I’ve been in a bad mood all day. Who am I kidding? I’ve been edgy most of the week. I’m knee-deep in planning this charity hockey event, which is way more work than I thought it would be, even with Rose’s help. I went to Hope House and I really loved it. The director, Keith, has such passion for helping these kids that I found myself offering to help him, not only with the money raised from this event, but I offered to come do one of their “Life Talks,” which they hold once a month to inspire the kids.
Whatever happened last night with Rose is eating away at me. I haven’t heard from her or seen her all day, which makes me feel even worse. In reality it’s probably good because I don’t think I can handle anymore lip chewing, hair twisting, smiling, winking, flirting. I couldn’t stop fixating on things I’ve already seen. Like for some reason my mind kept wandering back to a moment a week ago when she stretched. Right there in front of me she fucking arched her back, pushing out that perfect chest and that perfect ass at the same time—while wearing yoga pants and a tiny little tank top. I actually groaned out loud and had to cover it with a cough.
And because of her hair twisting and lip biting and—God help my dick—stretching, I was a sexual time bomb. All I thought about was all the sex I wasn’t having. I was having trouble sleeping. I was jerking off like a fifteen-year-old and I was having sex dreams about Rose and waking up sweaty, hard and aching.
It was a fucking nightmare.
I throw open the door to Cole’s house without knocking and kick off my shoes because he’s anal about that crap. One lands on top of Jordan’s giant shoes and the other hits the wall and lands on top of Cole’s Nikes.
I glance into the living room but no one is there so I storm to the back of the house where the kitchen is located. I yank open his fridge and pull out the first beer I see and crack it open. As I turn to the den, which is sunken off the kitchen to the left, I see Cole and Jordan staring at me. Cole is sitting in the overstuffed leather chair, his feet up on the ottoman and his MacBook Air in his lap. Jordan is sitting on the couch, his upper body twisted toward me, away from the video game he’s playing on the eighty-inch flat screen.
“What?”
“You tell us,” Cole replies calmly.
I jump down the three steps and land on the hardwood of the den with a big thud. “I’m having a bad day,” I say and take a big gulp of beer.
Jordan and Cole both laugh.
“Fuck you, assholes.”
They laugh harder.
I contemplate just going home, but my empty house would just add to my foul mood.
“What happened?” Jordan wants to know when he’s finally done laughing. “Did you realize you’re not cute, not smart and bad in bed?”
Cole and Jordan start laughing again. “Seriously?” I bark. “You two are infants.”
“Now, now,” I hear a familiar voice behind me say, and I turn to see Devin coming out of the bathroom down the hall. “I’m back in town five seconds and you’re already fighting like we’re kids again?”
I smile. “Finally! Where the fuck have you been?”
He comes down the stairs behind me and hugs me. “Ashleigh and I had shit to deal with in Brooklyn.”
“But you’re here for good now? All summer? So I don’t have to deal with these two shitheads on my own anymore?” I ask. I smile gratefully when he nods.
I love Devin and at the sight of him I realize how much I missed him and didn’t know it. I don’t have an overall favorite Garrison brother—they’re each my favorite for different reasons. But Devin’s my favorite because he’s always got solid, rational advice, and right now that’s what I need.
“What’s got your French blood boiling, Luc? I mean, besides these two morons?” He flops down on the couch next to Jordan and grabs a beer off the coffee table that I had assumed was one of Jordan’s empties.
“Rose.”
Cole chuckles. Jordan smiles. Devin covers his smirk with his beer bottle and says casually, “What did Rosie do?”
Cole stops chuckling. “Or what did you do?”
“I don’t know what I did. One minute she’s helping me with the event, setting up the website, and then she just got up and left and she hasn’t returned a text or email all day,” I tell him as I sit on the edge of the ottoman next to Cole’s feet.
“Classic.” Cole smiles as he types away at something on his laptop.
“What was the last thing you remember saying to her?” Devin prompts.
I shrug. “We were talking about her trip to Europe. I offered to lend her money because she’s a friend and I wanted to help her out.”
Jordan hip-checks Devin in the video game, sending him flying into the boards. It makes me smile. It’s still a little surreal that we’re in a sports video game. “And you have no idea why she’d be pissed at that? Come on, Luc. You’re not a moron.”
“It’s the friend thing, right? She still has a crush but…” I reply and suddenly feel defensive when Jordan scoffs at that.
Devin stares at me. “But… what? You don’t find her attractive?”
