“Ain’t that Dustin’s girlfriend?” Marcus asked, drawing my attention back to the present moment. I scanned the people until I saw Sienna Roy standing in the crowd with her book bag held protectively to her chest and her eyes wide with wonder. She looked lost. Where the fuck was my brother? The girl had turned into a beauty overnight. I had told him just last month he needed to make their relationship official before they started high school. Guys were going to notice her.
“Yeah, it is, and the stupid little fucker isn’t anywhere around,” I muttered. Sienna was so damn overprotected by her parents that she didn’t have much of a life outside of her house and ours. My brother was already going to parties, but Sienna didn’t get to go. And she never seemed to have friends over. Dustin was her friend. But his stupid ass was nowhere to be found.
“They break up?” Preston asked, taking a new, keen interest in Sienna. Fuck no. He could back his horny ass off.
“They were never a couple. And don’t even go there. I’ll beat your ass. Do you understand me?”
Preston gave me that cocky grin that I’d hate if he wasn’t one of my best friends. Right now, though, I was considering knocking it off his face.
“Don’t piss him off, Preston. I’m not in the mood to handle that without some backup,” Marcus said, glaring at Preston.
I wasn’t going to let my little brother leave Sienna out there to the dogs. And there were lots of fucking dogs at this school.
“I’ll meet y’all in first period. I got something to do,” I told them, but didn’t make eye contact. I didn’t want to see the looks on their faces. I never messed with freshmen. But this one freshman needed me, and if my brother wasn’t going to take care of her, I was.
I didn’t have to shove through the crowd. It split for me as I made my way to Sienna. I was halfway there when her gaze found me. First her eyes went wide with surprise, and then a shy smile touched her face. Damn, she was pretty. Too damn pretty. My brother was an idiot.
“Hey, Little Red, looks like you found your way to the big leagues,” I teased her as I took her arm gently and pulled her to the side of the busy hallway. “You found your locker yet?”
She blushed and glanced down at her feet. I followed her gaze and noticed she was wearing a pair of cowboy boots with her skirt. That was sexy as hell. Fuck! She was a kid. She was also my brother’s girl. He just needed to grow up and realize it.
“I looked for it, but there are so many people and I couldn’t remember if the one hundreds are on the first or second floor. So I just figured I’d carry my books around today and stay late to find it.”
Her books weighed more than she did. “What’s your number?” I asked her. I wasn’t letting her carry those books around all day.
“One eighty-eight,” she said, frowning and looking around again. The hall was so full of people, it would be hard to see the locker numbers from her height.
“Come on. Can’t have you getting a backache your first day of school,” I told her, and put my hand on her back to guide her through the crowd. I could see people looking at us, and I wanted to glare at them all and warn them to be careful with her. But I didn’t. I made my threat silently. I kept my hand on her back as we walked down the hall and turned left to find her locker in the first row on the east wing.
“This is it. You got the combination?”
She looked relieved. She dropped her bag and began going through it until she pulled out a little scrap of paper. “Here it is,” she said, beaming at me before carefully turning the lock until it popped open. I took the door from her and made a little change to the inside of it.
“Now close it. Let me show you something,” I told her.
She closed it without question and looked up at me.
“Hit it twice.”
She barely slapped at it.
Chuckling, I shook my head. “No, Little Red. You got to hit it twice. Like this.” I showed her, then turned the lock once and it opened up.
Her eyes went wide. “How’d you do that?”
Winking at her, I grabbed her book bag and put it inside the locker. “Magic, sweetheart.” I closed the door again. “Now you try it again.”
She hit it harder this time, and with one twist of the lock it popped open. She laughed and clapped her hands in excitement. “That is so cool. Thank you, Dewayne.”
Yeah, my brother was going to have to do something fast, because this kind of pretty wasn’t going to be left alone long. I’d have to make sure no one else got near her until Dustin woke the fuck up.
Present day . . .