The Bad Boys of Summer (3 page)

M
y name leaving
my stepbrother’s lips was like the slow drip of honey, sweet and almost musical. I bit my lip on instinct and felt a throb from down low as I raked my gaze over the man who’d almost ruined my life a mere seven years ago.

He’d gotten taller. Christ, I thought guys stopped growing at eighteen, but Slade towered over me more now than he ever had before. He was an imposing figure with broad shoulders, a thick, solid chest, and arms that bulged with lean muscle beneath his scrubs. He’d certainly filled out. Even his face was different, more chiseled, his eyes more intense. Gone was the boy I’d gotten into so much trouble with, and in his place was a man.

A man whose help I needed.
Right. Kellan.
I felt awful that I’d almost forgot.

I cleared my throat, evading my stepbrother’s piercing gaze. “Good to see you’re hot-blooded as ever,” I said, nodding to the two nurses he’d been checking out.

“Iris Walker,” he said again, like even the sound of my name defied belief. He looked me over from head to toe, and for a second, his tongue darted out across his lips. When he ran his teeth over the bottom one and pulled it into his mouth, that throb between my thighs returned full-force.

Down, girl.

“Yeah. Iris Walker. Your
stepsister.
” At this point, I was reminding him as much as I was reminding myself. “I need a favor.”

I should’ve asked him how he’d been, should’ve made small talk. That would’ve been the polite thing to do. But I was in a rush. I wanted to get this over with. I wanted the feelings flooding me—both good and bad—to dissipate and leave me the hell alone, and the only way to do that was to get in, get out, and never look back again.

With how fantastic Slade looked, that wouldn’t exactly be easy.

As soon as the word “favor” left my mouth, my stepbrother’s expression darkened. He took a quick look around the hall and said, “Well, it’s going to have to wait. I’m making rounds.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “In the cafeteria?” There weren’t any patient rooms on this floor.

Slade shrugged. “Just taking a shortcut to the elevators. Point is, I really don’t have time. You in town long? You should call me sometime. We can figure out a rain check.”

He was already moving past me before I could answer. I fell into step beside him. “I get it. You’re busy. We’ll walk and talk.”

Slade laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Please. I can’t bring my little sister with me on my rounds.”

“
Step
sister,” I said again and caught the look he flashed me. It was a quick one, just out of the corner of his eye, but I could see it, feel it,
taste
it. There was an electric charge in the air and I could practically hear the gears in Slade’s head turning. He remembered what we’d done, and he knew why I was making the distinction.

Still, he shrugged it off. “Whatever. Stepsister, then. Still, you can’t come with me on my rounds. This stuff is confidential information.”

I shrugged too. “Better stop and talk to me, then, I guess.”

Slade did stop, right in the middle of the cafeteria where everyone could see us. He tilted his head toward the ceiling and shut his eyes like when he opened them, I might have disappeared. When I didn’t, he looked disappointed. He lowered his voice.

“There are things more important than us having a little tête-à-tête right now, Iris,” he said through his teeth. “People’s lives are at stake. And believe it or not, you dropping in here unannounced after… how many years has it been? Five? Ten?”

I stared at him. He knew exactly how long. “Seven.”

“Right.” He snapped his fingers. “Lucky number seven. So after seven years, you show up at my work in the middle of the day and expect me to take a timeout to chat about old times? To ask me for a favor?” His eyes smoldered as he drew an inch closer. “You could’ve used a phone for that, sweetheart. But you’re here in the flesh. Why’s that?”

My jaw sagged. He couldn’t possibly be implying that I was here to fuck him…

Oh, wait. This was Slade Jarvis.
Of course
that’s what he was saying.

“Because nobody has your number,” I snapped, recoiling from Slade like I’d been burned. He chuckled, stoking my fury. “And anyway, I called this hospital—several times—and left you three messages, none of which you ever returned.”

“I’m a busy man,” Slade said, rolling his eyes and starting to walk again. He gestured to the nurses, patients, and doctors littering the cafeteria. “As you can probably see, I’m a doctor. I save lives. You’re gonna have to wait to get a piece of me, Iris, just like everyone else.”

