Page 39 of Accidentally Hitched (Unintentionally Yours #1)

Callum

P retending I’m not thinking about Amanda is hard.

I’ve never been a man to get distracted at work. Not by drama. Not by celebrities (and trust me, we have a lot of those going in and out of here).

And not by women.

Yet here I am, thinking about her and nothing else as I drone through work pretending to give a shit about what we are doing.

The only thing harder than pretending that I’m not thinking about her is pretending I don’t see her around every corner at work.

Go figure that I normally hardly see her at all.

If she’s not in the recording room she’s getting coffee from the downstairs bar.

Today I feel like she’s in every hallway, near every door.

She was even in the copy room earlier on the third floor. What could she possibly need copies of?

But the worst part isn’t even running into her.

It’s that she is blatantly avoiding and ignoring me.

That’s a low blow, even if I do deserve it.

But by the end of the day, I’m over it. I get that I was a dick. I get that I could have responded better to everything.

But I have tried to get a hold of her countless times. Not just because I care about her and about us but because she works for me. We can’t avoid each other forever. So, when I know she’s in the recording room, I make my way over to talk to her.

The door is cracked slightly, and I can hear her talking to someone. In fact, she’s going off on someone. It’s a tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard before and it has my whole body going rigid and my feet moving faster. Whoever it is has her upset and that has me upset.

Just as I reach the door, it opens the rest of the way, and she walks out. Her expression is tight, heated and visibly upset.

“Amanda,” I start to say. But then I see who she was talking to. Avery is standing in her office with a deer in the headlights look on his face.

What the fuck?

“Amanda,” I say again but she keeps walking. I want to go after her. To see if she is alright. I want to talk about everything that is going on. But when I glance back at Avery and his face relaxes to its normal smug, shit eating grin, my attention locks on him instead.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I bark out once Amanda is out of earshot.

“I’m a Hardin. That makes me her boss too. I don’t think it’s any of your business–”

“Cut the bullshit!” I shout knowing full well that there’s a chance the whole floor heard me, but I don’t really care.

The only thing that bothers me more than Amanda giving me the silent treatment is the idea of Avery swooping in and doing what Avery always does with women.

He’s a snake and always has been. “You haven’t spoken so much as two words to her since she was hired so I find it a little ironic that you would start now when–” I stop myself.

Avery approaches me, a slimy grin on his face. “When the two of you are on the rocks? When your world is up in flames? Not sure about ironic but definitely beneficial if you ask me.”

Avery heads down the hall but I follow.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” I tell him. “You can’t stand to see me get ahead so you’re looking to sabotage it. But it’s not going to work. Dad sees the truth. Dad knows–”

“Oh, give it up,” Avery lets out a gritty laugh. “Our pathetic excuse for a father is senile. Whatever disease is growing inside him has his brain so shot to hell that he couldn’t make a decent decision if the company actually depended on it, business or otherwise.”

With that, I grab Avery by the back of the neck and steer him to the side into one of the meeting rooms. It’s empty other than a large oval table and about twenty roller chairs.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Avery’s grin is gone for the most part as I slam the door shut. I’m not sure if he ever drops that smug look 100% to be honest and it’s been digging under my skin for years. I want to wipe it clean off his face.

“You are my problem,” I spit out.

And just like that, the grin is back. “Maybe if you focused more on your own life you wouldn’t be so consumed in mine.” Avery places two fingers on my shoulder and nudges me back.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I grit out.

“Says the man who just threw me in the first room he could find so he could throw a hissy fit. You know, for being the ‘older brother’ you sure are–”

I shut him up with my fist. It lands square on his jaw, sending him crashing into the table, tossing two of the chairs out of the way.

Pain shoots like electricity through my hand and up into my shoulder.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve hit someone and while I know I will probably be feeling it in the morning, it feels good.

Really fucking good. Probably because I know who will be hurting more.

Avery grips the edge of the table to pull himself to his feet. He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, streaking his light gray button down with blood. He chuckles and spits on the floor next to my shoes.

“It’s nice to see a little aggression from you, brother. Here I always assumed you didn’t have it in you.”

“Not everyone is reckless, Ave. Some of us grab life by the horns in a bullfight.”

“And some of us actually want to get ahead and go for the throat.”

Avery lunges into me, and we both land on the table.

If it weren’t for the fact that it’s solid polished oak, it probably would have broken into a million shards of wood, maiming us both.

One thing is for sure as we wrestle our way across the table before landing on the floor in a heap– we may be fit, but we aren’t young.

I’m going to be feeling this in the morning. And I don’t give a shit.

“When will you learn that it’s not about tearing someone else down?” I growl at him as I sit back, assuming he’s learned his lesson.

Stupid on my part because he never learns his lessons.

