Bro Code

Chapter Two

Chapter Two AvaMy mom would say that plans are like cookies—no matter how closely you follow the recipe, something completely different can pop right out of the oven.

It’s why she laughs when I spill an extra tablespoon of vanilla into the batter we’re making, and I hold back a groan. There’s no getting it out once it’s in, and we’re way too far along to start over. All I can hope now is that some miracle of chemistry will even things out once they’re on the tray.

“You look so serious, sweetie,” Mom chides, folding everything into the dough so it can be mixed and then rolled flat across the counter. “Relax. This weekend is going to be fun.”

“Sorry, Mom.” I wish that she wasn’t always so perceptive. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

Not the baking. Baking is easy street next to Barrett.

He’s the reason I wish my vibrator wasn’t packed away with all my other belongings deep in the garage…and he shouldn’t even be here. My brother could have told me he was bringing his best friend to the house for the weekend, but no, I get to relive a fifteen-year-old crush—in the flesh—because Nick doesn’t know how to make a phone call.

Typical Nick.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and apparently it also turns the cool, older guy I dreamed about having my first kiss with into the best-looking man I’ve ever seen. Ever. I only caught a glimpse when he came in with Nick earlier, but it was enough to make my heart almost stop before I quickly darted into the other room.

That jaw, that smile, and he was so tall...

Barrett had always been taller than me, though. At fourteen, ‘sexy’ had barely entered into my vocabulary, but when all my friends were cooing over Hollywood heartthrobs and boy bands, I was looking at Barrett. He was the good guy, the guy you could trust, and he kept my brother out of trouble more than once. I’d catch glimpses here and there, but Barrett always seemed to be just out of reach—at least until I turned seventeen.

My birthday party that year had transformed into a nightmare after I’d gotten into a huge fight with my best friend and I wanted to be anywhere but in the house. The only place to go was the backyard, where I’d been crying my eyes out until a hand touched my shoulder. Barrett was the last person I expected to see when I turned around, concern written all over his face.

“Hey, Ava. You okay?”

I don’t remember what I said back. Whatever my answer, it wasn’t enough to convince him, and a second later, I was wrapped in the tightest hug of my life. He let me cry my eyes out against his chest until I had nothing left, and when I cursed out my friend for being such a pain, Barrett’s laugh was a warm, deep rumble in his chest. When I was finally able to put myself back together, he walked me back inside where I made up with my friend.

We never talked about it again. I don’t know if he thought my brother would give him s**t for being sweet to me or what, but it lingered in my mind for months. Years now, I guess.

“Ava, honey, let’s get this batch going.” My mom’s voice draws me back into the present, and so does the aluminum cookie cutter she’s waving in my face.

When I lean over to check the recipe card, she shoos me away from it, pushing the cutter right into my hands. “You don’t need to count how many you make per tray. Just shove them all on there.”

Sue me for wanting them to bake evenly through. “Okay, Mom.”

I press the little tree and star outlines into the dough over and over, cutting out dozens of cookies. Each one goes onto the tray, and my mom scrapes the excess together before rolling it flat again, which is just enough for two more cookies. Once they’re arranged in a bunch of clean rows, I’m urged out of the kitchen.

“I’ll call you back in when it’s time to frost them,” Mom says.

There’s not much else to do but wait for the scent of fresh cookies to fill the house, so I slip down the stairs and into the den. My dad is exactly where I left him a few hours ago, watching the news on the couch, but now that the sun’s set, the entire room is dark. He doesn’t seem to have noticed, but I flip on a lamp anyway before sitting down next to him.

“What’s the state of the world like, Dad?” I ask.

He mutters something under his breath, eyes still locked on the screen. “Same as always. Your mother run you out of the kitchen?”

“Yeah.” I don’t mind, though, and he knows it. “You shouldn’t stay down here in the dark, you know. It’ll kill your eyes.”

“Not like I need them for much anymore.”

The bitterness in my dad’s voice is new, raw. After decades of building a business with his own two hands, a heart attack last fall suddenly put him out of commission. Every doctor said it was congenital, that only a life of hard work and eating well had kept severe heart problems from starting earlier, but that was almost worse in a way. If there had been something he could change, my dad would have immediately put his nose to the grindstone and fixed it. Instead, he had to retire.

Now I’m taking over where he left off. It would have been Nick’s job but he loves living in the city, and being a store manager who gets to drink with the guys every night too much to stop and learn how to run a factory. When Dad asked, my brother said he’d just close the business and sell it off, locking the doors on the same place whose profits put him through college. Thinking about that conversation always puts a boulder in my stomach.

I refuse to shut down the factory. My dad has hundreds of employees, from janitors to engineers, and they all rely on the company staying open. Every business around it would buckle without those people keeping a steady paycheck. I’ve driven past enough towns that were left to turn to dust and blow off the map because someone didn’t care enough to keep the heart of it alive.

“You know what the boys are up to?” Dad asks, squinting at the screen in front of him.

