SOCS/Story a Day September: Day 24 – “Busted”

Today’s Stream of Consciousness prompt was to use ‘bus’ somewhere, either on it’s own or as part of another word. And for Story a Day, it was to focus on genre. Pretty much everything I write would fall under the Romance genre. This will probably come at the beginning of the story that I’m currently plotting(no title yet, but it’s part of one of my series). I’ve just finished all of the back stories, so I may have it plotted before the end of the month. This fits somewhere around the story I wrote for Day 21, Barely Crawling.

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“You could take your eyes off my sister for even five seconds.”

Beside Toby, Jonas started to laugh. “You’re so totally busted,” his teenage brother said.

Toby put his hand on the kid’s face and pushed him back into the chair. Jonas only laughed harder. “Knew I shoulda left you at home,” Toby muttered.

Across the table, Jared just smiled at the two of them. Then, his gaze went back to Toby even as he balanced his infant daughter on one leg. That couldn’t be easy as she was squirming as if she wanted down. Jared made it look easy, though. “Seriously, Toby, I’m sure she’d appreciate, oh, I don’t know, if you’d go over and talk to her instead of trying to stare through her clothes.”

Heat washed over him at that. “I wasn’t. That’s not-”

Jared laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I know my sister’s a grown woman. Trust me, she’s made that clear to me. And that I need to ‘chill on the overprotectiveness.’ Her words.”

“So Hallie’s going to get all of that now,” Melanie, Jared’s wife, said as she joined them.

He raised one eyebrow and stared her down. But, she only kept looking right back at him. Finally he dropped his gaze and kissed the top of his daughter’s head. “Your mama’s got me beat. Always.”

Toby’s chest burned watching the two of them. The love was obvious between them, even when they were in one of their fights. It was something he’d never thought he’d have for himself. He’d never seen it growing up. The men in his mother’s life hadn’t loved either of them. Not until Edward. The foster homes he’d bounced between whenever he’d been taken away from her hadn’t been all that loving either. Then, there’d been Adriane. But, she’d been taken away from him, too. And he’d seen how losing Edward had nearly destroyed his mom.

Maybe love wasn’t such a good thing after all.

Then, Denise’s laugh rang out again and drew his gaze back to her. Melanie laughed this time. “Go talk to her, Toby. I’m sure she’d like it if you did.”

Did everyone see it? No, because then she would, too. But, she seemed to be oblivious. And it was probably better that way. She was sweet, innocent, and perfect. Everything he hadn’t been since before he even hit his teenage years. It was better for both of them if he just kept his distance. “We should probably get going, Jonas. Mom will be expecting us.”

His kid brother rolled his eyes but stood up from the chair. “How come she’s the only thing you’ve ever run from? You were in the Army. You’re a cop. You’re not supposed to be afraid of anything.”

Jared laughed again. “You’ll figure it out one of these days. Sometimes the best things in life are the ones that scare us the most.”

Toby glanced toward Denise again, caught the grin she was flashing toward another couple. If that was true, then there couldn’t be anything better than Denise. If only he could be good enough for her.