The Time with Rebecca

Rebecca was Xander’s person. She was quiet. He was not. She was sensible. He was… not. But for years, the two of them had shared a never-spoken understanding of what it was like to be the youngest, to live in the oversized shadows of older siblings who wanted things and went after the things they wanted—the win, the world, each other.

It wasn’t like that with Xander and Bex. Nothing had changed between them when they had become teenagers. At fifteen, they knew each other, which is how Xander knew…

“Something’s different about you.” Xander punctuated that statement by jumping from the arm of one giant leather sofa to the next. “My Xander sense is tingling.”

“Not a fan of the word tingling,” Rebecca told him, walking along the back of the sofa with the same understated grace with which she would have balanced on a log in the Black Wood.

“So noted,” Xander replied. He executed a flying-squirrel leap toward the fireplace, caught the edge of the stone mantel, and pulled himself up to sit on it, his endlessly long legs dangling down. “My Xander sense is buzzing, and the source of that disturbance is…” Xander deployed a finger gun with expert precision, pointing his index finger directly at her. “You.”

He’d noticed it a few days earlier: a subtle, automatic curve to Rebecca’s lips, a secret smile Xander wasn’t used to seeing on her classically beautiful face. That smile, paired with the completely uncharacteristic and almost dreamy look now discernible in her emerald eyes, could only mean one thing.

Xander grinned. “There’s a girl.”

“There is not,” Rebecca said a little too quickly.

“There is!” Xander was delighted by this turn of events. “Is she broody with hidden depths or sunshine in human form—or, ooohhh, is she a Sagittarius?”

Rebecca opened her mouth, presumably to deny again that there was a girl, but Xander preempted any such denial.

“If you lie to me again, I am going to stand up on this mantel and dramatically throw myself into the magma below, meeting my tragic, untimely, and exceptionally well-acted death with Xanderlike aplomb.”

Rebecca said nothing at first, as she hopped from the back of the couch to a chair and then eyed the space between the chair and the fireplace.

“You can do it,” Xander said encouragingly—and he wasn’t just talking about the jump.

Rebecca threw a pillow onto the floor, then leapt onto that.

“Pillow is toast,” Xander, the rule-keeper for The Floor Is Magma, announced gravely, “in three, two, one…”

Rebecca jumped, grabbed the mantel, and pulled herself up.

“Your Floor Is Magma technique is, as ever, flawless,” Xander told her. “But you know the rules. A pillow assist entitles me to one question.” He lifted his hand and poked Rebecca’s shoulder gently with his index finger. “There’s a girl…” he prompted.

On top of the mantel, Rebecca pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. “There’s a girl,” she admitted. “And she’s… complicated.”

“Good complicated or bad complicated?” Xander’s tone made it clear: He found those prospects equally appealing.

Rebecca smiled helplessly. “Both?”

Something about the way Rebecca said that word set Xander’s Xander sense to buzzing once more. “Theoretically speaking,” Xander said thoughtfully, “how long has there been a good-complicated, bad-complicated girl in the life of my very best Rebecca buddy?”

Rebecca directed her answer to her kneecaps. “Hard to say. It’s…”

“Complicated?” Xander offered. The wheels in his Hawthorne brain started turning. Rebecca mostly kept to herself at school. Emily—Rebecca’s sister and admittedly not one of Xander’s favorite people—had a habit of needing Rebecca any time she showed the slightest sign of making friends. Xander was well aware that the only reason Emily didn’t try pulling the same thing when Rebecca was with him was the infamous Lederhosen Incident from the summer he and Rebecca were nine.

For all her faults, Emily Laughlin knew better than to mess with Xander Hawthorne.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Xander said, “where did you meet this—”

“Hello?” A demanding voice echoed through the foyer. Xander recognize it immediately: two-thirds Impress Me, one-third I Am Not Impressed. Thea Calligaris. Her uncle was married to Xander’s aunt, and Thea was one of Xander’s very favorite people to annoy.

His eyes widened suddenly.

Thea was a frequent visitor to Hawthorne House. She was Emily’s best friend. She was a Sagittarius.

“Rebecca Laughlin,” Xander said in awe, “you lovable, rascally minx.”

Rebecca shot laser eyes at him. “Not a word, Xander. Not. A. Single. Word.”

In that moment, Xander heard everything that Rebecca wasn’t saying. Her entire life revolved around—and had always revolved around—what Emily wanted.

Emily, who had a heart condition.

Emily, who their mother obsessed over.

Emily, who had always, always been given her way.

Emily Laughlin didn’t allow anyone to put her second. Not her sister. Not her best friend.

“I’ll help you,” Xander said fiercely. “Double-O-Xander, at your service. You have no idea how sneaky I can be.”

Before Rebecca could reply, Thea appeared in the archway into the Grand Parlor. Her eyes came to rest on Rebecca’s for just a second, just an instant, but that was enough for Xander to confirm: Beneath the mean girl facade—which maybe, possibly, probably wasn’t entirely a facade—Thea felt it, too.

“Do I want to know what you two are doing?” Thea Calligaris really knew how to sell an eye roll.

“The floor is magma,” Xander told her seriously. “Quick! Jump on the couch!”

“Xander,” Rebecca warned.

Xander did not heed her warning. How could he? Thea was right there, and she was complicated, and they needed him, in all of his Xander glory.

“Don’t worry,” Xander told Rebecca seriously, as he pulled his feet up on top of the mantel and crouched. “I’ll save her!”

Thea did not see the tackle coming. No one ever expected a Xander Inquisition.

“What the—”

Expert tackler that he was, Xander ensured that they landed safely—and more or less gently—on the couch. “And thus,” he said dramatically, “the damsel was saved. And thus…” He grinned. “An alliance was born.”

“Alliance?” Thea looked at him like he’d just sprouted a few extra heads and possibly a second butt. “Have you lost your mind?”

Up on the mantel, Rebecca sighed. “He knows,” she told Thea.

Thea’s eyes cheated to Rebecca’s.

“I know,” Xander reiterated helpfully. “And I am pleased to inform you that I make an excellent accomplice.”