While my guard is down, he takes another shot, this time socking me square in the mouth.

Mother fucker…

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t momentarily see stars as my mouth floods with the distinct taste of copper.

But I quickly shake it off, grabbing his fist mid swing.

I am able to unsteady him and shove him to the ground before getting on my knees and barring my forearm over his throat.

I put just enough weight on him to stop him.

To slow him down. To make him surrender.

“Okay,” he taps my arm. “I said okay!”

I let up and we both sit heavy, our breaths jagged, our faces fucked up. But for the first time, as he looks at my bleeding mouth and I look at his bruised frown, I think we both finally feel a release in the tension we have been carrying between us for all these years.

“Nice left hook,” I nod down at him.

“Thanks. I’ve been saving it up for you, special.”

I can’t help but grin at that. I run my tongue across my metallic teeth.

Fuck it.

I spit on the floor and wipe my mouth too.

Then, Avery says something I am not expecting.

“Why are we like this?”

“Bullheaded? I think we get that from him.”

“No, I mean why have we always been enemies? Aren’t twins supposed to have some kind of deep-rooted connection?”

“Not ones who have been pitted against each other since birth,” I sigh, leaning back against the wall. Fuck, I am in pain. I mean everything hurts.

“Who’s doing do you think that was?” he asks. “Dad’s?”

I half shrug. That hurts too. “Could have been mom’s for all we know.”

“I don’t remember mom,” Avery says flatly.

“I do. Glimpses anyways. I remember strawberry blonde hair. A smile to beat all smiles. Apple scented perfume. And the song "Straight Up” by Paula Abdul.”

“Fucking Paula Abdul,” Avery smiles as much as he can considering his lips are already swelling. “She loved all that crazy 80’s shit.”

“K-ninety-nine-point-nine,” I say, before we both say in unison, “The jam.”

Then we smile. Both of us. Something that probably hasn’t happened since the last solar eclipse or maybe before.

“Listen,” I start but Avery shakes his head.

“No, you listen.” He sits up enough to pull a flask from his pocket. He would. Then he unscrews it, takes a sip, winces and holds it out to me.

I want to tell him to put it away. To lecture him about how drinking on the job is one of the reasons he will never ‘get ahead’ as he puts it. Not that I can say much. I too find this company unbearable enough to turn to the bottle at times. Not daily like Avery but still.

But I don’t do that. For once, I join my younger-by-sixteen-minutes brother. I take the flask and pour a little of what I know is bourbon in my mouth. Then I suck the air between my teeth hard.

“Fuck, that hurts.”

Avery chuckles grittily. “Have a little more, it numbs the pain.”

My lips tip in the corners. But his words are deeper than he intended.

We pass the flask back and forth until it’s dry. He’s right about one thing. The whiskey really does take the edge off.

“You know I never hated you,” Avery says as he takes in a deep breath and lets it out with a cough.

“The fuck you talkin’ about?”

“Come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You were always one step ahead and I was always trying to trip you. But it wasn’t hate. It was jealousy.”

I snort out part of a laugh. I don’t think Avery and I have ever talked like this before. I’m not sure how I even feel about it now. But he keeps going.

“Dead serious, brother. I was jealous because you weren’t as greedy as me. You were never focused on winning. You paid attention to the game. And it paid off. Everything you did, you did it the right way and it shows. Fuck, I’m jealous of you now.”

“Why are you jealous?” I ask. I don’t know how to process this. Our entire lives, Avery Hardin has not had an apologetic or humble bone in his body. At least not that I have seen.

“You’re fucking joking right? Think about it. Successful, levelheaded, a girl who loves you.”

I stop him there. “Hold up. What do you know about Amanda and me?”

“I know that you meeting each other was a fluke. I know that her working here was an even bigger one. And I know you’ve held onto that accidental marriage as a benefit.”

“You think we’re faking it?” I cut him off.

“I think that YOU think you’re faking it. Marriage by chance was a great card to draw, brother. And I can’t blame you for holding it close to your chest. I mean, shit. I’ve been with Zoe for several months now and we still don’t have the chemistry you two have.”

I think about that, turning over the empty flask in my hand. “Well unfortunately the marriage was real but the relationship…is not. I thought it was but…”

“You might be the better man but you’re an idiot, Callum. If you think whatever going on between you and Amanda isn’t real, you are truly dense. And you know what else is real? The baby.”

“The baby that may not be mine?” I ask.

Avery peels himself off the floor, the struggle coming more from pain than toxicity if I had to guess and points at me. “Again. You’re an idiot.”

With that, he straightens his tie (a pointless effort considering his shirt is blood stained) and walks out of the room leaving me alone with his words, my thoughts and whatever the fuck is going on in my heart.