She couldn’t—I stopped and stepped back, and then my eyes went back to the boy in front of me.

“Micah, go to your room,” she said in a calm, even voice. “Now. Go.”

“But he’s nice—” the little boy started, but she cut him off.

“Micah, go.”

I watched the back of his head as he walked away from me. I wanted to see his face again. I wanted

to study it. This was not . . . This couldn’t . . . No. He was too young. He wasn’t Dustin’s. There was

no way she’d had my brother’s kid and hid him from me . . . from us. But the kid had said his dad was

a basketball player. He’d never known Dustin. He obviously knew his dad.

“Hello, Dewayne,” Sienna said, with a tone of warning I didn’t miss. My head was still reeling.

How did she have a kid? I thought she’d lost her mind when my brother had died. Not gone off and

started a family.

I stared at her. I didn’t understand. I was trying to wrap my brain around it. How old was that kid?

Where the hell was his father? Men didn’t let women like this one walk away. Especially with a kid

that damn cute.

“Sienna,” I finally said. “It’s been a long time.”

Chapter Two

Eight years ago . . .

DEWAYNE

“Freshman girls,” Preston Drake drawled, sounding pleased as he looked down the hallway. “Damn

shame they’ll be illegal before the year is over. We need to enjoy being seventeen while we can.”

Marcus elbowed Preston in the ribs. “Dude, you’re a douche. Glad my sister won’t be here until

next year when we’re gone.”

Preston chuckled. We all knew he wasn’t going to touch Amanda Hardy. She was our little sister

too. Or at least¸ it felt like it. We’d been friends with Marcus since Amanda was in diapers.

“Y’all seen Trisha?” Rock asked as he walked up to us with a frown firmly in place. It was the kind

of frown that meant he was on the verge of beating the shit out of someone.

“No. She didn’t take the bus?” Marcus asked.

Rock shook his head. “Stupid piece-of-shit mother of hers. I’m gonna have to go find her. I’ll be

back later. Cover for me,” he said, before turning and heading for the back exit of the building. This

was a once-a-week thing. Trisha had a verbally abusive mother, and her mother’s current boyfriend

had slapped Trisha’s younger brother, Krit, around last week. Trisha had jumped on the man’s back

and started pulling his hair, and he’d slung her across the room. If Rock hadn’t shown up when he did,

Trisha would have ended up in the hospital or worse. Rock was working on getting her out of there.

But he had to do something about her younger brother, too. She wouldn’t leave him in a dangerous

situation.

“Ain’t that Dustin’s girlfriend?” Marcus asked, drawing my attention back to the present moment. I

scanned the people until I saw Sienna Roy standing in the crowd with her book bag held protectively

to her chest and her eyes wide with wonder. She looked lost. Where the fuck was my brother? The girl

had turned into a beauty overnight. I had told him just last month he needed to make their relationship

official before they started high school. Guys were going to notice her.

“Yeah, it is, and the stupid little fucker isn’t anywhere around,” I muttered. Sienna was so damn

overprotected by her parents that she didn’t have much of a life outside of her house and ours. My

brother was already going to parties, but Sienna didn’t get to go. And she never seemed to have friends

over. Dustin was her friend. But his stupid ass was nowhere to be found.

“They break up?” Preston asked, taking a new, keen interest in Sienna. Fuck no. He could back his

horny ass off.

“They were never a couple. And don’t even go there. I’ll beat your ass. Do you understand me?”

Preston gave me that cocky grin that I’d hate if he wasn’t one of my best friends. Right now,

though, I was considering knocking it off his face.

“Don’t piss him off, Preston. I’m not in the mood to handle that without some backup,” Marcus

said, glaring at Preston.

I wasn’t going to let my little brother leave Sienna out there to the dogs. And there were lots of

fucking dogs at this school.

“I’ll meet y’all in first period. I got something to do,” I told them, but didn’t make eye contact. I

didn’t want to see the looks on their faces. I never messed with freshmen. But this one freshman

needed me, and if my brother wasn’t going to take care of her, I was.

I didn’t have to shove through the crowd. It split for me as I made my way to Sienna. I was halfway

there when her gaze found me. First her eyes went wide with surprise, and then a shy smile touched

her face. Damn, she was pretty. Too damn pretty. My brother was an idiot.

“Hey, Little Red, looks like you found your way to the big leagues,” I teased her as I took her arm

gently and pulled her to the side of the busy hallway. “You found your locker yet?”

She blushed and glanced down at her feet. I followed her gaze and noticed she was wearing a pair

of cowboy boots with her skirt. That was sexy as hell. Fuck! She was a kid. She was also my brother’s

girl. He just needed to grow up and realize it.

“I looked for it, but there are so many people and I couldn’t remember if the one hundreds are on

the first or second floor. So I just figured I’d carry my books around today and stay late to find it.”

Her books weighed more than she did. “What’s your number?” I asked her. I wasn’t letting her

carry those books around all day.

“One eighty-eight,” she said, frowning and looking around again. The hall was so full of people, it

would be hard to see the locker numbers from her height.

“Come on. Can’t have you getting a backache your first day of school,” I told her, and put my hand

on her back to guide her through the crowd. I could see people looking at us, and I wanted to glare at

them all and warn them to be careful with her. But I didn’t. I made my threat silently. I kept my hand

on her back as we walked down the hall and turned left to find her locker in the first row on the east

wing.

“This is it. You got the combination?”

She looked relieved. She dropped her bag and began going through it until she pulled out a little

scrap of paper. “Here it is,” she said, beaming at me before carefully turning the lock until it popped

open. I took the door from her and made a little change to the inside of it.

“Now close it. Let me show you something,” I told her.

She closed it without question and looked up at me.

“Hit it twice.”

She barely slapped at it.

Chuckling, I shook my head. “No, Little Red. You got to hit it twice. Like this.” I showed her, then

turned the lock once and it opened up.

Her eyes went wide. “How’d you do that?”

Winking at her, I grabbed her book bag and put it inside the locker. “Magic, sweetheart.” I closed

the door again. “Now you try it again.”

She hit it harder this time, and with one twist of the lock it popped open. She laughed and clapped

her hands in excitement. “That is so cool. Thank you, Dewayne.”

Yeah, my brother was going to have to do something fast, because this kind of pretty wasn’t going

to be left alone long. I’d have to make sure no one else got near her until Dustin woke the fuck up.

Present day . . .

SIENNA

I had wanted to prepare myself for this. I needed time to think this through. Had they sent Dewayne

over here to look at Micah? To see if he was Dustin’s? Was that what this was?

My stomach turned, and I was sure I was going to throw up right here at his feet. Micah didn’t

know them. They hadn’t made any attempt to know him. I couldn’t just let them try to walk into his