Chapter 5 Olivia
FIVE
olivia
Fuck. My head pounded, and I deserved it.
Coping with tequila was always the worst choice, but in the moment, it always taunts you with a good time, a chance to forget about life for just a minute.
You want your son to have a relationship with his father.
No matter how many times I reminded myself of that, it never prevented the sting when Cooper dropped me flat for whatever scraps of attention Jason tossed him.
I watched my son try so fucking hard for Jason to care about anything other than his own world—it broke me repeatedly. I was sure it did worse to my son.
I should be up, making my houseguest comfortable, but instead, I left him and Austin to fend for themselves. God, I’d barely shown my brother any sympathy after what had happened with him and Ashley. But damn, I was glad she was gone.
I remembered back to the early days of their marriage. When I was living in this house, she had tried to get him to charge me market-rate rent. She lost that battle, but my brother had let her take over the bill paying earlier that month, and she purposely let my electricity go unpaid.
On April 1st, the first day the electric company could legally shut off utilities in the Northeast, the house went dark. When I called, I found out the bill hadn’t been paid in months, and I needed to drain my savings to get it turned back on.
I had the money to pay my bills each month, but this house was more than I could afford. I’d always told my brother this. But he wanted Cooper to have access to the best schools available, and Lexington was the best.
When Austin confronted Ashley, she apologized, saying she didn’t know what the bill was for and that she would have paid it if she’d known.
My brother had fallen for a lot of shit from her, but I swear he knew something was off with her excuses.
Instead of having her pay the bills for the Lexington house, he set up an account for me to handle on my own.
Because I only used the bare minimum to maintain the property, pool, and landscaping, the account had grown substantially. I hated relying on my brother financially, but fuck my pride if I could provide the best for my son. Once my real estate career took off, I was in better shape financially.
I smelled bacon and cocked a brow. My brother could do a lot of things; cooking wasn’t one of them.
Making my way down to the kitchen, I was not prepared for the wall of shirtless muscle decorated with my apron as he moved confidently around my space. Nate showed no embarrassment while wearing the words “Put a Bun in My Oven”; the apron had been a joke from my best friend, Sophie.
Damn, Olivia. Stop checking out the kid.
As if on cue, the bacon splattered onto his arm, and he hissed in pain. I rushed over, grabbed his arm, and rushed it under cool water. His face flushed, and I continued to hold on to his arm until I was certain that the sting from the burn had cooled.
“Didn’t your mother tell you always to cook with a shirt on?”
“It still would have hit my arm. My nipples are covered, at least.”
No, Olivia, don’t look down. I looked. His nipples were covered, but the outline of his abs showed at least an eight-pack.
Then my eyes were drawn to his forearms; the one still in my arm had thick veins and was entirely muscle.
Oh shit, his triceps—why was I such a whore for a man with prominent triceps?
Not biceps, but triceps—signs of a well-rounded athlete and a man who could hold himself up for long sessions in the bedroom.
“What’s going on here?” Austin called from the doorway.
I jumped away, not because there was anything wrong with what we were doing, but because there was definitely something wrong with me fantasizing about those ripped arms holding mine above my head as he pounded into me.
“I made breakfast but burned myself in the process.”
Had I known a Southern accent could turn me to mush? Nope. But I did now. Add the charm of a hot breakfast filled with my favorite hangover cures, and my body forgot that the man in front of me was barely an adult.
“Bacon with an egg white omelet?” Austin asked.
“I used what I could find. Luckily, there was real bacon.”
“I have a ten-year-old boy. Do you think he’d eat turkey bacon?”
“No one should eat turkey bacon.” Nate shuddered at the thought, and I laughed.
“I guess if your career involves burning 84,000 calories a day, then the full-fat bacon wouldn’t be a problem.” And yes, I swiped a piece of bacon off the plate on the counter, not intending to burn any more than the calories required to nurse my damn hangover. “What’s your schedule this week?”
“I’ll send it to you. We’ll be home most of the week and then traveling this weekend,” Austin said, scrolling his phone and finding the information. He sent the link, and I added it to my digital calendar, where I track Cooper’s comings and goings.
I took the first bite of the omelet and groaned. “What did you put in this thing? It’s amazing.”
Austin laughed. “Don’t ask, Livvie. It’s probably bacon fat. Just enjoy it.”
Nate looked sheepish. “Is it?” I asked.
He nodded.
“His biscuits and gravy are a favorite, too.”
“You’re from the south?” I asked.
“Alabama.”
“Damn, it doesn’t get more south than that. What do you think of Boston?”
“Well, I learned real fast not to call anyone ma’am up here.”
I laughed. When he cleaned up the mess from breakfast, I nudged my brother to get off his ass.
“Aus—what the hell. Why are you sitting on your ass and letting him wait on you?”
“I got it. No worries,” Nate shrugged good-naturedly. Did anything bother him?
Austin got up and forced Nate to sit back down. “Sorry. The rule in our family is that if you cook, you don’t have to clean.”
Nate looked out of place. “In my family, the youngest one always did everything.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You were the youngest?”
“Yes, ma—” he caught himself before he finished that word. “Yeah. But I was also the only kid in the house, and wasn’t going to let my mom wait on me after she worked all day.”
The way he said that, the weight of it—I wanted to ask more, but it didn’t seem like the right time.
“What are you all up to today?” I asked.
“I have a meeting with my attorney, and then I’m heading to the gym to train,” Austin said. They may have dropped into my home, but with it being baseball season, both Austin, and Nate would be busy at this time of year.
“Gym for me, too. How about you?” Nate asked. Why did I want to watch his gym session? Oh, yeah, those triceps. Definitely wouldn’t mind seeing those in action.
“I have a few purchase and sales agreements that need to be finalized and a house showing this afternoon. Other than that, I’m probably going to relax by the pool.
” It was because I was a real estate agent that I understood the value of the home I lived in; the neighborhood was virtually out of reach for most budgets.
This property and the Boston brownstone currently occupied by my sister-in-law would prevent Austin from being able to move out anytime soon.
But the more time I spent with Nate, the more I realized why he had triggered Austin’s protective nature. Could Nate live on his own? Easily. But I wouldn’t want him to if I had the option to keep him under the same roof as me.