I could read the subtext as clearly as if he’d written it in the air with a Sharpie:
You’re not special.
Somehow, my stepbrother had turned into an even bigger asshole than he’d been at twenty-one. He was a hotshot doctor now, the cock of the walk, holding pride of place in a henhouse full of young nurses and impressionable interns. No doubt he was screwing every one of them that came within spitting distance. He’d gone off to Harvard for a doctorate and left with a swollen ego, instead. I tried not to think about the implications of what else of Slade’s might be swollen as I stopped walking and clenched my fists.

Somebody needed to take him down a notch.

“Slade!” I barked, and it seemed like the whole cafeteria put down their sporks and stared at me all at once. Slade stopped so short I heard his sneakers screech across the floor and turned to me, eyes narrowed. Defiantly, I met his gaze. “You don’t get to walk away from me, Slade Jarvis. I don’t care if you’re a doctor, a unicorn, or God Himself—you
will
get your ass back here and talk to me, because we’re
family,
and right now
I need you.
”

My stepbrother looked at me for a long time. Even from a distance, I could feel his heat, his anger irradiating me right into my bones. He cocked an eyebrow and glanced around the room, noting the silence, the weight of all eyes focused on him and me. My knees turned to jelly and my stomach flopped, but I never wavered. If I did, he’d walk away again, right after he laughed in my face.

Poor Iris,
he’d say.
You really haven’t changed, have you? You’re still the naïve little teenager in way over her head with a man you can’t handle, much less control.

I couldn’t back down. Not with what was at stake. But when Slade crossed the distance between us in three great strides, it was all I could do not to shrink away.

“This way,” he said, a grin on his face that was less like a smile and more like a baring of teeth. As he gestured to the opposite end of the room, he added, “
Sis.
”

I followed Slade out the cafeteria doors to a long hallway with too-bright lights and floors that reeked of sanitizer. Wordlessly, my stepbrother swiped his ID badge over a scanner near another set of doors and held one open for me to walk through. I had to duck under his arm to do so, and the way he glared at me made the hairs on my nape stand on end.

The rest of this wing was under construction. There were plenty of signs denoting this, but Slade ignored them, jiggling the handle on one of the doors and then kicking the bottom of it to spring the lock. This one he pushed open, letting me see myself in, and once I heard that door close behind us, my guts tied themselves into knots.

I turned and looked at Slade. The air was thick with tension, though of what kind, I wasn’t sure. He looked angry—his brow was deeply creased and I could see the muscle in his jaw twitching. Slade never did like being called out like that, especially in front of friends. And I’d gone and done it in front of his
colleagues.
No wonder he was looking at me like he’d just love to break me in half.

I wasn’t sure that was all he wanted to do to me, though. Or at least, I wasn’t sure if he wanted to break me with his hands, or with his body while he bent me over his bed. It was always hard to tell with Slade. For him, there was a fine line between rage and desire.

“Look,” I began, “I know you’ve got a lot going on here, and I know we haven’t exactly kept in touch. And trust me, if I had any other options…”

Slade was moving toward me, stalking like a panther, the muscles beneath his blue scrubs rippling and stretching taut with each of his slow, methodical steps. I tried to hold my ground, but my heart was already in my throat by the time he grazed a fingertip down my blouse, letting it come to rest right at the center above my breast.

“You’re not wearing your visitor’s badge,” he said. “You could get in a lot of trouble for that, Iris. Since when do you break the rules?”

Since you put your dick in me,
I thought, but didn’t answer.
Your big, amazingly thick dick…

“It’s in my purse,” I said, finally taking a step backward. Slade grinned. He knew he had me now. “Like you’re such a stickler for hospital protocol.”

“Aw,
sis.
You really didn’t forget all about me,” he chuckled, tracing one of the buttons keeping my breasts shielded from his view. Heat rushed to my neck and face. I knew I was blushing, and I knew, even in the dim light, that Slade could see it.

How could I have forgotten about him, after the things he’d done to me, the way he’d made my body sing? Then again, it wasn’t like I wanted to remember all that, either—not on most days. Most days, I wanted to forget the way Slade made me feel—how big his cock was, how talented those hands of his were when it came to the human body. Slade had always been a master of anatomy, only now, here, as a doctor, he had an entirely different reason for utilizing those skills.

