Page 30 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

Chapter Eleven

THE WRECKING THORN

I fucking hate get-togethers.

Not in general, just the ones my sister throws.

It didn’t start out that way though. As in, in the beginning these events only consisted of a few people.

Callie’s friends from St. Mary’s, the rest of my siblings.

It was a place where we could all be together, like old times.

We could carve time out of our busy schedules and hang out together, play a friendly little game of soccer, rib each other, feel like a family again.

It used to be one of my favorite things.

But then things changed. The group grew.

Friends of friends started to come into the fold.

And of course, my own siblings started hooking up, bringing their girlfriends and wives and fucking everything in between.

And somehow, these intimate get-togethers graduated into this huge fucking party full of people I don’t really know or care to know.

I’d stop coming to them, but I know Callie would hate it.

And this is still the only way I get to see all my siblings together, as busy as they are with their own lives.

Seeing my brothers at practice doesn’t really count; that’s work. This is family, or it’s supposed to be.

Mostly though, I feel guilty. Like always.

For being so irritated about all this. For being so disloyal toward my own brothers and sister.

Not to mention, it’s even harder these days, coming to these things.

No one really has to guess why. Or maybe they do have to, because it’s not like I will let it show.

That I’m still hung up on her. My twin brother’s girlfriend.

“Hey.”

It’s as if I conjured him up, I see Stellan approach me and my fingers tighten around the bottle.

I’m still at the party. Mainly because it’s over now and most of the people have left.

At first I stuck around for the clean-up, but now that’s done as well and I’ve been nursing the same beer for the past hour, looking out to the woods.

Sipping my lukewarm beer, I reply, “Hey yourself.”

He comes to stand beside me, his hands in his pockets. “Thought you would’ve left.”

“Not yet,” I say and take another sip of the disgusting liquid.

I’m not much of a drinker for obvious reasons. I’ll drink whiskey here and there but it’s very rare for me to go for seconds. Except tonight this is my second beer. Not that I’m drinking it; it’s a cover.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Stellan says, flat out.

He’s right.

I kind of am. I don’t return his texts. When I do, I keep them short.

He’s been trying to get me to go out for drinks and I always have an excuse not to.

At practice, I try to keep my distance from him.

I don’t talk to him much, don’t provoke him or try to start something with him like I usually do.

Or did, because I love being an asshole.

I know he notices it. My distance, my unusual quiet. And again, I feel guilty for doing that to him. I feel guilty for wanting to piss on his happy parade, but I can’t seem to help it. Being in love with your twin brother’s girlfriend will do that to you.

It’s just that this is fairly new. As in, him actually bringing it up.

Love has made him a changed man, and I think he’s embracing more of an open approach.

I take another pull of my beer and wish I was more into alcohol.

That way I could get drunk and avoid whatever conversation he wants to have. “Been busy.”

He watches me for a moment before throwing me a short nod. “Okay, I’ll give you that.” Then he sighs and speaks before I can. “The reason I’ve been calling you, wanting to get together, is because I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“Hear what from you first?”

He waits a moment to answer. “I’ve accepted another job.”

I go still for a few seconds, thinking I heard him wrong. “What?”

“New England,” he says, his eyes—identical to mine—staring at me. “They’re looking for a new coach and they sought me out. I said yes.”

I turn to him fully, my frown thick and deep. “You said yes.”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re moving to fucking New England?”

Again, he watches me for a few beats before replying, “Yes.”

I clench my jaw and lower my beer bottle before clipping, “No.”

It feels strange coming out of my mouth, my real feelings.

The truth. Especially when it comes to Stellan.

My twin brother and I, we never really had a very close relationship.

We’ve always been different, radically in fact.

But instead of bridging the gap between our two contrasting selves, we’ve always ended up widening it.

Our difficult relationship only got worse when I realized he wanted Isadora, same as me.

I’ll be the first to say I didn’t make it easy for him.

I knew he liked her, and yet I forged ahead with my relationship with Isadora.

I could’ve talked to him, discussed it, but that was never our way.

