Free Staking Her Claim...: Book 1 in the Patricks' Brothers series by Natasha Thomas

been told, Rob has been tending bar since he was legally old enough to do so. From Sturgis, South Dakota, as far south as, Las Vegas, Nevada, Rob is well-known and liked. He could easily get a job in any one of the establishments he’s already been employed at, and if not one of them any number of others.
     
    “Harp, I get that you’re rooting for the underdog and I love you for it. You wouldn’t be my soul sister if you didn’t. But whatever ideas you’ve got rattling around in your crazy, little head about something happening with Rob and me, you need to stop thinking them. He’s different from the boy we knew when we were younger. I’m different too. This isn’t a love story about second chances, Harp.”
     
    And it isn’t. Some people don’t deserve second chances, and Rob is one of those people. What we had, or more aptly put, the feelings I had for him years ago is where it belongs; in the past.
     
     

CHAPTER FOUR
~ Alysia ~

“I have multiple personalities and none of them like you.”
- Text from Alysia to Brookes
     
    Twenty years ago… Alysia is twelve and Rob is thirteen
     
    It was the first day of seventh grade, my first year at Lancaster junior high, and what I thought would be an uneventful start to a new school year was anything but. And not because it was my first year at a new school. No, that wasn’t what made today special. Something else altogether more life changing happened…
     
    It started out like any other day when I was in elementary school with, Finn walking Harper and me to school, him separating to meet up with his friends the second we made it to the gates.
     
    Finn would end up being the most popular boy in school this year seeing as Brandt had moved on to Lancaster high to join Brookes after graduating at the end of the last school year. How did I know this? Easy. The Patricks’ brothers were always the top of the food chain no matter where they went.
     
    Not only were they great at sports, all of them, but they were a visual feast for the eyes too. Or at least, that’s what Harper tells me. They’re just my brothers; nothing more, nothing less. Sure, they are all tall with dark almost black hair, and we all share the same odd shade of violet eyes, but I don’t see them the way the rest of the female population, that includes my best friend.
     
    To me, they’re still the same smelly bullies that get some sick satisfaction out of pushing me over, pulling my hair, calling me names, and being overall pains in my ass. They leave their socks and boxers laying around the house, their football kits in the kitchen, their baseball gloves on the couch, and their dirty dishes in their bedrooms. They are typical boys, but where I differ from most girls my age plagued with brothers, I, unfortunately, have seven to deal with, not one or two.
     
    For all their faults, they do have some redeeming qualities. Few and far between, but some nonetheless. I mean, I love them all, but occasionally I wonder what it would be like to be an only child like Harper. But then I remember how much time she spends at our house and reconsider selling them off to the highest bidder, because no matter what, they’re family. And above all else, family sticks together through thick and thin.
     
    But back to the point…
     
    Where most kids starting out in junior high might have been nervous or apprehensive, I wasn’t. For me, this was just another step on the path to growing up. Something I wanted to do faster than was possible most days. I wanted to be in high school already. I wanted to be old enough to make my own choices. More than anything else, I wanted to be independent of my older brothers.
     
    Until now I had just been relegated to the ranks of ‘one of the Patricks’ siblings’. I desperately wanted to be looked at as my own person. A person that was as capable as the other members of her family. Realistically I knew that wasn’t going to happen until I went on to college, or God