Page 21 of Guarding Over You
Not enough sleep made you less sharp. He didn’t want to put himself in those positions.
“You’d do the same thing,” Rory said, nudging Gale’s arm. “You’re working almost every day yourself.”
“I’m a one-man show,” Gale said. “Got bills to pay and debt to eliminate.”
“No shit,” Blaze said. No one carried the debt he did. Gale came close, but med school was its own monster.
Still, he was making more than any of them now, and if everything stayed on track, he could wipe those loans clean in six years.
He lived pretty lean for a guy who could afford more. A small townhouse with no frills.
Why bother with fancy when he was rarely home and didn’t need the headache of upkeep?
The goal was simple. A debt-free life before forty. That gave him a two-year buffer, room to breathe, maybe even time to think about the future he kept pretending he wasn’t dodging.
A family. A real life. The kind that cost more than money and didn’t fit neatly into a ledger.
He shook his head. Damn, now he was sounding like one of those planners he was always giving grief to.
“Are you whispering in your brain?” Gale asked.
“What?”
“You just shook your head as if you were internally arguing. You and Clay always do that. So, what were you gossiping about? Anything juicy you want to share?”
He turned to look at Clay and saw an eyebrow lifted. He got that trait from his brother.
The one where they beat themselves up before someone else could do it for them.
“Just thinking of the future,” he said. “Working my ass off to get there. Nothing more than Rory is saying you do.”
“I tell her to dial it back,” Rory said.
“Says the man up clicking on the keyboard at three in the morning last night.”
“I’m on track. I can’t stop now.”
Rory was a mystery writer with several bestsellers. Looked like Lake George was the home to his newest series. At least from the bits and pieces he’d picked up.
It wasn’t as if Blaze read much more than medical journals. It’d probably be nice if he checked out one of Rory’s books... if he had the time.
His mother came in and put two plates of food down, then sat with them. She didn’t normally do that, but it sounded as if dinner wouldn’t take much work, and his father had slipped in and gone upstairs to shower and change.
“So, everyone fill me in on their lives. Ford and Clay, I know the most from your women since I see them daily.”
“Maybe those aren’t the versions we want you to know,” Ford complained.
“Don’t be a little bitch,” Clay said. “You can whine like the best of them.”
Ford shoved at Clay with his foot, Clay kicked back and he thought they were going to flash back to when they were teens and the couch would be overturned.
If it weren’t for the fact Ford was laughing when Clay said it, he’d be worried because his two brothers were bigger and tougher than shit, but Clay had a level of fierceness that would even scare the evilest person around.
“I’m off the clock today,” Blaze said. “So let’s keep the damage to a minimum.”
“I sure miss this,” his mother said. “Boys, your women sing your praises and you know it.”
“No way Meredith is singing anything about Clay other than telling him to wipe the grouch off his face,” Ford said.
