Free Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) by Nazarea Andrews Page B

spiraling into shit that neither of us really wants.
    Damaged kids grown up into broken adults, and I’m a prime fucking example of that shit.
    Good example of our dysfunction: We live together.
    It’s not as bad as it could be. I mean, it’s not like we own a house.
    I do.
    A brick and stone thing that I built on the property that I inherited when Dad died.
    Kinda a bloody legacy, especially when you consider the money I made while at war built the fucking house.
    I’m getting off track again.
    Eli and I share the house. He had a place that was just for him and Amy, but it went up in the same apartment fire that snatched her away from Eli and none of us are gonna bring that shit up. He’s done well, adjusting to her being gone, and the other girls who followed, over the years. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna wave that shit in his face and hope he doesn’t have a break down.
    Anyway.
    I let him move in with me, because that’s what you do for family. You help them when shit isn’t working out the way they want it too.
    That’s how I ended up with a spare bedroom turning into Eli’s bedroom, and a roommate who eats too many salads and forgets to restock the fridge with beer.
    Annoying little shit.
    So when we leave the Chief and the Mayor, we head for our place without talking about it. Because we don’t have to actually talk about this shit. After a lifetime of each other, we both know what the other wants.
    And after a night on Hazel’s couch and a morning at Mama’s, we both want showers and clean fucking clothes.
    Enough that I don’t push my brother as we drive across town, as we pour out of the Roadrunner and stumble to the house.
    There will be time, after I’ve showered and changed, to deal with my brother and whatever the fuck is happening that got us a case turning a fucking prostitute into an informant.
    Because, yeah. I’m still hung up on why the fuck the mayor thinks Elijah would be any good at that.
    As I strip, I catch the faintest hint of strawberry and vanilla and rain.
    And just like that, I’m hard.
    Fuck.
    Hazel. Eli and Nora are gonna fucking kill me. And I can’t bring myself to give a damn. Because I’ve waited four fucking years to have her again. To have her hands in my hair, demanding and fierce.
    Hazel wasn’t soft. Everyone saw her, saw her blonde hair and big blue eyes, that innocent-as-fuck little girl smirk, and they saw sugar-sweet-needs-to-be-protected.
    They didn’t see my Hazel. A girl fierce enough that she so often slapped me down to size. Fucking me .
    I grin. All sass and bite, until I got her legs open and slid my fingers in that sweet wet heat. Then she was putty. Sweet, moaning putty, and god, I wanted her again.
    There’s a long list of reasons why fucking Hazel Beth Campton is a bad idea. Her brother and mine will likely kill me for it. Not to mention our foster mother. There’s her almost disturbing tenacity when it comes to a story, to what she wants—fucking a journalist who has been digging around the County isn’t the best idea for a rising detective.
    She thinks I don’t know about that—she’s kept it under wraps, as much as she could.
    But this is fucking Green County and nothing here stays buried forever.
    Maybe that’s her whole angle.
    But the real reason—the one thing that keeps tripping me up, is that she’s my best friend. My secret keeper and confidant, the girl who helped me keep my family safe, who always had my back when shit got hard.
    And it did. More than any of us deserved.
    As sweet as her pussy was, as much as I wanted her again, wanted her naked and panting under me—was it fair to her? Was good sex—okay, fantastic fucking sex—worth the risk of fucking up one of the best things that had ever happened to me?
    Yes.
    There was that thought. The one that said—this is Hazel. She wasn’t some girl I’d fuck in the back room of the bar before I went home and forgot her, to smile politely when I wrote her a ticket two months