Excerpt

Jesse

I should not have a hard-on at a funeral. Especially not my father’s.

This should be an occasion where I should feel nothing below my waist. Yet, my dick obviously wasn’t listening to the appropriate behavioral dos and don’ts discussed around the family dinner table last night as we debated how to handle the swarm of paparazzi expected to swarm like locusts to the cemetery ever since news of the death of our father hit the media.

A few years ago, this kind of news would have been a relatively big deal around Kensington, Texas—the town my family founded hundreds of years ago. But now, it’s a worldwide sensation due to who my brother-in-law and niece are.

My sister Paige married her long-lost high school sweetheart almost two decades after the birth of their child. No one could have predicted that while she struggled at seventeen, pregnant and alone without the love of her life, that he was following a journey that would lead him to become a household name—renowned rockstar, Beckett Miller. Crazier still, before they found their way back to one another, their daughter would become a musical prodigy of her own, taking the world by storm as DJ Kensington.

My brother Ethan wraps his arm around his wife Fallon’s shoulder, tugging her close against his side. She tips her head up and murmurs into his ear before swiping her thumb against the moisture pooling beneath his eyes. He smooths a piece of hair back from her face before lowering his brow to hers.

While I’m thankful Ethan grew a set of balls and admitted he was in love with Austyn’s best friend, I’m more grateful he and my father resolved their differences before my father passed. It was the final barrier to him falling in love.

As for me, love found me in the most unusual place—Rodeo Ralph’s. I just wish I could lay claim to her today when I so desperately want her by my side to offer me solace.

I ache recalling the call coming through her cell phone about my father before the news ever reached me. It leaves me conflicted for so many reasons.

If I’d been there, could I have saved him?

I shift uncomfortably in the hard white chair lined up graveside where my father’s casket resides, praying to God no one notices the log behind the seam of my slacks that might split the zipper of my suit trousers. My eyes can’t help but drift toward the fierce blond whose eyes are hidden behind a pair of police-issued Ray Bans.

It would be just our luck that one of the paps gets a snap of her.

Despite the fact my family has maintained a friendliness with the paparazzi that relentlessly invades our lives, the last thing I want them to focus on at any time is my love life. Up until now, it’s why I’ve kept how important she is from everyone. It’s been to protect her in the only way I know how. Though now that the family’s all here, I need to introduce her to them.

I make a mental note to do that the second the paparazzi aren’t lingering around.

Sporting a boner at my father’s graveside would make for good tabloid copy. Every moment of our lives has lived out in the press since Paige and Beckett got back together—including the initial stroke my father suffered—I have no doubt as the only single member of Beckett Miller’s close-knit nucleus, I’d draw attention.

Then the media would fall on me like a pack of hungry wolves wondering who caused the blood to rush from all my extremities to one engorged appendage.

Suck me, baby. That’s right. Swallow every fucking drop.

A small sigh escapes my lips. I don’t even realize the sound escapes until Brendan Blake—Fucking hell. Who would have ever thought Brendan Blake would be at my father’s funeral?—leans forward and clasps a hand on my shoulder. He murmurs low enough so just I can hear, “I know it’s hard.”

Understatement. Since I know for damn certain my dick has been hard for longer than four hours around her, which had nothing to do with Viagra, I’m familiar with my predicament. Instead of giving him the truth, I just nod.

“Y’all will find a way through together.” Before I can make him the first to know that with my woman by my side, it may be possible for me to shit unicorns, he releases my shoulder as the minister begins the service.

Immediately, a solemnness permeates the air as prayers are spoken over the casket that will soon be lowered into the ground, reuniting my father with the one person he loved beyond measure—our mother. Recalling everything my father did to tear our family apart, it’s but by the grace of God—and through a wake-up call and hours of therapy—Tyson Kensington changed in the last few years of his life.

“People change, Jesse.” Her fingers ghost over my face, smoothing away the furrow in my brow. “Love doesn’t.”

She was right. She usually is.

I adjust my tie to release the chokehold of emotions squeezing its tentacles around my neck. It isn’t from the words being spoken, though. As much as I now wish my father knew I found what he had with my mother, I was determined to keep her private. I didn’t want my father’s machinations wreaking havoc on the one piece of perfection I’ve had in my life since my mother died.

Still, regret causes a tear to wind its way down my cheek. Can you see how happy she makes me, Dad?

A kiss of wind seems to be my answer.

Now, I’d forge ahead before my forever is riddled with my own regrets. I don’t want a life of pain. I want it filled with lazy Saturday mornings, pancake breakfasts, whipped cream fights, and heady kisses.

I stare across my father’s casket at the woman whose love is true and deep. Even if no one knows it but me.

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