On The Ropes Series Box Set

by Aly Martinez

  I held my attitude for a few seconds longer, but it wasn’t because I was still mad. Rather, if I spoke, I knew I’d start crying.

  We’re family.

  There was no way he could truly understand the depths of what those words meant to me. I swallowed hard, trying to force the emotions back, and for once, I actually succeeded.

  “Okay.”

  His head snapped back as if I had slapped him. “Um . . . okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay. If you had started with that explanation instead of being all bossy, this conversation could have been a whole lot shorter. I get it. You don’t like him. I’ll steer clear.”

  Till smiled, and it reflected on my own lips.

  “Besides I’m in a very committed relationship with Justin Timberlake right now.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.” He cupped the back of my neck and pulled me up against his chest.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him as his hand slid up and down my back.

  Till and I both knew we had a strange relationship. It was more than a friendship, but there wasn’t romance or sex. There was definitely love though. Immeasurable amounts of it. I knew that Till had this grand fantasy about me. But what he didn’t realize was all that he gave me in return. He was the only thing I’d ever had that I honestly thought I couldn’t live without. Till Page was my soulmate on every level. I’d accepted that it didn’t have to be sexual between us. Truth be told, I’d have been happy to sit in an empty room for the rest of my life as long as he was sitting beside me.

  But it was moments like those, when his arms were protectively folded around me, and his heart beat a strong rhythm in my ear, that made me want more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Eliza

  “I NEED TILL TO SIGN this paper for school,” Quarry said as I opened the door.

  “Uh, okay? He’s not here.”

  “Really? His truck is here.”

  I glanced out into the parking lot, and sure enough, Till’s truck was parked front and center. “I haven’t seen him at all today, actually.”

  “Well, he wasn’t at the gym this afternoon either. Slate drove us home.”

  “And you checked his room?”

  “No. But I didn’t hear him come in. He must have snuck past.”

  I headed back to my room. “Till?” I yelled at the ceiling. But I didn’t get a response. “Till!” I yelled again.

  “Yeah.”

  I heard his voice, but it wasn’t coming from the ceiling. “Where are you?” I looked around my room.

  “Purgatory,” he slurred then began to laugh.

  I traced his voice to the window, but when I lifted it, I didn’t see him anywhere. “Till?” I called again, getting frustrated.

  “Jesus. Stop calling my name.”

  I leaned outside and found him sitting on the ground with his back against the brick exterior of the building. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, and a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag was at his side.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I told you. I’m sitting in purgatory. And they say I’m the one going deaf.”

  “Oh, well, that clears things up,” I said sarcastically. “Quarry was looking for you.”

  “Fuck.” His voice broke as he began frantically scrubbing his face with his hands.

  His reaction instantly worried me.

  “Give me a second. I’m coming out.” I shut the window and ran back to the door, where Quarry was still waiting. “I found him. He’ll be up later.”

  “Can you ask him to sign this? I’m about to go to bed.”

  “Um . . .” I responded, remembering the way Till had slurred his words and the bottle at his side. “Here.” I snatched the pen and paper from his hand. “Does your mom spell her name with ‘ie’ or ‘y’?”

  “‘Ie.’”

  I scribbled “Debbie Page” across the paper and handed it back.

  “Hey, thanks!” He smiled and dashed away.

  I made a mental note to discuss the big, red F on the test I’d just signed later, but for now, I needed to see what the hell was going on with his brother. I snagged one of my many sketchpads off the coffee table and walked around the side of my building.

  “Doodle!” Till yelled in greeting as soon as he saw me.

  I kicked the sole of his boot. “Scoot over, drunky.”

  “You want some?” He lifted the brown bag.

  “Um. Hell yeah!”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” He smiled and passed me what I discovered was beer.

  I immediately poured its warm contents into the grass before handing it back empty.

  “Not cool, Doodle. Not. Cool.”

  “Oh, whatever. You don’t even drink!”

  “I know, because that shit is expensive, and you just wasted it!”

  I shrugged. “I can live with that. Now, scoot.”

  “Okay, but you don’t belong in purgatory, so you can only stay for a few minutes.”

  “Why exactly is the flowerbed under my window purgatory?” I asked as he lazily moved over a few inches.

  Using a finger, he pointed over his head to my window. “Heaven.” Then he motioned to everything in front of us. “Hell.” And finally, he pointed to the dirt where he was sitting. “Purgatory.”

  I gave him a confused look that made him fall over in laughter. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at me or at his own joke. I’d never seen Till drunk before, but I knew right then I preferred him sober.

  I sat next to him and patted my lap and handed him the sketchpad. “Here. Hold this and lie down.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Look at you going all old school on me. You must be really worried,” he teased, but he didn’t waste any time getting situated so his head rested in my lap.

  It wasn’t the most ideal position, with his legs wedged crookedly between two of the overgrown bushes, but he didn’t complain. He opened the sketchpad and handed me the pencil.

  I began scratching his head with one hand and drawing his eyes with my other. I didn’t say anything for several minutes, and eventually, I felt his shoulders relax as he let out a content sigh.

