive it if you leave me
again.” I swallow the lump in my throat.

“Can you come home with me?” she asks.

If I take her home right now, we won’t get to
talk at all because I’ll be all over her. “Let’s go get some pie,”
I say instead.

Her face falls. “You’re mad at me.”

“I love you like crazy, girl. How could I be
mad at you?” I drink her in from the curve of her lips to the way
her eyes look almost black in the darkness of the night.

She squeezes my hands. “Is Matt all
right?”

I nod. “Thanks to you, yes.”

She exhales, and it’s like a balloon has been
emptied inside her. “What do we do now?” she asks.

“Pie,” we both say at the same time. I take
her hand in mine and lead her to the diner where we had our first
meal together. Pie is safe. Pie is good. Pie will buy me enough
time to be sure she still loves me as much as I love her.

Calmly, Carefully, Completely

Book 3 in The Reed Brothers Series

Pete

Nobody fucks with you in prison when you’re
all tatted up.

Not a single, solitary soul.

It could have something to do with being big,
too. I haven’t asked. I’ve just enjoyed it.

At home, it’s a completely different story.
At home, everyone fucks with me. I am the youngest of five, all
brothers. They’re all as big as me, if not bigger, and they have
even more tats than I do. You don’t get any points for being
adorable. At my house, all you get points for is being a good
person, contributing to the household, and supporting your family
in every way possible.

It’s too bad I sucked at all the
requirements. I fucked things up royally two years ago.

I never should have done what I did. But I
did it, and I did my time behind bars. I just hope that they can
forgive me at home and not hold it over my head.

A hand clapped onto my shoulder jerks me from
my internal dialogue. I look up and see my pro bono attorney, Mr.
Caster. “Good to see you again, son,” he says as he sits down
across from me. He opens a file folder in front of him.

“Why are you here?” I blurt out. I wince
immediately, realizing how rude that sounded. But his brow just
arches as he shakes his head. “I mean, it’s good to see you,
sir.”

He chuckles. “Nice to see you, too, Pete,” he
says. He takes a brochure from the folder and turns it so I can
read it. “I have an opportunity for you.”

My oldest brother, Paul, says opportunities
are other people’s problems. “What kind of opportunity?” I ask
hesitantly. I open the brochure. There are pictures of horses and
children and climbing structures and a pool with lots of splashing
going on. I look up at him.

“This is a brochure for Cast-A-Way Farms,” he
says.

“And?” I ask.

“The opportunity,” he says. “I talked to the
judge and told him you would be good for this program.” He raises
his brow again. “I hope I’m not wrong.”

I hate to sound like a numbskull, but… “Not
following, Mr. Caster.”

“I need a few good young men to help out at
the Cast-A-Way camp for five days this summer.” He starts to reload
his folder and closes it. “I read your file. I liked what I saw. I
think you have potential. And you have the skill set that I need
for this particular camp.”

Skill set? All I can do is ink people. I work
at my brothers’ tattoo shop when I’m not behind bars. I don’t know
how to do much else. “You want me to tattoo them?”

He chuckles again. “I need your signing
ability,” he admits. “We have a camp every year for special needs
kids. We have a very special boy this year who has MS, so he has a
tracheostomy tube. He can’t speak. He signs. His mother’s going,
but she can’t be with him 24-7. So, I thought you might be able to
come and help.” He shrugs. “There will also be a small group of
boys there who are hearing impaired. You might work with them some,
too.”

I look at Mr. Caster’s forearms and think I
see a tattoo creeping out of his short-sleeved dress shirt. He
follows my gaze and shrugs.

“You think you’re the only one who wears your
heart on your sleeve, Mr. Reed?” he asks, but he’s smiling.

I shake my head. “Your opportunity sounds
interesting,” I say. “But I’m on house arrest for a year. I can
only go to work and/or approved activities.”

“I already talked to your parole officer,” he
says. “He’s in favor of it.” He crosses his arms in front of him on
the table and leans on his elbows. “Only if you want to, though. No
one is going to force you.”

