Read Lila's Thunder: The Almeida Brothers, Book One for Free Online Page B

had never been more apparent to Lila than it was right then.  He wore a tattered pair of sweatpants, and nothing else.  The strong muscles of his back and arms contracted softly in the dark shadows of the house as he ran his fingers through his newly damp hair.
    He turned to her, keeping his hands on top of his head as he took her in.  His arms flexed beautifully and made him look strong and powerful.  Lila wasn’t sure if the moisture on his face was from his eyes or the rain outside, but she had a pretty good idea.
    “Thanks for coming so quick.”
    “Of course, Chase.”  She quickly turned to hang her coat, running her hands up and down the arms of her sweater.  She’d heard the potent distress in his voice when he’d called her earlier that night.  There was no way in hell she could leave him alone.  She wouldn’t have been able to sleep worrying about him. “You know that I’m always here for you.”
    Chase dropped his hands to his sides, sighed heavily, and held up the gold necklace he’d been clutching all evening.  “I was going through some stuff in my room and… I found this.”
    Lila nodded, taking in what looked to be a small gold locket.
    Chase’s f ace grew pained. “She bought it for me when I was… I don’t know… ten?  Eleven?” He looked down at the locket, opened it, and took in the photo of he and his mother when he was just a baby.  “Do you know what I said to her when she gave it to me, Lila?  Do you know what I said?”
    Lila’s eyes grew pained and she shook her head.
    “I said ‘guys don’t wear lockets, and you know I hate gold jewelry’.”  A look of disgust crossed his face, before it collapsed with sadness. “Every day she would look at my neck to see if I was wearing it.  I never did. Not once.”
    A sob escaped his l ips and Lila crossed the foyer, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him to her.  His body quaked as he silently cried. “Chase, please don’t do this to yourself. Please. She knew that you loved her.”
    “Why did I have to be such an asshole?”
    “You were just a kid.  Kids are assholes.”
    Chase encircled Lila in his arms, still clasping the locket as he clawed at her sweater.  “I tried to call Jack, but…”
    “ Shhh…”  Lila reached up and massaged the back of his hair.  “It’s okay, Chase.  I’m here.”
    “Please don’t go.”
    “Never.”
     
    Chase watched white clouds breeze past outside of his classroom window, taking steady breaths.  It had been a week since he’d attacked Jack in his office and he hadn’t seen him since. He figured that his older brother was doing everything he could to avoid another confrontation, and was now working the latest hours possible as an excuse.  It wasn’t Jack’s absence in his life that had plagued him for the entire week--Chase was used to that--but Lila’s.
    The morning after his fight with Jack he’d waited for her at their usual meeting spot and eventually left when she hadn’t shown up, figuring she was sick.   Then it happened again the next day, and the day after that.  Anytime he tried to call her she sent him straight to voicemail, and he knew she was screening him.  A powerfully dull ache ran through his body at the thought of Lila purposely avoiding him, and he nearly split the pencil in his hand when his eyes grew watery.
    After composing himself , he looked to the front of the classroom where his Calculus teacher was passing back their graded midterm exams.   Mrs. Jackson was the best math teacher he’d had at Dalton, and he knew that she was good friends with Lila.  Apart of him wanted to pull her aside after class and ask her how she was, but he didn’t want to risk putting Lila in a compromising position.  He wasn’t blind to the fact that she gave him special treatment, the kind of treatment that would probably be frowned upon by her superiors and colleagues, but he missed her terribly.
    He thought back to the times when she’d