  “I’m going to assume it didn’t go well at the doctor today,” I said quietly.

  His eyes snapped to mine. “What?”

  “I said, ‘I’m going to assume it didn’t go well at the doctor today’.”

  He slightly shook his head. “I’m still hearing at about seventy percent.”

  I stopped drawing and looked down at him. “That’s good, right? It’s only gone down, like, ten percent in six years. It’s fading slowly. That means you have years before you have any real issues, right?”

  “He couldn’t predict that. He said everyone’s different. Sometimes, it’s slow. Sometimes, it’s rapid.” He didn’t seem too thrilled, but I felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

  Later. We could deal with this later. Many, many years later.

  I went back to drawing in an attempt to downplay my enthusiasm. This should have been good news, but with his lips sealed tight, I couldn’t figure out what exactly was going on with him.

  “So, why were you drinking, then? I thought Slate had a strict no-drinking policy.”

  “That’s only for the kids. I’m twenty-one. He can’t stop me from having a drink if I want one. Besides, are you planning to rat me out?” He reached up and tugged on a piece of hair that had fallen free of my ponytail.

  “Maybe.” I shrugged, filling in his long, black eyelashes on the paper. “Now, tell me what’s really going on.”

  Till avoided my question by glancing down at the paper. “You always make me look like a chick when you draw my eyes.”

  “No, I don’t. And who said those were your eyes?”

  “Okay, then whose eyes are they?”

  “My ugly, old accounting teacher.”

  “Well, he has some seriously sexy eyes, then.”

  “She really does, doesn’t she?” I smirked, and Ti
ll burst out laughing.

  He suddenly sat up, causing my sketchpad to fall to the ground. His laughs were silenced as he dragged me onto his lap and buried his head in my neck.

  “Oh, God, Doodle.” The agony in his voice shredded me.

  “Talk to me,” I said louder than necessary since he wasn’t looking at me.

  “The doctor I saw today thinks it’s genetic,” he confessed against my neck. “He wants to test Flint and Quarry.”

  My stomach twisted.

  “What am I supposed to tell them? If they have this too . . . I . . . Fuck! I can’t do this.”

  “Okay. Let’s stop for a second.” I crawled off his lap so I could see him. “What exactly did the doctor say? He thinks it’s genetic, so he doesn’t know for sure?”

  “He’s pretty positive. He said he couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t fit into any one category of sensorineural hearing loss, so he’s assuming it was some combination that was passed down.”

  “All right. What did he say were the chances of Flint and Q having it? They haven’t shown any symptoms, have they? I mean, you were already at eighty percent by the time you were thirteen, right? Surely, we would have noticed something, at least in Flint. What type of test would he want to run on them? And when does he want to do it? The sooner the better, right?” If I just kept talking, I felt like I could sort it out. But the more questions I asked, the more it seemed to piss Till off.

  “I don’t know!” He jumped to his feet and drunkenly stumbled.

  “Well, let’s figure it out.”

  “Goddammit, I don’t know how to figure this out!” he shouted, startling me.

  “Hey! Don’t yell at me! I’m just trying to help.” I pushed to my feet and brushed the dirt off the back of my pants.

  “Well, you’re not. You’re making me feel stupid for not asking all that shit.” He shoved a hand through his hair.

  “I’m trying to figure out a way to fix this!”

  “You can’t fix this! No one can. They are either going deaf or they aren’t!”

  “Calm down and let’s—”

  “No. This is a fucking nightmare. I’m going to bed. I can’t do this.” He stormed off, tripping over the edge of the flowerbed.

  “Not a bad idea. Sleep that shit off,” I barked as he staggered away.

  “You ruined purgatory!” he yelled over his shoulder, and I rolled my eyes at his dramatics.

  Drunk Till was an ass.

  I walked back to my apartment, and I heard his feet clomping up the steps. I knew he wouldn’t want the boys to see him drunk, and as much as I wanted to stay pissed and not care, I still did. I went straight to my bedroom and dragged off my shoes. And after crawling into bed, I listened for Till to make his way to his room.

  Several minutes later, when I still hadn’t heard his door shut, I began to worry.

  “Till?” I called to the ceiling.

  “Yeah,” he replied, lifting my window open.

  “Shit!” I cried. “What is wrong with you? Why are you never where you are supposed to be tonight?” I shouted at him as I tried to slow my pulse.

  He folded his bulky body inside. As much I wanted to hold on to my anger, with his next words, Till Page robbed me of my God-given right as a woman to be mad at a stupid man.

  “Maybe I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

  “Maybe you’re drunk,” I snarked in order to hide the way my heart skipped.

  Throwing back the covers, I issued an unspoken invitation for him to join me. It wasn’t unusual for Till to hang out in bed with me. We would lie there late at night and talk about random shit. We didn’t exactly cuddle anymore, but he always found ways to touch me.

