You Asked For This

Chapter 1

One

Hallie

The Rutherford backyard was littered with the remnants of yet another successful Fourth of July pool party.

I sat on my parents’ deck wrapped in a towel, holding a red paper cup close to my lips.

The scent of the citrusy concoction my brother made almost replaced the smell of chlorine from the pool and sulfur from spent fireworks.

On the food tray at the center of the patio table, only a few sad grapes and bruised strawberries remained.

My sister, Anna, had hijacked the Bluetooth speaker and was now subjecting us all to her feral party playlist–explicit enough that we were all silently thankful our mom couldn’t actually understand the words.

The deck rail was lined with empty cups and beer bottles, and the pool was finally quiet and still, unless you counted the lonely flamingo floatie drifting around in slow circles.

The party had dwindled down, and now there were just a few of us left to roast each other and shoot the shit with Mom like we were teenagers on summer vacation.

But we weren’t.

We were all adults now, or something like it. I mean, fuck–Brooke had a mortgage, a husband, and a kid already, like she’d spent the last four years of her life checking items off a list. My oldest sister was easily the “adultiest” adult out of all of us.

Beside me, Adrian sat with a towel slung low around his hips, nursing his drink and taking everyone’s teasing comments about wasting his business degree in stride.

“Hey, the tips I get from middle-aged women having a ladies’ night out are keeping my lights on,” he said. “So you can all say whatever you want.”

My brother was a bartender at Applebee’s, and he had zero shame.

I swallowed and kept my teasing comments at a minimum, knowing I was in no position to joke about someone else’s career choice. I glanced down at the melting ice in my cup, glad that the attention was on his career instead of mine.

Because the more they asked questions about my nonexistent remote job, the more I’d risk stumbling over the flimsy lie I’d told everyone when I moved back home. I’d successfully evaded talking about myself all night, and I intended to keep it that way.

“We’re all very grateful for how generously you’ve been pouring tonight, friend." Directly across the table from me, Knox Ballard lifted his cup in a casual toast, smoothing things ever effortlessly.

Just like he always did.

My brother’s best friend had been a fixture at our Fourth of July pool parties for as long as I could remember. Then again, he was practically an honorary Rutherford at this point, having been around since he and Adrian met in the sixth grade.

He even looked like one of us, with his dark hair and towering height.

When he’d come to the movies with us when we were younger, people actually thought he was my mom’s fifth child.

And Knox went along with it, too, saying things like, “Can I get Red Vines, Mommy?” until Adrian punched him in the stomach.

But he was no longer that scrawny teen who showed up just to eat all the Cheez-Its and pester me while I did my homework.

The person sitting across from me now was a fully grown man, all broad-shouldered and muscular with a real job, a tattooed chest, and a quieter sense of confidence.

Knox’s once-floppy hair was shorter now, but still long enough to fall over his forehead, forcing him to toss it back every so often in a way that had been distracting me all night.

And the beard?

Who gave him permission?

This man, whom I’d once witnessed burp the entire alphabet, had no business looking so fucking sexy.

I bit my lip when Knox’s dark eyes briefly caught mine from across the table, and my cheeks burned as I turned my attention to my mother, who yawned as she pushed back her patio chair. “Okay, who’s going to help me clean all of this up?”

“Not it,” Adrian blurted.

“I have to get Cayden home to bed.” Brooke gestured toward the padded bench on the other side of the deck, where my nephew had been napping on my brother-in-law’s chest since the fireworks ended. “Sorry.”

She wasn’t sorry.

Anna made an excuse about needing to get upstairs to call her long-distance girlfriend before it was too late in her time zone, and I accepted my fate with a sigh. What excuse did I have?

“Let’s get it in the morning, Mom,” I suggested. “I’ll come down and take care of it.”

For the past month, I’d been living in the little apartment above my parents’ garage.

Needing to move back home for a while was becoming a Rutherford rite of passage.

Brooke did it. Adrian had done it twice.

Even Knox had found himself in that position once, accepting my parents’ generosity during a brief rough patch.

Now it was my turn to take up residence in that musty garage apartment, and with the way things were going in my life, I might as well start unpacking the boxes in the corner of my living room I’d been pretending were just temporary.