Well,
I thought, remembering how he’d been checking out those nurses in the hallway,
mostly.

As if reading my mind, Slade’s lips quirked. “Is that why you’re here?” he asked. “Because you haven’t forgotten me—because you can’t stop thinking about everything we did together, and you needed another taste?”

“Please,” I said, though my voice cracked, “shut the fuck up for one second, would you, Slade? That’s not why I’m here.” My knees were quaking.
No, not why I’m here at all…

“Is that so?” His eyes darted around the room momentarily. “You know how many nurses I’ve fucked in here, sweetheart?” he said, his breath hot on my cheek. There was a dark note to it—coffee, rich and savory, with just a hint of cream, plus Slade’s own masculine spice. I wanted to look away from the heat in his eyes, from the low flames burning there, but I couldn’t. I was trapped in his gaze, in that same desirous stare he’d ensnared me with so long ago. And some deep, primal part of me—the one that made my thighs clench and my lips tremble—was loving it.

Slade brought his lips to my ear. In a sound somewhere between a groan and a purr, he told me, “A lot, Iris. I’ve fucked a lot of nurses in here. Right where you’re standing now. Right up against this wall. So if you
were
here because of my dick, you sure as hell picked the right place and the right time to…”

“It’s Kellan,” I blurted, pushing my back against the wall in a last, desperate bid to put space between my stepbrother and I. “Kellan’s missing, Slade. Has been for over a week now. And I think you’re the only one who stands any chance of bringing him back.”

The burning in Slade’s eyes faded, replaced by a cold glare that gave me chills. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only reason I was shivering. But I had to keep my head in the game. I couldn’t let my stepbrother, this cocky ass, get the better of me. Not when Kellan’s well-being was on the line.

Still, it was so damn hot when he growled, “What the hell?”

“
W
hy would
that be my problem?” I asked, folding my arms. How did Kellan getting involved with a bunch of druggies have
anything
to do with me? But even as I asked myself that question, I felt the first twinge of guilt pulling at my heart.

Fuck. I was hoping it wouldn’t have gotten this far, that being a lewd bastard would have made Iris turn tail and skedaddle way before now. I’d pulled out all the stops, too—first avoiding her, then showering her with way too much attention. Being rude, and being a pussy hound. I’d tried to be everything I knew my stepsister didn’t like, and still she was here. Obviously, whatever Kellan was mixed up in was serious.

Still, I didn’t see what the hell that had to do with me. Not when I hadn’t even seen the kid in seven whole years.

“
You
were his role model, Slade!” Iris said, the scowl on her face somehow making her look even cuter. “Kellan looked up to you. Idolized you.
Worshiped
you. Don’t act like you don’t remember, or that you don’t care.”

“And what if I don’t?” I asked, my voice rising as I felt the tones of truth in her voice. I didn’t like that. The truth was rarely comfortable for me, and Iris was already making me uncomfortable as it was. “That was years ago, Iris. He’s gotta be out of his teens by now. He hardly needs big brother running back home to clean up his messes. And even if he does, I didn’t ask to be Kellan’s hero.”

“But you are,” she said, taking a step closer to me, trying to catch my gaze. “Or at least, you used to be.”

I turned away from her, desperate not to look into those eyes. I knew that the moment I stared into them, I’d be trapped and there would be no way of escaping. I had spent so long avoiding the idea of her gaze, or the way it had filled with tears the day I took off on her. That look of betrayal was seared into my brain, but stick your dick in enough hot, ripe pussy, and you can learn to avoid such memories.

But now she was here, after everything I’d done, so that she could save her brother—
our
brother.

He
is
my brother now, technically
, I thought, closing my eyes as I tried to gather my thoughts. But no matter what I came up with, my first instinct was to run.

“Times change, Iris,” I said, waving my hand, though I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince her, or myself. “I’m not just going to drop everything to help some punk kid I barely even knew.”

Ugh, those words stung the second they left my lips.
Okay, asshole. Dial it down a notch.