I reach over to the table next to the couch, grabbing the case for his glasses. He sighs, but takes them anyway. “Not really. Barrett walked in and then Nick dragged him off.”

“Some things never change.” Now that he can see, my dad looks at me instead of the television. “I’m glad you came home to start looking things over, Ava, but I wish you weren’t by yourself. I’m so proud of you, but you deserve someone to share a life with.”

Oh God, this again. “Dad...”

“You’re twenty-five.” He frowns, wrinkles pulling against old laugh lines. “You know, your mom and I were-”

“Twenty when you started dating. I know.” It’s the same story he brings up every time he sees me lately, and somehow, I feel just as guilty every time. He means well, of course, and I’ve never wanted to disappoint him. “I’m working on it, okay? But I’ve got to get everything with the factory stable first.”

I don’t think navigating the ins and outs of running the factory will be too bad, despite the learning curve. Even if I don’t know anything about building new engines, I did go to school for business management. After graduating, I stuck almost exclusively to consulting work, but this could be the chance for a real career, something I can settle into for good. Then I can find Mr. Right and see about having a couple of kids before my mid-thirties start to loom on the horizon.

Which means dating again. Which means going on a date in the first place, instead of focusing on how I’ve been single so long. That’s a rabbit hole I’m determined not to go down, unless I find myself in the mood for a good cry later.

“I’m not rushing you.” Dad gives my shoulder a fond pat. “I just don’t want you to be alone. You’ve got a lot to offer a man.”

“I’ll put that on a sign next time I go up for auction,” I tease, and he chuckles before shaking his head.

“Ava! The cookies are ready!”

It’s kind of amazing how my mom can make her voice carry through an entire house. There’s a reason I never got away with anything as a teenager.

Dad gives me a little salute. “Duty calls.”

I hustle back up the stairs to the kitchen, ready to be wrist-deep in frosting and sparkles until every cookie looks appropriately festive. Thankfully, I get a system down quickly, and once my mom’s stretched clear wrap over the tray, I’m ready to wash my hands and relax with a glass of wine. That master plan is swiftly derailed by my mother stacking the dishes under the faucet and shooing me out of her way.

“Use another sink, honey.” She’s already turned away from me, looking in the cabinets for a washcloth. “I’ve got to wipe everything down before the dough sticks like glue.”

Trudging up another flight of stairs to the bathroom, I nudge the door open with my elbow before stepping inside. The light is already on, and I have about a second to register why before the shower curtain slides back against the wall.

Barrett steps out from behind it, and my thoughts scramble in sixteen different directions at once. I’ve known those brilliant blue eyes for years, but not the way water looks clinging to his dark eyelashes, or dripping down his sculpted frame, the valleys and ridges of all that muscle, the sheer breadth of his shoulders. He towers over me, making it easy for my eyes to draw lower, tracking a single, clear drop from his chest down to his chiseled abs.

The lucky little drop falls into fine, dark hair, neatly trimmed around the thick base of—holy mother of mercy—the largest p***s I have ever seen. My breath catches in my throat and I have the sudden urge to take a step back, and I would have, had I not been rooted in place so firmly. I wasn’t sure my legs would ever work again.

Heat sparks under my skin and settles as a needy pulse between my thighs as I take in the impressive length of his shaft. Even soft, he’s huge, and that thought is all it takes to imagine Barrett hard and so deep inside me, that powerful body pinning mine right to the wall. With all that muscle framing his hips, he could keep me there, taking me over and over until we were both totally exhausted...

Now he’s not the only one who’s dripping wet.

I’ve never been madder at myself before, remembering again how far away my vibrator is right now.

“Uh, Ava?” Barrett’s very real voice snaps me out of my erotic fantasy. “Are you okay? I’ll be out of here in a second if you need the bathroom.”

I was staring at him. I’ve been staring at a naked Barrett Wilson, my brother’s best friend, for a full minute, straight-up ogling like he was in a dirty magazine. What was I thinking? My first attempt at words come out as an intelligible whimper, and my face is heating up so fast I’m pretty sure something in my brain is about to short-circuit. No, scratch that; all of me is going to short-circuit.

My n*****s pebble inside the cups of my bra, and my heart hammers dutifully behind my ribcage.

Making no move to cover himself, Barrett smiles, and somehow that makes everything ten times worse. “Ava? Can I help you?”

There’s a hundred ways I want him to help me, and every single one involves having my clothes ripped off, his body on top of mine. Except I can’t do any of that when I’m staring at him like a total fool, and this isn’t supposed to be how my evening ends.

I don’t have a plan. The only thing I can do is rush out of the bathroom, yanking the door shut behind me. It slams a bit loudly, but at least I can start to pull myself together with a barrier between me and Barrett’s gorgeous body. Those sinfully perfect abs, his sharp jawline, that stunning face, and most of all, the baseball bat-sized appendage between his legs.

My evening was going to end with a relaxing glass of wine. The only thing I know right now is that there’s not enough wine in this county to calm the fire Barrett has ignited inside me.