Page 83 of Van Cort

“Do you even like her?” I ask, as he comes outside.

“I talk of love and you ask if I like her?”

“Yes, Rhett. Like. Enjoy. Want to spend every fucking minute with. Do you yearn for her? Struggle to think straight without her? Does she complete you somehow? Does everything feel empty and pointless and desperately unfulfilling when she’s not there? That’s love. It isn’t having something and ruling it and making it do what you want to when it won’t behave.”

“It is a little bit.” My glare swings at him, and I find a smile waiting for me. “Alright. I get your point. But that was a long time ago, West. I’d like to think I’ve grown since then.”

“Have you? This fucking game appears to prove otherwise.”

“You started that. I was happy enough to enjoy what I’d organised alone.”

“See? Organised. Passionless, Rhett. Dead.” He smiles and leans on a wall opposite me, staring into a face he knows just as well as I know his. “Do you even know what emotion is?”

“I’m perfectly capable of emotions.”

“I’m not seeing any.”

“Aren’t you? Are you sure? You’re not looking hard enough, West. Include yourself in the mirror, because I can assure you my emotions are high, and both of you are part of them. None of this would be happening if you weren’t.”

“And what happens when the drinking ramps up again?”

“It won’t.”

“And what happens when she knows there are two of us and she chooses?”

“I can’t answer that. Not yet.”

No, I bet he can’t, because he doesn’t know, does he? Neither of us do.

I stare out to that damned cabin again, as desperate as he is, in some ways, to make something beautiful happen for the second time in our lives. It could be the ending we hoped for, the one that comes from our near identical hearts and leaves every other kind of scenario useless to us. But those hearts beat so differently. Mine stutters and leaps. His drones and growls.

“Well, you better find an answer I like, because if you think I’m going down this road with you again, without knowing what you’re prepared to give up if it doesn’t go your way, you’re wrong. I won’t.”

He nods and kicks off his own wall, placing his drink down on the table. “Stop fighting me, West. Fall in love if you haven’t already. Don’t lie to yourself to hurt me. I want this. I want you to want it, too.”

“I’m not falling in love until you do.” He holds his thumb and finger up on the way out of the room, barely a millimetre of space between them. That close, it seems.

“Her name is River, by the way. Call her it,” he calls.

It is? Well, that explains the Andie conversation.

CHAPTER TWENTY - EIGHT

BEFORE

WEST – AGE SEVENTEEN

Lately, West had seen something in Rhett’s eyes that he didn’t like. He didn’t know why, but he was both angry about it and thankful for it. But the booze Rhett was downing was getting bad now, and sometimes, even before the alcohol flowed, Rhett seemed more callous than usual. He was sullen, pissed, volatile.

Not today, though.

He smiled over at Rhett, as Lara shuffled into place in his own lap, and breathed in the forest air. She’d been dancing around the fire minutes earlier, showing off her moves. And damn, could she move. He chuckled to himself as she grimaced at her beer and knocked her head back into him. Perfect. Truly fucking perfect.

There weren’t any nerves between them all about who was with whom anymore. It had settled itself somehow without any of them needing to discuss it. Sometimes, she was West’s, and other times she was Rhett’s. And on days like these, when it was early evening and the dark was slowly rolling in and summer was coming to an end, she was theirs, and they were hers.

West wondered, as they all sipped on their bottles of beer, whether it would be like this forever. It should be. They were all they needed. Every second of time spent with her, whether alone or not, somehow brought a balance that Rhett and West couldn’t find on their own. He supposed that was the sex, because no matter how similar the brothers were, that was the one thing they couldn’t give each other. She could.

The trouble was, college would soon be upon them, and her grades weren’t good enough for Harvard. Both he and Rhett knew it without even speaking about it. They thought, though. And if West knew one thing about his brother, it was that he didn’t like losing anything. He’d use everything he had to make sure he didn’t lose her.