Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

The name Richard picked for me would make it obvious how he felt about me. How he saw me. Was I the fuckup who had returned? Would he accept that? Or was I Markus, dead and gone, with no room to move on. No room for who I was in his life now that I wasn’t who I used to be.

Richard continued to give me details about the order but my head was spinning. I lost track of a lot of them, but figured…how hard could it be? It was just a few fucking chairs. I could handle that.

“What name?” I blurted, weirdly late. “I mean. For me.” I cleared my throat. “What name did you?—”

“Jeffrey Prince,” Richard sounded confused, like that had been the only answer that made sense. And my heart fluttered as I realized what that meant. It was the best-case scenario. I wasn’t used to those.

Richard said something about sending help for me, but I was too twisted up inside to really understand what he meant.

At least…

Until I was climbing into my truck a while later and there was a gentle rap at the passenger-side window. A familiar freckled face peered at me, dark eyes glinting as Collin yanked the door open and slid into the seat. He folded his gangly legs up, shoving the seat back with an annoyed huff. “Blair been in here?” he said in greeting. Probably because the leg room was abysmal.

“Uh, yeah.” I stared at him, not really sure what the fuck was happening.

Jesus, god. Why must you punish me?

Collin was the last person I wanted to be stuck alone in a car with for three plus hours.

“There,” the seat whirred as it moved back into place. Collin grinned, very pointedly not buckling himself up—probably to test me.

I may be trying to come across as the “cool big brother” but I wasn’t an idiot.

“Buckle up, man,” I said, doing up my own buckle pointedly. “The fuck aren’t you in school?”

“I’m sick,” Collin fake coughed like Karen from Mean Girls.

“The fuck you are.”

“Dammit,” Collin huffed, throwing his hands up. “Aren’t you supposed to be the cool brother?”

His thoughts so perfectly mirrored my own, I couldn’t help but laugh. “You know what’s not cool?”

“If you say ‘not putting your seatbelt on’ I’m going to scream.”

“Not putting your seatbelt on.”

“Fuck.”

“Richard know you’re not in school?”

“Yes, Mom.” Collin huffed, annoyed. “I checked with all my teachers. I’m not missing classes. I’m all caught up. Now will you get off my ass?” Blair had mentioned that this was Collin’s first year at public school and that he’d been more than a little excited to attend. I wasn’t so sure about that, judging by his current mood.

I shrugged, ignoring his swearing with a snort as it finally hit me what Richard had meant when he’d said he was going to send me help. Collin was…apparently my help. I wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to lift, but now that he was in my truck I couldn’t just kick him out.

Especially when it looked like—based on the bike parked on the curb in front of my parking spot—he’d biked all the way here. I had no doubt that Richard would find a way to pick it up for him, because he was just perfect like that.

Collin was sweaty, like the second Richard had called in the calvary he’d pedaled his scrawny ass over here like there was a fire lit under it. I could respect that. Seeing as I’d dropped everything to help Blair the second he asked too. Everything, as in my dildo plans. My ass still felt twitchy and loose, and that was not a feeling I liked at all when I was sitting alone with my kid-brother-stranger.

As much as I hated being stuck alone with him though, I warmed a little.

Because maybe Collin and I weren’t that different after all.

We both cared about Blair.

And that was a good fucking start.

Pulling out onto Spruce, checking for wayward wolves and the very few pedestrians that populated the streets during daylight, I headed toward the highway that would lead out of town. I was quiet as I turned the music up so Collin wouldn’t be tempted to talk to me, and rolled the window down so the wind would make that even more difficult.