I pick up the brochure and start to read. It
actually looks kind of interesting.

“You’d be doing me a big favor,” he says. “I
need another man present who can be a good role model for the boys
we’ll be taking from the juvenile detention facility. They’ll be
there working, getting service hours. I need someone to help me
with them. That’s why I need you.” He narrows his eyes. “You’re big
and scary looking enough.” He grins. “And your file looks
good.”

“You’ll have the youth offenders at your
camp? Working with the kids?”

He shakes his head quickly. “They’ll interact
some with the kids. But not much. They’ll be there more to help
with the daily living tasks—feeding the horses, moving hay,
stacking boxes, doing odd jobs, helping with meals…”

I’ve never been afraid of manual labor. My
brothers have drilled it into me from day one that I am going to
work hard at everything I do or I’ll have to answer to them. I
heave a sigh. I’m slowly talking myself into this.

“There’s a perk,” he says. He grins.

“Do tell,” I say. I sit back and cross my
arms in front of me.

“If your time spent at the camp goes well, I
can ask for leniency with regard to your house arrest, based on
merit.” He looks into my eyes. “If you earn it, that is.”

Wow. I could get leniency? “It’s for five
days?” I ask.

He nods. “Monday through Friday.”

I heave a sigh. “When do we leave?”

He grins and holds out a hand for me to
shake. I put my hand in his, and he grips it tightly. “We leave
tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow?” I gasp. I haven’t even gone home
yet. I haven’t gotten to spend any time at all with my
brothers.

He nods. “At oh-dark-thirty.” He smiles
again. “You still up for it?”

“It can really shorten my sentence?” I
ask.

He nods. “Maybe. It’s up to the judge. And
depends on how things go at camp.” He sobers and looks directly
into my eyes. “Pete, I think you could help with the boys I’ve
invited to the camp. With all of them. You can help with the
hearing-impaired boys, the ones who can’t talk, and the ones from
the youth program. I think you can do brilliant things. I believe
in you, Pete, and I want to give you an opportunity to prove you’re
better than this.” He makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses the
room.

Better than jail? Am I better than what I
have become? I am not so sure.

“Do we have a deal?” he asks.

I nod and stick out my hand again for him to
shake. “We have a deal.”

“Do you need for someone to pick you up in
the morning?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I can get here.”

“I’ll see you at six a.m.” He claps a hand on
my shoulder and points toward the door. “I believe your family is
waiting outside.”

My heart trips a beat. It’s been so long. I
can’t imagine what it’s going to be like to be with them again. To
feel normal.

I nod and bite my lower lip. But I steel my
spine and walk out the door. The guards lead me by the guard
station and toward the door, where they give me a bag of my
belongings and ask me to check it. I slide my wallet into the back
pocket of my jeans. I put my watch back on my wrist. I drop my
piercings into my pocket. I might be able to get at least some of
them back in later.

“Ready?” Mr. Caster asks. I don’t realize he
is right beside me until I look into his eyes. Very softly he says,
“Stop worrying so much. They’re the same family you left two years
ago.”

They might be, but I’m the one who’s
different. I nod my head, though. I can’t speak past the lump in my
throat.

I shove against the door, pressing hard on
the lock bar, pushing, and then I find myself outside the walls of
the prison for the first time in two years. I take a deep breath
and look up at the sky. Then I see my brothers waiting at the end
of the walk and the lump in my throat grows twice the size. I blink
hard, trying to squeeze back the emotion.

Paul, my oldest brother, is standing beside
Matt, who has the biggest grin on his face. His hair has grown
back, and it’s gotten longer than I’ve ever seen it on him. He told
me in a letter that he had decided to let it grow out now that he
knows what it’s like to lose it all to cancer. He’s recovering. I
missed it all because I was behind bars. But that’s one of the
reasons why I was there. I thought I could help him and just ended
up getting myself in trouble.

