Read Online Brother to Brother: The Sacred Brotherhood Book I by A.J. Downey - Free Book Online

days, as long as he treated my son like he was now. I could do this. I could do this for as long as it took, for the rest of my life, as long as Noah had men to look up to. As long as my son had every idea of what brotherhood and family was supposed to be .
    For the first time since arriving here, in this strange town, so very far away from anything and anyone I’d ever known, I knew no fear and had no regrets. I stood in the doorway of Archer’s bedroom and drank every detail of this morning in. The light growing, and casting lines across the man and my boy through the slats of the blinds.
    You can do this Melody. You have to… for him. I thought, and as I ever did, took strength from it, I took a picture, and I did what every mother before me had likely done… I went into the kitchen, forgot my tired, made coffee, and started breakfast like it was just any other day and I hadn’t just seen something that profoundly changed me, or mattered to me.
     

Chapter 10
    Archer
     
    I woke up with the boy on my chest and to the quiet sounds of Mel moving through the kitchen. My stomach growled and I looked down, but the boy was still out cold. Kids. They could sleep through a nuclear holocaust and this particular kid was no different.
    I sat up slowly, carefully, and got up, taking Noah to his crib and laying him down. He didn’t so much as stir. Might as well have been comatose. When I turned to look, Mel was watching me over the stove, spatula in hand. I raised an eyebrow at her somber, almost sad, expression and realized – she looked like shit. Like she hadn’t slept in a fucking age. I didn’t comment on that, I just waited her out because it looked like she had something to say.
    “You can treat me however you’d like,” she said softly, flipping the pancake she had going in the skillet. “As long as you don’t do it in front of him and as long as you treat him the way you just did, always… Am I clear?”
    I frowned, “Where the fuck did that come from?” I asked.
    She shook her head, “Never mind that, I just need to know, am I perfectly clear on this?”
    Truth be told, her intensity was kind of freaking me out, so I nodded and when she raised her eyebrows I realized she wanted to hear it, or maybe needed to hear me say it out loud… “Yeah, Mel. You’re clear, I get you…”
    “Thank you,” she uttered and flipped the pancakes she had going in the skillet onto a plate after a few heartbeats more.
    I just wanted to get off this super fucking weird bent she was on, it was seriously creepy as fuck, so I asked, “Is there coffee?”
    “Absolutely, still take it with cream and no sugar?” she asked and again I blinked. I hadn’t realized that she’d ever paid that much attention to anything that weren’t my brother Grinder’s dick.
    “Yeah.”
    She made me coffee, she served my food and I was glad I’d remembered the syrup. Of course, when I said I would do something I did it. I was a man of my word. Maybe that was why she’d been so adamant about whatever the fuck it was that put a wild hair up her ass the minute before.
    “Wanna tell me what that was all about?” I asked, shoveling some pancake drowned in syrup in my mouth. My curiosity winning out more than my desire to let it lie.
    “No,” she murmured.
    “Suit yourself,” I said with a shrug. I let it go, I didn’t want to pursue it that fuckin’ bad. Females, who the fuck knew why they did half the shit they did?
    I ate, and she watched me, sitting at the opposite end of the table from me, her hands wrapped around a fresh, steaming mug of coffee, huddled in on herself like she was cold or something. She had on this thin cotton bathrobe with the wide sleeves, like something outta China or something. It looked good on her. Suited her color, or whatever, but I’d be fucked if I’d tell her so. I didn’t need her going back to primping and fucking with makeup in a mirror forever like she had when she’d been nailing my brother. I