Free The First Time is the Hardest: An Austin Brothers Novella (Austin Brothers Series Book 1) by L A Cotton Page B

swallowed hard, suddenly overwhelmed by the significance of this moment.
    “It was written all over your face. I may not say a lot, but there isn’t much I don’t see.”
    “This is …” Breathe, just breathe . “This was-”
    “Your place. Yours and Lucas’s. I know.”
    I nodded as warm tears rolled down my cheeks. Ryan’s voice sounded so distant—so cold—chills ran through me.               He climbed out of the car, and hands jammed in his pockets, he started walking down to the lake. I watched him through blurry eyes. He moved stealthily, something people might have mistaken for confidence or even swagger, but I saw past all that. I saw the vulnerability, the uncertainty. I saw the guy who just needed someone to tell him that everything was going to be okay. That losing Lucas didn’t mean he was alone.
    Exiting the car, my legs carried me in the direction of Ryan. He didn’t slow down or stop, not until he reached the water’s edge and sat down on the grass. I joined him, but he didn’t acknowledge me. He didn’t even look at me, and I almost felt like an intruder on his private moment. But I didn’t feel out of place because everything about the lake reminded me of Lucas. The water and the feel of the grass as I ran my fingers through it. Even the birds singing their melody reminded me of my best friend and the moments we’d spent here. I’d almost expected it to feel wrong by bringing Ryan here.
    But it didn’t.
    Being here with him, in the place Lucas and I had shared as our own, felt right. I couldn’t explain it or even try to put it into words, but when I’d asked Tanner to turn around and take me back to the motel—to Ryan—I’d known that I would bring him out here, to this very spot.
    Ryan plucked a strand of grass between his fingers and twirled it around and around. I wanted to say so much, but now that we were here, the words couldn’t find their way out.
    “I was always jealous of the two of you, you know.”
    Pulling my knees up, I rested my head there and watched Ryan. His eyes were staring out across the lake, and I knew he was lost in his memories.
    “He was my brother, but the two of you were inseparable. In fact, in ninth grade, I hated you. It was an especially shitty year. Digger McShaw had made it his mission in life to make my life hell. Any opportunity he got to rough me up, he took it.”
    My mind backtracked. Lucas and I were in junior high then, but everyone knew Digger McShaw. He was a bully. It didn’t matter if you were weak, strong, popular—if he took a disliking to you, he made your life hell.
    “He gave you a black eye.”
    Ryan tensed beside me. “You remember?”
    “I remember your dad demanding to know what had happened. He thought you’d been fighting again, and you said it happened in the gym.” Even by ninth grade, Ryan had a reputation of his own. He was hotheaded, impulsive, and didn’t care much for authority. The total opposite of Lucas, who thought rules were there to be kept, not broken. “It was him, wasn’t it? Digger?”
    “Yeah. It wasn’t the only time.”
    “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
    A bitter laugh escaped him. “Like anyone would have cared. I got into fights. Caused enough of my own trouble. To them, I wasn’t a target, Mila, I was the problem. But one day, right after Spring Break, it just stopped. I remember waiting for school to start up again with that sick feeling in my stomach. I wasn’t scared; it wasn’t about that because I gave as good as I got. I was just so fed up with having to deal with him. But that first day, Digger just walked right past me like I was nothing to him … he didn’t even look at me.”
    Realization dawned on me, and I gasped. “Lucas? You think Lucas did something?”
    Ryan laughed again, but this time, it was quiet and sad and filled with regrets. It made my heart twist in my chest. “Not did … said. Lucas wasn’t a fighter, you know that, but he could charm the