After hearing me offer to clean up for my mom, Adrian shook his head, staring me down with a shameful look. “Imagine that, the golden child’s tryin’ to get brownie points.”

“First of all, everyone here knows Brooke is the golden child,” I retorted, trying not to laugh. Nobody disagreed. And even without glancing in Brooke’s direction, I could see her nonchalant shrug in my peripheral vision.

God, even she knew she was the favorite.

“And second?” I continued, waving my hand over the empty cups and bottles at his and Knox’s end of the table. “You boys contributed the most to this mess.”

Knox let out an exaggerated, offended huff, though there was a hint of a smile on his lips when he said, “I’ve imbibed the least out of all of you, and my mess is very contained. So you can leave me out of this, Hallie.”

I almost spit out the last sip of my drink. “‘Imbibe’?” I questioned, licking the coconut rum off my upper lip. Warmth flooded through my veins, but I couldn’t be sure if that was from the alcohol or the way I had Knox’s full attention. “Who are you trying to impress with that vocabulary?”

Knox let out a husky chuckle, but before he could defend his word choice, Brooke stood up to leave. There were hugs and kisses all around, and then my mom announced she was ready for a shower. She adjusted her sarong, told everyone goodnight, and disappeared into the house.

Adrian wasn’t far behind, muttering something about an early shift as he pushed up from the table. Knox followed him in, both of them laughing and muttering to each other on their way into the main house.

I didn’t mind the sudden quiet. I’d brought my Kindle out earlier, fully intending to read while everyone swam, but I’d almost forgotten about it in the tote hanging from the back of my chair. I pulled it out and turned it on, suddenly realizing I was a little too buzzed to focus on the words.

I stared at the screen for a minute, rereading the word cock over and over until it no longer felt like a real word. I’d just decided to give up and head to my apartment in the garage when the sliding door creaked open again.

Knox tugged a gray t-shirt over his head as he stepped onto the deck. “Everyone else gone?”

I watched his unfairly muscular abs disappear under the cotton fabric, dragging my eyes up to his face to answer. “Yeah,” I said, tapping a button on my Kindle and holding it against my chest like I’d just been caught doing something nefarious. “I thought you left, too.”

“I was throwing away my trash. And Adrian’s,” he said, nodding at the table. I’d been so distracted by hugging my sleepy little nephew goodbye, I hadn’t even noticed Knox had cleaned up half the mess.

My lips pulled up into a smile. “Trying to be the honorary Rutherford golden child?”

Knox cleared his throat, sitting back down in the seat across from me. He casually gripped the armrests, his twinkling eyes locked on mine. “Just trying to stay off your mom’s bad side.”

I twisted my lips in an attempt to suppress another smile, curling the ends of my hair around my fingers.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window, relieved to see my dark brown hair had dried into acceptably presentable waves instead of its usual poof.

I was still in my black bikini top, but I’d tugged my jean shorts back on a couple of hours ago.

“Right,” I said, lowering the Kindle against my chest. “You’re already my mom’s favorite person, aside from Jon Hamm.”

“So there's still room to move up on that list.” Knox casually folded his hands over his abdomen like he didn't have a care in the world and nowhere else he’d rather be. “I'm thinking Bon Jovi tickets for Christmas.”

“And here I thought you treated us to all those concerts and shows because you cared. But all this time, you've just been trying to win my mom’s affection?”

He smirked. Knox was the assistant director of security at an arena in the city, which came with plenty of perks, including discounted tickets. A couple years ago, he gave us all Cirque du Soleil tickets for Christmas, and my parents were still talking about it.

I was still waiting for him to introduce me to the Blackhawks, but I decided not to remind him right now.

“You caught me,” he said. I shook my head at him as I reached for my sister’s unfinished wine cooler, relieved to find it still cold. I needed something to do with my hands besides clutching the Kindle like a shield.

Considering I was likely one sip away from saying something stupid, I probably should have gone off to bed like everyone else.

But I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet, and Knox made no indication he was leaving, either, settling back more comfortably in his patio chair as he watched me finish off my stolen drink.