Tore Up (Mississippi Smoke Series Book 1)
Tore Up: Chapter 9

They were only two words. Yet my chest felt like it had been hit with a fucking brick.

“It’s his,” Linc had said when I answered his call.

I had to sit down with that blow. I couldn’t even respond. I’d been so fucking sure it wasn’t Crosby’s.

“Before I talk to your dad, I need to know what you would like to do with her. He was your brother, and I’m asking you this out of respect, but understand that I do not plan on letting her deal with this alone. She needs help. Her family fucking left her, and her brother is a walking dead man. She’s just nineteen years old. Whether you want to admit it or not, Crosby loved that girl. We owe it to him to make sure his baby and the girl he loved are taken care of.”

He was right about the fact that Crosby would have wanted us to take care of her. I wasn’t so sure he was in love with her. That had just been his first taste of a kinky pussy. But that kid was my brother’s. All I had left of him.

“Can she stay in the cabin?” I asked.

“That’s not fair to her, Bane. Being stuck, all alone, back in the woods. I stopped by to check on her yesterday, and just being there alone for twenty-four hours seemed to have pulled her into a darker mood. She didn’t say much.”

I glared at the wall. “It’s better than the house she was living in. She has a bed in the cabin.”

He let out a weary-sounding sigh. “Would Crosby want her living alone in a fucking tiny-ass cabin? With no one to talk to? She has no family. The one that gives a shit about her will be dead as soon as you can get to him.”

Clenching and unclenching my fist, I sat there, fighting with the voice in my head, telling me what Crosby would have wanted. He would have wanted her in our house. With his things. I didn’t want that. Not at fucking all. But he would have.

FUCK!

“She can live in the room on the third floor of the house,” I said tightly. That was the best I could do.

“He wouldn’t have wanted her stuck in a fucking attic, Bane. He would have wanted her in his room.”

“NO!” I took a deep breath. “No. That room is off limits. The door stays closed. The third floor isn’t an attic. There is a bed and a dresser and a bathroom.”

He was right. Crosby would have wanted her in his bedroom, but I couldn’t do that. I had my limits. That room hadn’t been touched since he had been in it last, and it was going to remain that way. I needed it that way.

“All right, that’s better than the cabin. Can I trust you to go get her and have her moved in, or do I need to be there? Going to talk to your dad is something I have to handle immediately.”

I didn’t want to look at her. That was something I had to get over. For Crosby’s sake. She was a reminder that he was dead, and I didn’t think I could ever see her face and not hate her. But she was the mother of my brother’s kid. I had to learn to tolerate her.

“I’ll get her tomorrow,” I told him.

“And her things,” he pushed.

“I got her things from that house of hers, didn’t I?” I replied.

No one but me knew that all her shit had been left sitting on the porch. She never mentioned it or asked for any of it. Linc had taken it to the cabin because I hadn’t wanted to see her again if I could help it. But then I’d been so sure my brother had covered his dick up when he fucked her. Whatever she’d done to trap him with a pregnancy had worked. She had seen money and used her pussy to get it.

Her gold digging had killed my brother, and for that, I would never forgive her.