Page 16

HAYES

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Shawn leans over the table in the library and prods the notepad I’m writing on.

“Tell you what?”

He stands taller, peering down the nose we share, his blue eyes blazing. “That you took Riley out on Friday night?”

I freeze, clutching my pen, wishing it was a magic wand, and I could spell my way out of this confrontation like Harry Potter. How the fuck did he find out? And how the fuck am I going to explain myself without cringing?

“Just leave it alone.” I focus on my paper, but Shawn’s finger is back in my line of sight in a flash.

“What did you say to her?”

“Nothing. I fucking said nothing.”

“You said enough to hurt her,” he says.

I raise my head, my eyes widening, as questions begin to form. “How the fuck would you know?”

“Because I took her out on Saturday night.” He folds his arms across his black shirt, bulging his biceps. That might impress the girls around here and even strike some fear into some of the dudes, but it makes me want to shove his head down the toilet.

“You? You took her out?”

“Well…” He pauses and folds in his lips. “Not technically. We went swimming.”

“Swimming?”

“Shhhhhh,” a girl at the other end of the table hisses. It’s supposed to be a quiet room, and our full-blown argument is rippling across the space. I gather up my books, stuff everything in my bag, and stride for the exit, not checking if Shawn is following because, of course, he is. This conversation isn’t done. With every step, my tired brain is growling, ‘What the fuck?’ One day, I’m taking Riley for drinks, and we’re making out, hot and heavy, in my truck. The next day, she’s swimming with my triplet.

And she has the gall to suggest that I was the one playing games with her.

Shawn catches up to me halfway down the stone stairs, grabbing my arm.

“You know, if you’d just told us what you were doing rather than walking around like a bear with a sore head, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“What wouldn’t have happened? You wouldn’t have taken her out?” Narrowing my eyes, I study my brother, looking for all the familiar tells I’ve noted over the years. He licks the center of his top lip, and I know he’s about to lie.

“I would have backed off.”

“Sure,” I say. “ Sure .”

“What’s the big deal, anyway, bro? It’s not like you’re looking for a relationship with her?”

I glare at him, nostrils flaring, his assumption that he knows anything about what I want and don’t want pissing me off.

Understanding dawns. “You did?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want.” Shoving my hands in my pockets, I turn to face the library. I need to study, and this is a waste of my time and energy. Once again, I’ve lost out to one of my brothers, and it sucks.

“Of course it does. She was upset, which shows she cares. I put her straight, so you’re welcome, asshole.”

I narrow my eyes at him as he forces his hands into the pockets of his jeans, mirroring my body language. We must look ridiculous to anyone observing. Mirror images of each other, angry but still totally in sync.

He licks his lips again. Another tell. He always does it when he’s talking about a girl he’s been physical with, like he can’t stop his mouth from reliving what he did.

“You kissed her? The fuck, man!”

Shawn’s expression flattens, and he turns away to watch a woman with pink hair and a purple fur coat descend the stairs. It’s an absentminded observation. “You ever look at a girl and get a feeling… something you didn’t feel before, or at least, didn’t feel for a long time.”

I stare at him like he grew a second head right in front of my eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, bro. I just…” He runs his fingers through his hair, leaving it disheveled, and it only adds to the confusion I’m experiencing listening to him.

“You mean like love at first sight?”

“No,” he says. “Not love…” He trails off like he’s weighing the possibility and exasperation balls tight inside me, forming a knot beneath my sternum. “Lust, I guess.”

“So, you saw Riley and got an extra hard boner? Whoop de doo, Shawn. Let’s break out the champagne and confetti.” I turn away from him, disgusted, then flip again. “You know what? Fuck you, man. She’s not a shiny toy you get to smear your sticky fingers all over just because you want to play with her.”

“It isn’t like that.”

“So, tell me what it’s like.”

“I…” He kicks the ground with the toe of his sneaker and then looks up at me. “What’s it like for you?”

“It’s like finding your favorite sweater taped up in a box you haven’t opened for eight years,” I say.

His lips quirk into a flicker of a smile, and he points at me. “It’s like that.”

“Shit.”

I can’t listen to this anymore but punching my brother in the mouth so he can’t spew any more stupid shit isn’t an option, so I walk away, but his footsteps follow me. “So, we both like her.”

“And she doesn’t like either of us,” I remind him.

“She’s misguided,” he says, catching up to me. “She just needs to be shown the truth.”

I stare at his confident profile, baffled again by his train of thought. We might share the exact same DNA profile, but our minds diverged at birth so widely that it’s sometimes like trying to converse with a different species. I’m over here talking sense, and he’s over there, barking or some shit. “Shown the truth? And what is that, Shawn? That we’re both interested in her?” I shake my head. “Why the fuck would that make a difference?”

“I’ll back off,” he blurts. “If that’s what you want me to do, I’ll tell Riley it’s you she should go for.”

“Oh, don’t even try me with that reverse psychology thing. You want me to say, ‘no Shawn. I’ll back off. You go for it, bro’, but I’m not going to do that.”

His face falls, but I know his game. He’s been playing it since before we hit kindergarten. “That isn’t what I’m doing.”

I stop suddenly, and he overshoots me by three paces before he realizes I’m not keeping up. “I don’t need you to do me a favor, Shawn. If she wants you more than me, that’s her choice.”

“She doesn’t, Hayes. Listen to me.” He crosses his arms behind his head, and his shirt rises enough to flash six inches of abs, drawing the attention of a group of girls passing in the opposite direction. They giggle and speak behind their palms, and their attention surges the frustration up the back of my throat, filling my mouth with bitterness.

“I never used to mind living in yours and Jacob’s shadows, but I’m done with it,” I spit.

“We can share her.” Shawn says quickly.

The second head he grew a moment ago morphs into three. “Share her? She doesn’t want either of us. What makes you think she’ll want both?”

“Let’s just smooth things over and let them play out,” he says. “We tell her she can have it all if she wants it.”

“You want us to date the same woman?”

“I’ve shared women with Jacob before.”

“You’ve fucked the same women at the same time,” I correct. “For a few hours. You haven’t shared shit.”

“But that doesn’t mean I can’t.”

“You’d be happy dating a woman I’m fucking,” I say, even though I’m nowhere near that with Riley, and if anything, it’s likely to be the reverse. Shawn only has to look at girls, and their underwear slides down their legs.

“If you’re happy, and she’s happy, why not? Other people do it. This uni is notorious for it. The McGregor’s, and that girl who ended up with a whole ranch of men. There are others, too. It worked for them. Maybe this is what we need. Jacob keeps fussing about secrets and guarding against women coming between us. Maybe this will keep him sweet.”

“She’s not going to want Jacob,” I scoff. “Not after the way he treated her.”

“She’ll want him when she realizes that his armor plating is one huge protection mechanism for a wounded boy. Women love that shit.”

“Not Riley,” I say confidently. “She’s got more sense than that. Not all women want to fix broken men. Some want men who come fully assembled.”

“And that’s you, is it?”

I shake my head. “Who the fuck knows, Shawn? She doesn’t want me.”

“Talk to her. Work it out.” Shawn claps me hard on the shoulder. “But lose the Eeyore glum expression, dude. It’s not working for you.”

He strolls away, his usual swagger returning now that he’s got whatever this was off his chest.

Talk to her.

I want to. I don’t like her mistakenly thinking I’m some kind of asshole. Even if she doesn’t want a repeat of Friday night, we need to clear the air.

I want a repeat of Friday night. Instead, I get another two hours in the library, mostly taken up with fantasies of Riley’s hands on me, interspersed with her kissing my brother.

Damn, my mind is fucked.