Hope Against Hope: The Hope Brothers Series Read Free Page B

you need us! Don’t burn the cabin down!” she warned, climbing in and closing the door. We stood back from the car and waved as they pulled away. The Haggard’s car followed behind, with Hank and Lora waving at us as they passed.
    Beau and Finn walked over and joined us, just as Ruby walked out of the front of the house.
    “Time to party!” she said, throwing her hands in the air over her head.
    “Hell, yeah!” I said.
    “Easy does it, George,” Crit threw a warning over his shoulder as he walked back into the house.
    The sound of tires crunching on the gravel road sounded behind us. Lee’s black Ford pick-up truck rambled up the driveway, taking the curve a little too fast as usual and kicking up dust along the way.
    “It’s about time,” Finn muttered under his breath.
    “Don’t start,” Beau replied. When the truck came to a stop, we were all waving our hands in front of us to clear the dust from the air.
    Right away, we knew Lee was drunk.
    “Well, look at you, Georgie!” Lee slurred as he slammed the door of the Ford. He walked over and grabbed my hands, spinning me around in front of him. “Twenty-one!”
    Lee Haggard was a disaster. A tall, ripped, rugged playboy of a disaster. He had probably slept with all of the single girls in the county, and half of the married ones too. He had a reputation for making a woman want to sleep with him again at the same time she was regretting doing it in the first place. I had heard all the stories. Hell, I had grown up around him. I saw how women treated him.
    He was the most handsome of all the Haggard boys, that was for sure. But in an obvious way, a way that no matter how much you tried not to, you still caught yourself staring at him. He was hypnotizing.
    It was too bad his outsides didn’t match his insides, though.
    As much as he was known as the sexiest man in town by all the women, he was also known as the biggest prick by all the men. Even the ones that didn’t have something to lose with the flash of one of Lee’s panty-dropping crooked grins towards their wife. He just did not get along with men at all.
    All I know is, if I was a man, I’d probably feel a whole lot less attractive with Lee in the room.
    He kept his hair long, the dark tendrils curling over the collar of the pearl-buttoned western shirts he always wore. His tight Wranglers only served to accentuate everything they were supposed to cover up - his muscular thighs, his round, tight ass, and the bulge that left nothing to the imagination, proudly on display through the tight stretch of denim, just in case anyone needed proof of the rumors being true.
    But like I said, whatever was going on inside Lee Haggard was not reflected on the outside. He was a hot mess. Always wasted, always in some sort of trouble with the law, too. Either he got in a fight at a bar over a woman, or got stopped while driving after a few too many beers and then didn’t show up for his court date, it seemed as if there was always something going on with him. So, I wasn’t surprised he was late for my party.
    I was surprised he showed up at all, actually.
    I pulled my hands away, dizzy from his attention, as well as the spinning.
    “Yeah, twenty-one,” I answered him. “Big deal.” I grabbed Ruby’s hand and we turned to go back inside.
    “Hey, it is a big deal!” he slurred to my back. “Happy Birthday!”
    “Yeah, thanks,” I said over my shoulder, as eager to get back to my friends as I was to get away from Lee’s intense gaze.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

    “It’s as big as a house!” Ruby said, standing in front of the bonfire the boys had built. They threw another pallet of wood on the pile, and I stared up at the sputtering orange flames that stretched up to the sky.
    I poured the last of the beer from my bottle into my mouth, and then tugged on Ruby’s shirt. She ignored me, her eyes glued to Crit, as usual.
    “Gotta pee,” I said to her, before stumbling away from the lake towards the lights