I also realize if it were someone else, Ledger or Conrad, I would’ve stepped aside right away.

But with Stellan, things are different. He’s my twin and the fact that he’s always kept me at a distance—due to his own reasons—bugged me more than I’d like to admit.

And my anger always came out in strange ways.

In ways that I would fuck with him for all sorts of reasons.

But anyway, in the end, I never could have taken his girl from him.

He’s my brother, my family. I’ll do anything for family.

Only now that he actually is happy, I can’t really see it. Maybe I truly am a fucking asshole.

“No what?” he asks, confused.

“No, we made a promise,” I state.

“What promise?”

“ Promise ,” I say, my voice biting. “To stay together. To stay close to each other. To look out for our sister.”

Stellan is silent for a bit, something going on behind his eyes, and I’m too agitated to figure out what it is.

When I’m about to snap him out of whatever daydream he’s entertaining, he speaks.

“Callie’s married. Happily married, with two kids.

She’s finally, fucking finally , going to Juilliard next year.

Because her jackass of a husband loves her too much to knock her up a third time, no matter how much she wants him to.

So I don’t think she needs looking out for, because as much as Reed still bugs me, he loves her. More than either of us can imagine.”

I open my mouth to argue, but he keeps going. “And in case you haven’t noticed, our baby brother is settled as well. He’s got two kids, a wife that keeps his hands full, and they’re already thinking about expanding the family even though the twins are hardly a year old.”

Again I try to speak, but he doesn’t let me.

“Even Conrad’s settled. Wyn’s planning the wedding and I’m sure as soon as they tie the knot, they’ll be talking about expanding the family too.

In fact, the only reason they haven’t is because Con is probably being his usual hardass self and wants Wyn to be absolutely fucking sure about wanting babies because according to him, she’s still too young. ”

A pulse beats in my cheek by the time he finishes. “You got a point?”

Again, I can see something is flashing through his eyes and again, I don’t give a fuck about it.

“You know, people think that us Thorne brothers are so strong, and we are. In a way. We lived through pretty tragic times, and we came out the other side. Most people think we came out on top, but I beg to differ. Some of us are still trying to make our way up.”

“What the fuck,” I growl, squeezing the neck of the beer bottle, “are you talking about?”

“I never worried about you,” he keeps going in that same tone, and I swear to everything that’s holy, I’m going to throw this bottle at him if he doesn’t get to the point.

“Well, aside from the fact that I wanted to protect you from me and my issues, and so I kept you at a distance and spent my entire life being a shitty brother. All you ever did was party too hard and break a few too many rules. Made a few too many jokes. Your grades were always fine. Your soccer was fucking phenomenal. You’re arguably the best of us.

And I always thought, back when I used to push you away, that if someone was going to cope with that, it would be you.

I always thought, Shep will be fine. Shep can handle it.

Shep can handle anything. He isn’t like the rest of us. ”

No, I’m fucking not. I made sure of that.

I made sure no one had to worry about me because there were so many other things to worry about.

Rent, food, Mom’s chemo sessions back when she’d been alive, our asshole father’s drinking problems before he thankfully fucking left us, Callie’s dance classes, Ledger’s fights and detentions; everyone else’s issues.

There was enough dysfunction in our family, so I made sure not to let any crop up.

But again, what the fuck is the point here?

“I was going to throw this bottle into your face,” I say, holding said bottle up to show him. “But now, I think I’m going to throw it in the air and then fucking kick it in your face. Just because you’ve almost bored me to death and I need something interesting to bring me back to life.”

His lips twitch. “That’s quite the picture.”

I hum. “No, it’s your picture that’s going to be in tomorrow’s headlines.”

I see him crack a small smile before he nods. “The point is, I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and ignoring you and pushing you away was the biggest. But now I think I may have made an even bigger mistake than that.”

“And what’s that?”

“Taking you for granted and thinking you’d be fine.”

Anger strikes my chest. “Con put you up to this?”

“No.”

“Because I am fine. And I’m going to fucking win the championship.”

“I never doubted that for a second,” Stellan says, and I believe him.

“So then what the fuck are you talking about?”