Pure Will by Kristi Pelton Read Free Book Online Page B

in the strength center his name before I followed you out. All I knew is you weren’t leaving with him.”
    She seemed to lose her oxygen for a minute and I don’t know what that meant.
    “You go,” she whispered.
    I knew my first one. “When was the last time you kissed a guy?”
    “Last week.”
    The reverberating growl reared its ugly head again. “Explain that.”
    She bit down on her lip then grinned wide. “Strip poker Blake. He sort of kissed me in the kitchen that night.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Seriously, tell me because that was NOT a kiss.”
    “What do you mean by kiss?”
    “Tell me.”
    She shook her head. “It’s been a while,” she said so softly I barely heard.
    “Was it with your brother?”
    Her eyes closed and she was taking deep breaths. “I don’t even know your last name.” The vodka and water she drank slid down too easily for my liking.
    “It’s Denton. Will-i-am Denton.”
    She smiled but it faded quickly. “Anyone who has ever known this has turned on me. No one in Kansas knows but Kate.”
    I couldn’t turn my back on this girl ever and that scared the shit out of me. She’d been hurt and I wanted to make a vow to her that she’d never hurt like that again. But Jesus, my thoughts frightened me.  I put my fears of loss onto her.
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    “Promise you won’t go.”
    “I’m right here.”
    After a long sip, which finished her drink in record time, she said, “Max wasn’t my brother. He was my stepbrother.”
    I knew before she said any more that I hated Max and I would destroy him if I ever saw him.
    “I was 15 when my dad remarried. I’d never met Max because he lived with his father. He’d gotten arrested for possession of marijuana and his dad kicked him out and sent him to live with us to get away from the crowd he was in there. He was 18 when he came and on probation.”
    She sloshed around the ice in her drink and I took the glass from her and went and made another drink.
    “OK…” I said when I got back.
    “Max was beautiful and all the girls were crazy about him. There he was under my roof. I had this horrendous crush on him and he was pissed off all the time. At his parents. At life. When he turned 19, he went out and got some tattoos and one of them was a ‘C’ and I dreamed it was my initial,” she said still sounding disappointed. “And he was everything I wasn’t at 16. He was strong and courageous or so I thought. I wanted him so badly.”
    She stopped and stared at her twiddling fingers. Every instinct inside of me wanted to pull her into my chest and hold her. That instinct had never been a part of my disposition and the desire was overwhelmingly strong.
    The part of my disposition that had always been alive and present—was wanting to obliterate Max.
    “Max drank vodka so that Tracy and my dad couldn’t smell it, and after getting a DUI, he was grounded and home for a month even though he was 19. He came in to my room one night while I was studying.”
    I finished my beer and wanted to throw the bottle into the closest wall. Predator!
    “So, we drank together and got to know each other. I wanted to look cool to him. Probably why vodka is my poison. We would stay up and talk for hours. He wanted to know about my sex life and who I had kissed and there was ZERO to tell.  But I lied and told him I had kissed a couple of guys. I’m not sure he believed me. Then one night he kissed me and I think he knew then because he would tell me to open my mouth or to do something differently. And Kate and I talked about it and neither of us thought it was wrong. We weren’t related. Believe it or not, she hadn’t had sex yet and so I shared all the gory details.”
    She shook her head trying to ward off thoughts.  I needed to know those thoughts.  Finally, I reached for her hand; it was half the size of mine.
    “Someone must have thought it was wrong,” I said but meant it as a question.
    “We took turns going to each