Iris sighed, rubbing one side of her forehead with her forefinger as she shook her head. I could feel my heart sinking, but I couldn’t let her know how much I cared—she had to get away from me. After all, I was the one who had betrayed her. What the hell made her think I could fix everything now?

“He needs you, Slade. He needs
both of us
,” she said, arms crossed over her chest. She was so goddamn hot, and no matter how I tried to look at her, I couldn’t stop imagining her with her legs wrapped around my waist, my cock sliding in and out of her warm pussy.

No. Stop that. That isn’t fair. Not to her, or to you.
Iris Walker was a prize I’d never win again, an opportunity I’d squandered. I swallowed hard and banished those enticing thoughts.

“I can’t help him, Iris,” I said, glaring out the window that overlooked the hospital’s courtyard. “It’s not my problem. I stopped being a part of that family a long time ago.”

“I’m not sure what’s happened to you between then and now,” she said, “but the Slade I knew wouldn’t have let a good kid like Kellan down like that. Despite what happened between you and me, saving our brother is more important than an old grudge. At least,
I
think so. After all, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

I risked a glance at her again. Her wide eyes, her parted lips—everything in her expression was pleading for me to reconsider. But the longer she stared at me, the more I saw the expression of hope slide from her face until her eyes turned cold.

“You can’t put all of this on me,” I told her. “Kellan is an adult now. He makes his own decisions, and I can’t do anything to change it. I’m not his goddamn father.”

“You can help bring him back, Slade!” she cried, throwing her hands up. “Ever since you left, he’s been on a slow road to nowhere, just spiraling out of control. This is happening all because of what
you
did that day, and it’s time you learned to clean up your mess.”

“Does he know about…?”

“Us? God, no,” Iris said, a note of resentment in her voice as she started to pace in the confined space I’d caged her in. Iris felt much more mature than when I had left, more of an adult than I truly ever thought she would be. I couldn’t help but be turned on by how much she’d grown up. “At least, I don’t think that he knows. Dad and Mom told me that they were going to keep it a secret, but I think he knew there was more to you leaving than just a fight with your dad.”

“Of course he knew there was more to it,” I scoffed as I turned my attention back toward the window. “My father was always a terrible liar, and Kellan was a smart kid—smarter than I ever expected, coming from a woman like your mother.”

Iris made a sound from somewhere behind me, something between a growl and the clearing of her throat. It was a clear enough message:
Watch what you say about my mother
.

“Regardless,” I began, waving her warning off, “I don’t see what I could do to help now. If he’s really in as deep as you say he is, then I don’t think that
I’ll
be able to save him. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Where do I start? Do you expect me to ground him? Isn’t he, like, twenty now?”

“You could show him that you actually care, Slade,” Iris said, grabbing my arm and turning me back around to face her. “Maybe you don’t understand it, but Kellan thought the world of you, and having you back in his life just might be the thing that sets him straight again.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. “What if I show up and he
never
gets back to the person that he was? What if I make it worse?”

“This is serious,” she said, glaring at me as she pulled her hand away like I’d burned her. “Don’t you get what’s happening? Kellan isn’t just smoking pot or hanging out with some ‘bad seeds.’ He’s throwing his life away. He goes out for days at a time, and when he manages to stumble back home, he’s high out of his mind. Mom and Dad are constantly worried, and when he’s home, all they do is shout at one another. This isn’t some rebellious phase, Slade. If he doesn’t get straight soon, he might die. And can you really live with that on your conscience, knowing that you could have helped save your own brother if you’d been enough of a man to accept responsibility?”

It was certainly a fair enough question.
Would
I be able to live with myself while the only brother I had wasted away into some junkie who would probably die with a needle in his arm? Could I let that happen, knowing that there was a chance—however slim—that I could stop it?

I remembered the way that Kellan would always watch me, imitate the way I moved and spoke. At first the kid freaked me out the way he’d just
stare
at me, this goofy smile on his face while I played
Call of Duty
with my friends. It wasn’t long after he saw me playing that he started to get into the same games, and before I knew it, we were going against one another from different rooms.

Kellan would always tell me how cool I was for wanting to be a doctor, how he wanted to do the exact same thing when he got to be my age. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t flattered, and I
really
did like Kellan, and I tried whenever I could to give him brotherly advice. But that was then. Things had changed.

