Craving Redemption by Nicole Jacquelyn Page A

hug until my feet were dangling off the ground. His beard tickled across my neck and I grasped his shoulders tighter in response. It was exactly what I needed.
    I was disappointed when he let me down, but he kept his hands on my hips once my feet were safely on the floor. He was about to say something, but I’d never know what it was, because just seconds later the front door banged open. The noise startled me so badly that I jumped up, knocking my forehead into his chin as I wrapped my arms and legs around him. I wasn’t tall enough, so I ended up lower than I’d wanted and ended up pulling and scratching my way up his chest until his hands gripped the back of my thighs and hoisted me the rest of the way.
    It must have only taken seconds, but by the time I was safely in his arms, I heard my brother yelling.
    “Who the hell is he ? What the fuck? Let go of my sister!”
    I wanted to go to him. His voice was so strained it was cracking like it hadn’t done in years, and I knew he would be embarrassed,  but I was too wrapped up in making myself breathe that I didn’t have the capacity to comfort my brother.
    “Cody, that’s Callie’s friend. You just leave them be a minute and she’ll come talk to you,” Gram told him in a no-nonsense voice I’d heard before.
    “Screw that! That guy’s like forty years old! What the hell is going on?” he yelled again, his voice once again his usual deep tenor.
    They argued some more, but I didn’t catch what they were saying, because all of a sudden we were moving and Asa was speaking quietly in my ear.
    “It’s all good, baby, but you need to climb down. Your brother’s about to stab me with one o’ your Gram’s kitchen knives and she’s gonna be pissed,” he told me in an amused voice, his hand rubbing soothingly up and down my back.
    I’d finally gotten my breathing under control, so I slid my legs down the outside of his body and stepped away, mumbling, “Sorry,” before I faced my brother.
    Cody and I faced each other across the room, both of us uncomfortable with our audience. Any other time, we would have already been hugging and pushing each other around, but we were so far out of our comfort zones that we just stood there staring. He didn’t want to seem like a pussy to the men who filled the house, and I was embarrassed that he’d just seen me wrapped around Asa, so neither of us made a move until I finally found my voice.
    “I don’t think he’s forty. Maybe thirty,” I told him with a small grin.
    That was all it took.
    We met in the middle of the room, wrapping our arms around each other as he swung me around slowly. It was what we always did when we saw each other for the first time during his visits. A few years before, he’d grown taller than me, and to prove that he was bigger he’d swung me around, teasing that he wasn’t the little brother any longer.
    Having my brother near always made me feel like the world was right again, but this time I knew it was just an illusion. Nothing would ever be right again, and breathing in my brother’s familiar scent reminded me in a flash that I was the reason we’d lost our parents.
    How I’d managed to put it from my mind, I didn’t know, but the minute he set me on my feet, I stumbled to the side as if hit, hearing the voices of the men who killed my parents inside my head.
    They were calling me by name.
    He reached out for my arm, an alarmed look on his face, but I pushed him away, unable to bear his comfort.
    “It’s my fault,” I told him, surprised. “Oh, my God. It’s my fault they’re dead.”
    His face drained of color as he watched me, but I didn’t see anything else because I was running for the bathroom with my hand over my mouth as if to hold in the vomit that was pressing at the back of my throat.
     

Chapter 15
    Callie
    I wasn’t sure if I should be thankful that I didn’t actually throw up or disappointed that I hadn’t purged the nastiness in my stomach. I rinsed my face