I swallow a big mouthful of beer, for courage, and admit, “She’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
Cole’s eyes move off the computer screen, Jordan’s leave the TV, Devin’s land on me too. Then each of them smiles. I realize how similar it makes them look. Moments like this there is no denying they’re brothers; that’s always made me feel a little lonely, because as much as the whole Garrison family treats me like family, I’m not. I don’t have their fair looks, their long, lean six-foot-two-inch frames or the lopsided smirks they all have plastered on their faces right now.
“What the fuck is with the grins, assholes?”
“Who won?” Cole wants to know, glancing from Devin to Jordan. “I had last Christmas so I know I lost.”
“Fuck, I underestimated him,” Jordan says, shaking his head. “I said he wouldn’t realize it until your wedding.”
“I said the bachelor party so I’m closest without going over!” Devin announces happily. “Pay up!”
Jordan and Cole both dig out their wallets and toss twenty-dollar bills to their grinning older brother. I glare at each of them. “What the fuck?”
“We had a bet,” Jordan explains, smiling like a big dumb asshole. “We all knew you’d realize you’re attracted to her, but we just didn’t know when.”
I shake my head and run a hand through my hair in frustration. “But we’re such good friends and if I think about her that way it’ll fuck it up.”
“But it’s not a normal friendship,” Cole announces. I turn and stare at him like he’s a fucking alien.
“What’s not normal?”
“Guys and girls who are as close as you and Rose aren’t very common,” Cole says. I can tell by the even tone and the slow way he says his words that he’s trying very hard to be tactful.
“Because it’s impossible to be that close to a chick and not bang her,” Jordan elaborates, as untactful as Cole was tactful. He drops the video game controller and picks up his beer.
“You and Jessie were friends for a little bit without screwing,” I remind him and sink back in the worn leather couch. “When you were kids and when you came home for Christmas.”
“Just because I didn’t have the balls to try and sleep with her before I was eighteen doesn’t mean I didn’t want to do it,” he informs me with a smile. “And our attempt at rekindling our friendship last Christmas ended with sex.”
“Right. Jessie had that huge hickey the next morning.” Devin nods, chuckling, and Jordan grins proudly.
I shake my head at the memory but I’m smiling. Jordan was in love with Jessie in high school, but he didn’t tell her until the end of our senior year when Jessie’s boyfriend cheated on her. She gave him her virginity that night. The problem was, Jordan was seeing another girl, but the bigger problem was neither of them were ready to deal with the intense emotions of being in love. They’d screwed it all up, and within weeks Jessie had run off to college in Arizona, refusing to ever see him again, and Jordan went off to play hockey in Quebec and sleep with anything that moved. If Lily Caplan hadn’t died last fall, forcing Jessie and her sisters to come back to Silver Bay, I don’t know if they’d have ever worked it out. But that cranky old lady’s death gave Jordan one more shot to try to win Jessie back. Luckily it worked.
“Well, I’ve never slept with Rose,” I remind them all.
“Yeah, and that’s what’s weird,” Cole pipes in, his wide-set eyes narrowing. “You two are way too close for never having seen each other naked.”
I say nothing as my traitorous mind fills with visions of Rose naked.
“You know how Rosie is. She wants some sweet, romantic asshole and I’m not that guy.”
“If that’s really what she wants, then why has she had a crush on you for so long?” Devin explains to me, scratching his dirty blond head thoughtfully. “She knows you as well as we do. She knows exactly what kind of asshole you are and she’s still interested.”
“Even if I wanted to… even if I thought it wouldn’t fuck up our friendship, I can’t,” I explain to Devin.
“Right. Devin doesn’t know that numb nuts here is having a self-imposed sexless summer,” Cole pipes in, scratching the reddish stubble on his unshaven face.
“If only my nuts were numb,” I mutter, thinking about the ache Rose causes in them every time I see her lately.
“Why?” Devin asks as he levels me with an astonished stare.
“He thinks it’ll impress the Vipers management,” Jordan chimes in, chuckling as if to prove he thinks it’s a hysterical idea.
Devin looks intrigued. “I bet he doesn’t last the whole summer.”
“I bet he doesn’t last another week,” Cole replies.
“I bet he—”
“Stop with the fucking bets!” I bark and they all burst out laughing, filling the large room with their belly laughs. “Can we just go out already?”
I suddenly want to be somewhere that makes talking impossible.
“We can now,” Cole says and hits a button on the laptop that causes the printer behind him to buzz to life. “We’ve got five rooms at the Harrah’s Resort and Spa. Just printing our reservations.”
“Okay, where to, then?” Jordan wants to know.
“Mr. Goodbar,” I suggest because it’s loud and will be busy on a Friday night, and mostly because it’s not the place Rose works. I need a night without blue balls. They all nod in agreement and we finish our beers and start for the door.