Everything
had changed.

The fondness of those memories hurt in a way I hadn’t expected, my heart aching at the thought of what my leaving had done to that boy—my own stepbrother. I knew that I was an ass, but was I so much of an ass that I wouldn’t even lift a finger to help someone who thought of me as their hero?

Who was I to him now? Some prick doctor? A womanizing jerk who he used to call his brother? It was exactly these kinds of questions I had been trying to avoid for the past few years, questions I knew I’d have to face when Iris showed up at my own figurative front door. Did I have the strength to confront the person I was?

“I don’t know…” I said, casting my eyes to the floor as I continued to weigh my options. Was it better to let sleeping dogs lie? Or would it only make things worse to leave a problem like Kellan’s untreated?

“Slade, I’m begging you,” Iris pleaded, her fingers resting gently over top of my bicep. It felt good to let her touch me. Too good. It was more than I deserved from her. “I don’t think that I’ll be able to reach him without your help.”

“And what if you’re wrong? What if this all blows up in our faces and Kellan gets so upset that he goes off and shoots up so much that he ODs? What if I’m the reason that happens to him? Do you expect me to live with that?”

“I don’t know, Slade!” she cried. “I don’t know how any of this is going to end! And neither do you. We either help him now, and have a chance at making him come back around to the brother we knew, or we can do nothing, in which case we
know
he’s just going to keep doing that crap until it kills him. I’d rather try and know that I did something than fail because I did nothing at all. That’s what you’re doing by saying no, Slade—
you’re
killing Kellan.”

“Don’t put all of this on me. I didn’t tell him to—” I began, but Iris held up a hand to silence me.

“Remember that quote you used to love?” she asked, looking up into my eyes, hers filled with a mixture of frustration and sadness. “‘
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is—
’”

“‘
For good men to do nothing
,’” I finished, sighing as I closed my eyes as I rubbed at my temple again. No matter what I said, she always found a way to hit me right where it hurt, right in the few morals that I had left. “Yeah, I remember.”

I knew, deep down, that nothing good would come of going back home, seeing the places I’d grown up and where I’d gone to school. I especially knew that spending time with Iris would only lead to trouble, trouble that would end in the two of us being hurt again. But at the same time I couldn’t deny that she was right. I’d never forgive myself if I was the only person who could help Kellan and I did nothing. It killed me that she still knew me so well, even after this long.

“I’m not sure I can take the time off,” I said, trying one last time to convince her that I wasn’t the man for the job, even though we
both
knew that that was a lie. “I just finished my residency, Iris, I can’t really afford to take off now. I mean—”

“Forget it,” she scoffed, shaking her head in what I thought was disgust. “Forget I even came here, Slade.”

“Iris,” I said, frowning as she started to turn away, “Hold on!”

“No!” she said, pushing my hand away as I reached out to stop her from leaving. “I’ve had it! Mom and Dad were right about you, and I was an idiot for even coming here in the first place. I’ll figure out what to do about Kellan on my own, and you can stay here and enjoy your new life. Alone, just like you like it.”

We both stood there in silence, as if expecting the other to change their mind or back down. When neither of us did, Iris pursed her lips. Her shoulders slumped, like she’d suddenly took on the weight of the world.

“Just forget I said anything,” she said, her voice a low whisper of rage as she turned and put her hand on the doorknob. A jab of panic rushed through me. I knew that if I let her walk out that door, I’d never see her again. Despite my talk and all my bullshit, I knew that I didn’t want that to happen.

“Stop,” I said, making Iris freeze in place, the door halfway open. “I’ll do it. I’m going to regret this. Hell, I’m pretty sure we both will. But I’ll do it, Iris.” I stepped closer, taking the doorknob from her hand. “But I’m doing it for Kellan. Not for you.”

I opened the door, striding down the hall toward the hospital’s human resources department. I’d just lied to my stepsister, but it was for a damn good cause. I couldn’t afford to get her hopes up or make her feel special. The last time I’d done that, it ended in tragedy. And I wasn’t about to make the same mistake all over again.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel like that was exactly what I was doing by going back home.