  “I’m sorry.” He kicked his shoes off the end of the bed, making it quite obvious that he was planning to stay for a while. “It’s just . . . I’m in over my head, Doodle.” He paused to cross his arms behind his head. “I want to give those boys so much more than we had growing up, but I just don’t have it to give.” He turned to look at me, and his eyes sparkled with desperation. “I want to be there for them, but in order to pay the rent and buy the shit they need for school, I have to work damn near twenty-four-seven. Then there’s the commitment at the gym. I love the way I feel inside that ring, but I guess I could give it up. We eat two meals a day there though. If we quit doing that, I’d have to pull more grocery money from the already negative bank account.

  “Then Quarry’s just starting to fit in at the gym, and he’s really showing talent. I’m not sure what would happen if I stopped showing up to train him every night. He’s still not sold on the work ethic Slate instills. Although, it’s been a month since he tried to skip school, so I guess that’s progress. And Flint . . .” He went silent. I had almost convinced myself that he had fallen asleep when he boomed, “Christ, that kid is smart! I can’t pay for it, Doodle. All the after-school stuff he wants to do. And I mean the good stuff that parents pray their kids will be interested in. He’s a beast in the ring but equally as talented out of it. They’ve never had it easy, and now, they have to be tested to see if they are ultimately going to struggle for the rest of their lives. It’s just not fucking fair.”

  “Okay. First off, they already have more than we did by you caring enough to be freaking out about this right now.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Yes, you are. And that’s a good thing. We didn’t get that from our parents. I had you and you had me. That’s the way it’s always been. Well, now, Flint and Quarry have you, but guess what, they have me too. I can’t do much to help in the financial department, but I can pitch in with getting them to and from the gym to allow you some more time in the mornings or afternoons. Maybe you could pick up a few extra hours at the shop to help loosen things up.”

  He stared at me as I spoke, and I could see the weight lifting from his shoulders with every word. Yeah, I loved Till, and I had grown to love Flint and Quarry too, but my offer to help was completely selfish. He wasn’t alone in this. Because if he were, that would mean that I was alone too. I needed the Page boys far more than they needed me.

  Till did things a little differently that night. He started with the best.

  “I don’t deserve you.” He rolled over and pulled me into a hug. “You and those boys are all I have,” he whispered into my hair, and I melted against him.

  Then he pulled a better.

  “You know I love you, right? I don’t say it enough, but I do.”

  My response was muffled against his chest. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Good. Just checking.” He laughed and tickled my sides.

  I squirmed back to my side of the bed.

  “So, what do I do if they test positive? What if my worthless parents passed this shit down to all of us?”

  “We do what we always do. We go to battle against the world.” He grinned with both sides of his mouth, and it was a truly amazing sight. “You’re a fighter, Till. This is no different.”

  He barked out a laugh. “I can’t fight the inevitable.”

  “Maybe not. But we can.” I returned his smile, but his fell instantly. He blinked at me in what I could only describe as awe for several beats.

  Just as I began to question his reaction, Till made everything harder.

  With both hands, he cupped my face and pressed his lips to mine. He took a deep breath as he held my mouth hostage. My eyes were wide with shock, but Till reverently closed his own as he opened his mouth and slid his tongue against mine. I didn’t know why my mouth opened with his or why my tongue stroked against his, and I had no clue why a moan escaped my throat as he rolled on top of me. Why wasn’t even part of my vocabulary at that moment. I knew but one word.

  “Till.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eliza

  I GASPED AS HE SLID his heated mouth over to my neck. His tongue left a wake of chills as it made its way down to my chest.

  “Take this off.” His callused hands glided
under my shirt.

  Lifting my arms, I gave him permission to pull it off. He watched as I licked my lips. Then his eyes heated before he roughly took my mouth again.

  It was then that I tasted it.

  Beer.

  I slammed my arms back down to the bed. “Till, wait. We can’t do this.” I turned my head to disconnect the kiss, but it only caused him to latch on to my neck again.

  “Yes, we can,” he growled, raking his teeth across my skin.

  Yes, we could.

  “No. We can’t. Remember last time? It almost ruined everything.” I groaned as he ever so slightly rolled his hips against my core. “Seriously, we have to stop. You’re drunk and not thinking straight. You’ll thank me in the morning.” I shifted to the side, trying to squeeze out from under his large body, but he had me pinned.

  His hand found my breast, sending a rush of heat between my legs, bypassing my brain completely. “I’m not drunk. Yeah, I was drinking, but I’ve wanted to have you again since the second I pulled out of you the first time. I need you.”

  But I needed him too—in a totally different way.

  “No. Last time, you disappeared for six months. I can’t go through that again.” I shimmied myself up the bed to escape the mounting pressure his hard-on was coaxing as he continuously slid it against me.

  “I won’t leave ever again. I swear. It’s me and you forever, Eliza.”

  Eliza.

  Forever.

  With Till.

  His hazel eyes studied me as I weighed my options. I knew that it was going to rock our world, but with his promise of forever still ringing in my ears, I didn’t care if the entire world flipped upside down. I could have sat there all day and tried to rationalize everything out, but the fact was that my body had made its decision the moment he’d said my name.