Fall Guy (A Youngblood Book) by Reinhardt, Liz (knowledgeable books to read TXT) 📕

"Listen, we can talk about this all later okay? Let's go, I'll spend a few minutes with Colt like I promised, and then you and me can get the hell out of here, okay? Forget this whole day ever happened."

He presses my hair back on either side of my face with both hands and kisses me, full and soft and sweet on the lips. I move my hands up and hold him around the neck for an extra-long second.

I don't want to get sucked into this. I don't want every day we spend together to end with his plea for a redo. And I hate Winch's constant insistence that we forgot things happened. Maybe that's why crazy shit keeps happening to him. Maybe it's because he's always charging ahead, into the next disaster, never learning from what happened before.

He leans down and offers me his hand, but I shake my head. "Go ahead. I don't want Colt to feel rushed. I'll be right here when you get back."

Winch's eyebrows press together. "You sure?"

"Positive. Go."

I watch him walk away, throwing an odd look at me over his shoulder now and then, and try to figure out what I'm supposed to do now that things have gone so wrong in a way I can't possibly fix.

"He's a good guy."

The words surprise me so much, I almost fall off the step. Winch's father stands behind me, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, a lighter in his hands.

"Mr. Youngblood." I get up and press down on the skirt of my dress with nervous, clammy hands. Shitshitshitshitshit. Did he hear anything? Should I say anything? Parents don't usually rattle me like this. "I was just going to, uh--"

"Sit," he interrupts, squinting his eyes as he holds the cigarette tight in his lips and lights it with a few quick clicks of his lighter.

I sit and instantly wish I hadn't, because he's still standing, leaned against the porch railing, and I feel diminutive and young and stupidly girly with him towering over me like this.

"My son is a good man," he repeats, inhaling a long, slow drag and letting it course out of his mouth in a lazy stream of bluish smoke. "Don't tell anyone," he looks down at me and smiles a conspiratorial smile, "but I sometimes wish Winchester was my firstborn." He shakes a finger at me. "Don't misunderstand. I love Remington from the bottom of my heart. He's exactly like my own brother, Becse." He laughs around his cigarette, and plumes of smoke billow out through his slightly crooked teeth. "Funny as hell. Clowns, almost. But sensitive. Remington feels everything deeply. He isn't strong like Winchester. He can't put his feelings on hold or let things go. When he's angry, he feels it from the bottom of his soul, you know? He's like a human hurricane."

"Do you think if he wasn't firstborn, he'd listen to Winch more?" I ask, tucking the fabric of the thin yellow dress under my knees more securely.

Mr. Youngblood has been nothing but polite since I came to their home. He didn't showcase any of the underlying menace his wife directed my way. But there was something quietly, dangerously powerful about him. It’s a trait Winch shares, but with Winch there’s so much more easiness and good humor. I just have the distinct feeling that Mr. Youngblood is one hundred percent charming and gentlemanly...as long as everything is going his way.

"If he wasn't firstborn, he wouldn't have our company to worry over. He'd have the kinds of freedom Winch has." He shrugs his broad, powerful shoulders. "But that wasn't his lot. Remington is first born, so he'll take my place when it's time for me to retire." The cigarette nestles between his lips as he looks into the distance musingly, sucking smoke in and out in gentle puffs.

"So Remington will run your company even if he's not the best person for the job?" I've noticed how secretive the Youngbloods are, and I half expect something negative; a glare, a harsh word, a shake of the head. But Mr. Youngblood's smile is cruelly, cautiously polite.

"In our family, we have old-fashioned ideas." He shrugs as if he's half-apologizing, though he clearly doesn't feel remotely apologetic for the uncompromising way his family runs. "But those ideas have kept the Youngbloods prosperous and successful for years. It's a tough economy out there. It will be twice as hard for my sons to gain half of what I had at their age." His eyes, greyer and starker than Winch's, focus on me for a long minute. "This family protects one another. Supports one another. If one of us sufferers, we all do. One of us celebrates, we all do. That takes a certain kind of sacrifice. You understand?"

He smiles again, this time slightly kinder, as if he's trying to tell me, I know you don't and can't understand, and here's your cue to leave well enough alone, little girl.

I know that smile. I've been an outsider in a crystal bauble my entire life, looking into worlds where I just couldn't fit or didn't make sense. Sometimes it was because of the taint of my notorious father and his crazy gambling habits. Or my flighty mother and her string of revolving-door younger men. Or my formidably rich and eccentric grandparents who didn't try very hard to fit in in any one circle, and wound up excluding me where they were reciprocally not wanted. I never had a solid social circle in school, my best friends are half a country away, and most of my boyfriends were users and cheaters.

And now I have Winch, and he’s all I ever wanted.

Why, just when I truly let myself begin to fall in love with someone, does the situation prove too impossible to overcome?

My pounding heart and churning stomach make it difficult to answer Winch's father, but I'm saved from my socially awkward hell by Winch's return with Colt, both of them slightly