CHAPTER 165

BRIAN POV

I should be long asleep when the text message sounds.

      It’s Cain, of course, not Moona.

My heart thumps at the possibility that she’s already decimated his patience. Maybe she’s already descended into hissing monster Moona and he’s thought better of his offer. Maybe it wouldn’t entirely be such a bad thing, having to bring her back here.

Maybe I could hide her from my co-worker  long enough to figure something out. Maybe having her around could work, even if I won’t allow myself to cross the line with her. Maybe I’d even be able to help her through her shit without having to check all the right boxes at work.

      I open the message, expecting the worst – but it’s nothing like that.

      ‘Man to fucking man, Brian, are you gonna fuck the girl or what?’

      My reply is instant, even though my gut aches with it.

      ‘Of course I’m fucking not.’

 It takes a while for him to reply. I’m just about drifting off to sleep when the phone bleeps at me.

‘But you want her? I’m talking for real here.’

 I don’t let myself go there because I daren’t. I daren’t allow myself to admit how I really feel about Moona Avii, because once I do that there’ll be no going back. I can’t allow myself to contemplate the serious potential of crossing the line with a girl less than half my age, a girl who depends on me to help her through this shitty time in her life. A girl who’s had nobody constant who’ll stand strong in the face of all her whims and tricks and silly games.

 A girl who needs to know she can rely on me to be her friend above all other things, even if I’m in love with her.

I’m in love with her.

Fucking in love with her.

      I’ve never felt so alive as I feel when I’m around her, and if I let myself entertain the possibility that this could be, even for a second, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to live my normal life again.

      So I don’t.

      I say the right thing.

      The sensible thing.

No, I don’t want her and you shouldn’t either. She’s barely even eighteen, Cain. She’s a girl who needs care, not fucking cock.

      I don’t get a response to that one.

And I don’t get any fucking sleep either.

•

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CAIN POV

 Moona Avii is a one-girl whirlwind of backchat in my once peaceful home. She’s noisy and obnoxious, messy and disorganised with no respect whatsoever for timekeeping.

      Every evening I head home from work nervous of what the fuck I’ll find there, and yet I’m still excited when I turn the key in my front door.

Brian’s right, of course. There’s no way he should contemplate fucking Moona Avii, and neither should I.

But I am contemplating it. I’m contemplating it every fucking minute.

Still, I do try to talk myself down from pursuing that tight little pussy of hers, simply because I have no idea where that kind of crap would lead any of us. The girl is a loose cannon, and I’ve never been one for commitment. I’m rarely still interested in a woman after she’s spent the night in my bed, and where would that leave our living arrangement if it comes to a thanks, but no thanks next morning?

      You know what they say: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – and Moona Avii is both crazy and furious enough to make Hell’s own demons shit a ton of bricks. I really don’t need that kind of insanity on my plate, not while she’s holed up in my house.

      But that’s really not what concerns me at the heart of it, not if I’m being totally honest with myself.

What concerns me most of all, is that this excitement I feel around Moona Avii would survive a night in my bed, and escalate all the more because of it.

There’s no doubt she’s craving some kind of stability, and as grotesquely adult and responsible as it is, I feel a strange compulsion to help the girl find her own straight and narrow and keep her on it.

 I know that helping Moona has been Brian’s job for the past five months, and I know he’s been giving it his all, but whereas Brian usually has the experience to excel in this  kind of one-on-one coaching, I can’t help but feel he’s slightly off the mark with this one.

      Scrap that, I think he’s well off the mark with this one.

      Call me arrogant for forming an opinion after just a few days in her company, but I really think I’m onto something.

 Where Brian is trying the calm, stable and supportive routine, I think he should be giving her an earful of shit. Where Michael seems like he wants to wrap her broken bits in cotton wool, I think he should be putting a heavy foot down on her bad behaviour,

  In short, I think Moona Avii needs discipline as well as support. Probably even more so.

  I think she needs a heavy hand to keep her in line, and I think she’d flourish for it.

      I think she’d even like it.

 I know Brian hands were mostly tied at work. He had boxes to tick and guidelines to adhere to. He had allocated time slots to make a difference and the clock was always ticking.

      But not anymore. Not here.

      Not for any of us.

 I strongly doubt Moona’s ever been given boundaries by someone who isn’t intimidated by her craziness. I doubt she’s ever been made to understand the concept of tough love.

      Maybe not even any love.

 I see it in her eyes when they meet mine over our late night beer. I hear it in her voice when she tells me she doesn’t need anyone and doesn’t give a fuck what I think of her approach to loading up the dishwasher so insanely high it’s almost impossible to close.

 She’s a bag of backchat and bluster, pushing and poking me for a reaction whenever I’m in her company, but I see enough to get a sense of the troublesome girl with the raven hair.

 It’s not that Brian isn’t around enough to draw his own conclusions about what Moona needs. He heads over every evening when his workday is done to check in on her. He makes calls to various associations about her living arrangements and talks her through the paperwork, even though she’s thoroughly disinterested in everything he’s doing for her.

Moona gives him nothing because she’s a snotty bitch who’s punishing him for sticking to his morals. I see it even if he can’t.

 That’s why I decided to broach it with her after the first swig of beer goes down a treat this evening.

“Straight up answer,” I begin. “Why are you being such a fucking bitch to him?”

 

She raises her eyebrows like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but I laugh in her face.

 “Cut the crap, Moona, we both know you’re freezing him out. You want to humiliate him for not giving a shit about you. Why?”

 “You’re fucking mad.” She taps the side of her head. “You’re seeing shit that isn’t there.”

 “You’re fucking mad if you think I can’t see right through you,” I tell her. “I just want to know why.”

 She shrugs. “Because he’s a fucking dick.”

      I shake my head. “Nice try, sugarplum. We both know the guy’s not a fucking dick. Just a couple of days ago you were desperate to confess your undying devotion to him in my living room. Now you act like he’s the biggest loser piece of shit you’ve ever met.”

“He treated me like the biggest loser piece of shit he’s ever met.”

I take another swig of beer. “What do you mean?”

      She folds her arms.

      “Moona, what do you mean?”

She groans. “Why can’t you mind your own fucking business?”

I’m not going to let this go. No fucking way.

“It’s hard to mind my own fucking business in my own fucking house, Moona.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to be nice to a guy who says he doesn’t want you.”

   I raise an eyebrow. “He said that?”

  She nods. “Friends, that’s what he said we can be. Such fucking bullshit.”

 “Friends isn’t the same thing as saying he doesn’t want you.”

  She kicks my stool with her boot. “’Tis as far as I’m concerned. He can go fuck himself.” She tips back her drink. “I don’t want him anymore anyway. I don’t give a fuck that he blew me out.”

 I know she must be lying, but my hands feel clammy all the same.

      “You don’t want him anymore?”

Her eyes aren’t just piercing tonight, they’re dangerous. Her guarded stare gives me the fucking shivers.

   “So, what do you want?” I prompt.

“I want you to shut the fuck up,” she snaps.

 But I won’t, because she’s sucking her bottom lip as she spins her bottle in her fingers. I won’t, because the sight of her sitting there makes my cock twitch in my pants.

Because I don’t want her to want Brian, not anymore.

I want her to want me.

I want her to look me in the eye and ask me to stay the night, even though it would be crazy.

      And I think she knows it.

      “He cares about you,” I tell her.

 “He can fuck off,” she says, and this time she looks like she really means it.

      I can’t fucking keep up with the girl.