Read Online Richmond-Banks Brothers 1: A Hopeless Place (BWWM Interracial Romance) by Coco Jordan - Free Book Online

things right where they’d been for years. The deafening silence that had remained between us for years was going to be our fate.
    “Yeah, it was good seeing you,” Spencer yelled from the rolled down window. “Keep in touch.”
    My breath grew labored and I saw nothing but red. It was clear as day that Spencer Goodwin was still the jerk he had always been. I was mad at myself for believing for one second that he still loved me, that he’d changed, that he’d missed me. I’d mistakenly thought we were finally getting that second chance I’d dreamed about.
    I fished my keys from the depths of my purse as the soft click of his car door sounded from behind me. “Amara, wait.”
    I turned around to find him standing there under the glow of the streetlamp with his hands in his pockets.
    “Look,” he began. His expression was pained and engaging all at the same time. He ran his fingers through his rust-colored hair and rested his hand on the back of his neck. “I’m going through some things right now. I’m really confused. I just don’t want you hurt you again like I did before. You don’t deserve that. Please, just be patient with me.”
    Spencer leaned over and scooped my face in the palms of his hands. I turned my face from his, but he turned it back, planting a single, tender kiss on my ice cold lips.
     

 
     
     
     
     

 
    BENNETT
    The smell was all too familiar: staleness; bleach; despair. To anyone else, it would’ve been a foreign scent, but to me it was just as oddly comforting as home. I’d been here hundreds of times before, lying on a thin hospital mattress, covered by thin, white sheets as machines beeped around me and nurses checked on me around the clock. I’d woken to an empty hospital room, half hoping Amara would be sitting by my bed, worrying about me, but I was pretty sure she was out with that dick ex-boyfriend of hers, fawning over every douchebag thing that fell out of his stupid mouth.
    I didn’t care so much that she wasn’t with me. I just didn’t want her to be with him. She deserved better, and she didn’t even fucking realize it. That was what killed me.
    I closed my eyes, shutting out the faint glow of the hall light that trickled in through my half-opened hospital room door. I needed to force myself to sleep, to shut out the world, and I was damn good at that.
    “He’s in here?” the faint, sweet voice I’d recognize anywhere echoed from outside in the hall.
    “Visiting hours are almost over,” a nurse said in a low voice, “but you can go ahead and go in. Just be quiet. He’s resting.”
    “Have his parents been here?” she asked the nurse.
    The nurse paused. “You don’t know them very well yet, do you?”
    “What do you mean?” she asked.
    “They said they’d send someone to come get him in the morning.” The nurse’s footsteps trailed down the hall.
    I shut my eyes, pretending to sleep, and listened as Amara quietly shuffled in, sat her things down, and pulled a chair up to my bedside. Through fluttering eyelids, I watched as she grabbed a blanket and cozied up next to me. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was settling in.
    And then I heard sniffling. She was crying. The soft stroke of her hand across my cheek as it traced the outline of my jaw and then the way her fingers raked through my dark hair sent shivers down my spine. And as if none of that was enough, she leaned down and kissed me, sweetly and delicately, on the lips. Not the forehead. Not the cheek. The lips.
    I listened as she backed away, sniffled, and settled back into her chair. I could feel her watching me, her dark eyes washing over the vision of me lying still and quiet in a hospital bed. No one had ever hung out next to me or watched me the way she did. Suddenly, I could rest easy. I let the night consume me as the beeping of the heart monitor lulled us both to sleep. I knew she’d be there when I woke up.
    Sunlight peeked through the blinds the following morning, and I awoke to