By C. E. Pereira
Chapter 5
IT was almost time to get up. He’d been tossing but sleep was elusive. Sighing, he got up to face the day ahead.
His mind was still on Tammy and how she’d grown up into a beautiful young woman. Desire ran through his body causing him to groan. It was going to be a bitch of a day if he couldn’t get his hormones under control.
Now wasn’t the time to get the hots for his best friend’s sister. For Christ sake, he’d known her since she was a baby. He’d tugged her pigtails and teased her through the years. So when did he start feeling different.
If he were truthful to himself, he would say he started looking at her in a different light on her sixteenth birthday. She was still a kid in a lot of ways and he was so afraid he’d do something that would make her hate him. So he made excuses not to come home during the holidays.
His mother knew something was wrong but she was patient with his behaviour. Then he got the call about his father and he regretted all the times he made those excuses for not coming home.
Now, here he was again faced with those desires and his hormones raging like a teenager. His best friend will surely kill him if he knew what kind of thoughts were running through his mind.
He snapped out of his daydream as he heard the jeep approach. It was still dark as he went out to greet his guest.
“Good morning Byron.” Tammy greeted him as she alighted the jeep.
“Hi Tammy. Ready to work for your breakfast?”
“Ha! Ha! Very funny! Maybe I should just turn around and come back later. It’ll be fun seeing you try to explain to Jess why you missed breakfast.” Tammy laughed as she teased Byron.
Holding his hands up in surrender, Byron grinned at Tammy as he leaned down to kiss her on the cheeks. Then together the two friends headed towards the barns, bantering good-naturedly with each other. For the first time since coming home, Byron realized how much he had missed Tammy’s friendship.
For the next few hours the two friends worked side by side, catching up on each other’s live during the past two years when Byron was away. Byron thought it would be hard but somehow they seem to have the same easy way of talking to each other.
Byron could still see that little girl who had followed him and Jack around. Who had cried when he and Jack went away to college.
He remembered that call from his mother saying that Patrick and Amanda Quinn were killed in a road accident and that Tamara was fighting for her life. The days that followed were a nightmare he wouldn’t want to relive.
He saw his best friend go from being a carefree teenager to an adult with such a burden on his shoulders. With a determination and strength from deep within Jack clung to the hope that his sister was still alive.
It was months before Tamara came home from the hospital. Even with all the operations done on her leg, she will always walk with a limp, a reminder of how her parents died. So the broken little girl who struggled daily to recover from the devastating lost of her parents, found strength with her brother by her side, to start to smile again.
And at sixteen she had looked at Byron with such adoration and love in her eyes. He panicked, packed his bags and left the next day without saying goodbye and for two years he stayed away from home. And now, looking at Tammy, he couldn’t deny his heart any longer, he was still in love with her.
HoneyGwhiz 