Echoes of Us by Teegan Loy Read Free Book Online Page A

with pots and pans. I chuckled because Maggie was going to have a stroke when she saw the mess. It would take her hours to return the kitchen to her specifications.
    When the last bag was emptied, I yawned. “I have to crash. Is there anything else you need?”
    Jade rubbed the back of his neck and smiled. “Nope, I’m good.”
    “Well, okay, then,” I stuttered and looked at him. Our eyes met, and I felt something stir deep in my soul. My stomach fluttered, and a heated flash headed for my groin.
    “I had a great time tonight,” Jade whispered.
    “Me too. Night,” I said quickly and rushed down the hall to my room. I slammed the door and let out a long breath.
    “What the hell was that?”
    My stomach fluttered again when I thought about Jade’s brown eyes. This was bad or crazy or a little of both. I could try to convince myself the pizza had been tainted and caused my stomach to dive into my ankles. But the problem with that theory was it was completely false. The pizza was fine. I was the crazy one.
    Jade caused the reaction, and because of him, I had a huge problem, and I was going to have to spend the next ten minutes thinking about horrible things or take my dick in hand and work it out.
    The five minutes I spent conjuring awful images was a total waste of time, because everything morphed into Jade. I gave up and stripped off my clothes, quickly climbed into my bed, and grabbed the lube before I pulled the covers over my head.
    Just as I wrapped my lube-covered hand around my aching cock, my phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen and saw Kelli’s name pop up. In the past three years since I’d left home, Kelli had called me seven times, and never with good news. It killed my erection immediately, so I wiped my hand on my discarded T-shirt.
    “Hello?”
    “Rylan, this is Kelli,” she said.
    “I know who it is.”
    “I just wanted to make sure you got home and, you know, that everything was okay.” She stumbled over the words and sighed when she finally finished the sentence.
    “We made it back with no problems.”
    The line went silent, and I wondered if she had hung up on me. “Rylan, I’m sorry about Mom and Dad.”
    “Don’t apologize for them.”
    “Okay,” she said quietly. “Then I’m sorry for treating you like you didn’t exist. I should have been there for you.”
    “It’s in the past, Kelli,” I said.
    “I’m here for you now, okay,” she said. I heard her take a deep breath. “I’ll support you and any choices you make. After you left, I had it out with Mom and Dad. It wasn’t pretty.”
    This was the first time since we were little kids that Kelli had stuck up for me.
    “Does Lucas know what happened?”
    “Yeah, Dad was totally freaked-out this morning, and Lucas kept bugging him until he exploded and said, ‘your brother has decided he likes guys.’ You would have loved Lucas’s reaction. The words rolled around in his head and then his eyes got really wide. He spilled his coffee, and Dad swore at him. Mom came in and told them to clean up and that talking about this mess was not proper breakfast conversation.”
    “Nice,” I said. Mentioning my name anywhere in the house was probably off-limits. From this day forward, I would be referred to as the mess .
    We talked for close to an hour. She asked me all sorts of questions about school and Maggie, but she stayed away from my social life.
    “It’s okay to ask me about my personal life. I know you must be curious.”
    “I’m not going to pry into your life, Rylan, but I really would like to come to Chicago and hang out with you and Maggie….” She paused. “If you’d have me.”
    “Really? You want to come stay with me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well,” I said. “Maggie and I start school in a few days. We don’t finish until early August, but you can come anytime you want. I’m only taking one class.”
    She squealed into the phone, and I had to hold it away from my ear. “Do you mean it, Rylan?”
    I stared