Logan is standing with his arm draped over
his girlfriend Emily’s shoulder. She looks up at him like he hung
the stars and the moon. He points and smiles toward me, and she
looks up and yells. Then she wiggles out of Logan’s arms and runs
toward me full force. She hits me hard in the chest, her arms
wrapping around my neck. I lift her off the ground and spin her
around as she squeezes me. She murmurs in my ear. “I’m so glad
you’re coming home,” she says. “We missed you so much.”

I look around. Someone is missing. “Where’s
Sam?” I ask. Her face falls, and she looks everywhere but at me.
Sam’s my twin, but he’s not here. My gut clenches. I really hoped
he would be.

“He’s stuck at school. You know how tight
school schedules can be.” She won’t look me in the face, so I know
she’s lying. I put my arm around her for a second and walk toward
my brothers, but it’s only a few steps before Paul jerks me away
from Emily and wraps me up in a big bear hug. He squeezes me so
tightly that my breath jerks out of me.

“Let me go, you big ox,” I grunt out, but
when he does, he grabs my head in his hands and runs his fingers
through my prison cut. My hair’s so short it’s not much more than
fuzz on the top of my head.

Logan punches me in the arm, and I turn to
look at him. Logan’s deaf, and he uses sign language. But after
eight years of silence, he started to talk right before I went to
prison. He signs while he speaks.

“Somebody scalp you while you were sleeping?”
he asks, pointing to his hair. It’s so strange hearing words come
out of Logan’s mouth. He went so long without speaking. But Emily
brings out the best in him, including his voice. “It looks like you
went three rounds with a weed eater. And lost.”

Before I can answer, he’s pulling me in for a
hug. Logan’s special. He’s wicked smart, and he’s ultra talented.
Emily’s his and everyone knows it. They’re meant to be together
forever, and no one doubted it from the first night he brought her
home with her ass tossed over his shoulder and her Betty Boop
panties showing.

Logan lets me go, and I look at Matt. He
looks so healthy he’s glowing. “Speaking of haircuts,” I say,
pulling on a lock of his hair. “When do you think you might get
one?”

He cuffs me gently on the side of my head and
pulls me into his shoulder. God, I have missed them.

“We’re going to start calling you
Goldilocks,” I warn. We’re all blond, and some of us are more blond
than others.

“Try it, asswipe,” he jokes as he punches my
shoulder. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good match.”

Emily wraps her arm around my forearm and
squeezes. “I think you’re bigger than when you went in,” she
says.

“Not much else to do but work out and read.”
I shrug.

“I can still take you,” Logan says. He flexes
his muscles. It’s so good to hear him speak.

Logan was injured in a car accident right
after I went to jail, and he almost died. I wanted to go to him so
badly. But they wouldn’t let me out. “I heard you’re an old man
with a limp now.” I duck when he tries to grab my head for a
noogie, and I dance away from him.

“Nothing about me is limp,” he says with a
chuckle. “Right, Emily?” he says, grinning. She punches him in the
arm. He bends at the waist and tosses her over his shoulder. She
squeals and beats on his butt, but he pays her no mind. He never
does when they do this. He starts toward the subway so we can go
home. The rest of us follow.

Emily gives up and dangles there over Logan’s
shoulder. She’s right by my face, so I lean in and kiss her on the
cheek. “You all right?” she asks quietly. It’s fucking ridiculous
the way she’s just bobbing there.

“It’s good to be going home,” I admit.
“Strange, but good.”

She wraps her hands around her mouth and
whispers dramatically. “We have beer at the apartment! For your
birthday!”

I grin. I spent my twenty-first birthday
behind bars. But I had a feeling they wouldn’t let it pass by
without some kind of celebration. “Just beer?” I whisper back
playfully.

She winks. “There might be some other stuff,
too. Like wine.”

My brothers don’t do anything more than drink
occasionally. “Is there cake?” I ask.

She nods. “Sam made it.” Sam’s the baker in
the family. It’s too bad he had to play football to earn his way
into college because he’d make a damn fine baker. And he’d be
happier doing it.

“So he was home this weekend?” Hearing that
he was home this weekend but he’s not there now is like a knife to
my gut. It fucking hurts. I can’t say I blame him, though.