Mistletoe and the Wrong Brother

Prologue

Ivy Weaver had never done a remarkable thing in her life. If there had been an award in high school for Most Likely to Never Stand Out, Ivy wouldn’t have won it because her classmates would have forgotten she existed when they cast ballots.

This was why she hadn’t said anything when Austin Underwood hadn’t invited her to his party, even though it was right next door, and loud.

She could have approached him that morning, when he was stretching at the end of his driveway before his daily run and she, with uncannily perfect timing, happened to be fetching her dad’s newspaper.

She could have asked what time the party was starting or if she could bring anything.

But she’d been so distracted by the gold flecks in his blue eyes and those impossibly long, dark eyelashes that she completely forgot how to speak.

By the time she remembered, he was rounding the corner at the end of their street.

It was easier to blame her current predicament on Austin’s eyes than the irrefutable fact that she was pure chickenshit.

Now, she was sweaty as hell and stuck up a tree.

The air was thick and sticky, heavy with the promise of another Wisconsin summer storm.

And since there wasn’t any air-conditioning in the tree house that straddled the property line between the Weavers and the Underwoods, Ivy’s hair had managed to simultaneously plaster itself to the back of her neck and blossom into a halo of frizz on top.

Her hair was a scientific marvel. Or a highly localized ecological disaster.

She’d tried so hard to look nice. An hour with the straightener in an attempt to tame her curls, only for it to all be undone by the humidity in less than ten minutes.

The same went for her outfit, carefully curated to be effortlessly cute but also totally natural.

She’d been ready and waiting, but none of the Underwoods had come for her.

He hadn’t come for her.

She checked her phone so obsessively for a text that the battery died.

In the end, Ivy went to the tree house because it was where Austin had kissed her the first time.

The only time. They’d been six and Lorelai, the oldest Underwood kid by two minutes, since she and Grant were twins, had dictated they play family.

Lorelai declared herself the mom, Austin her son, and Ivy his girlfriend.

Her unwavering crush on Austin Underwood had been sealed with a singular, featherlight kiss.

Ivy rested her back against the weatherworn boards of the tree house.

The walls had windows but no panes, so snow blew in in the winter and rain soaked the interior during summer storms. Cracked and splintered wood grabbed at her shirt and scraped her skin.

The tree house was on the verge of being condemned, but the day it got torn down would break her heart, because those four walls held so many magical memories.

“Austin! Take out the fucking trash!” Lorelai’s bellow cut through the muggy night.

This was it. The moment she’d been waiting for.

Ivy scrambled down the ladder and adjusted her clothes, her hands trembling as she fanned her shirt away from her body to get some semblance of a breeze under the fabric.

She tried to tame her curls by raking her fingers through them, but that only created impenetrable snarls.

Oh well. It was dark. But was there a darkness dark enough to make her look more like a femme fatale and less like… her?

This was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

If he had feelings for her, he would have said something.

Austin Underwood did not suffer in silence.

He took up space. He filled every room he entered with his indefinable Austin-ness.

She couldn’t manage to fill a thimble. Maybe she should take this to her grave—

The hinges on the side door of the Underwoods’ house creaked. Ivy’s heart and stomach fought for space in her throat.

She either did this now or she never did it, because if it blew up in her face, at least she could run away to college in the morning. Always have an exit plan.

Her feet didn’t feel like they touched the ground as she marched up the Underwoods’ driveway. It was disconcerting to be so untethered from her own body, but she pushed on, propelled by a mixture of fear and delicate hope.

In the dark, with his back to her while he loaded garbage bags into the bins, Austin looked taller and broader in the shoulders. Had he gotten more muscular over the summer, or had his biceps always bulged like that when he picked things up?

Austin dropped the last bag into the bin, and the thud of the lid jolted her into action.

“I need to tell you something,” Ivy blurted. Austin jumped at the sound of her voice and started to turn, so she barreled ahead quickly. “Don’t turn around. Please. I—I don’t think I can say it to your face but if I don’t say it now, I won’t ever say it and the what-if will be worse than anything.”

Her nervous, hollow laugh was muffled by the oppressively thick air. She swallowed.

“The summer before you go to college is supposed to be transformative. I kept waiting for my butterfly moment and it never happened; then tonight I was thinking that maybe I’m supposed to make it happen.

I can’t keep waiting for things to change.

So…I like you. A lot. Like, I like-like you, and I’ve like-liked you for a really long time, and I hate that I wasted all these years instead of just saying that, because I’m leaving tomorrow and we won’t even be in the same time zone anymore—when for so long you’ve been right next door.

You’re just really incredible, Austin, and even if you don’t feel the same way now, maybe someday—”

“Austin?”

The cold realization that this voice was deeper than Austin’s chilled her to her bones as he turned around.

Grant. Wearing Austin’s Coeur-de-Lac High School baseball hat backward, just like Austin did. Grant gave his brother so much shit about how he wore that hat.

“You have a crush on Austin?”

The disbelief and disdain cut deep, and Ivy flinched.

“It’s a little more than a crush,” she answered quietly.

“Austin doesn’t give a shit about you, Ivy. He barely knows that you’re alive. If you didn’t live next door, he wouldn’t know who you are. You mean nothing to him, and you’re never going to mean anything to him.”

Every harsh word was a blow she hadn’t been expecting. She’d worked with Grant at the movie theater all summer. She thought they’d graduated from proximity acquaintances to friends.

Hot tears clouded her eyes and strangled her throat. Her bottom lip trembled, and Ivy clenched her jaw to preserve the final scrap of her dignity.

“Um, yeah. Okay. Got it.”

And then she ran, back down the driveway and across her lawn, hurtling through her front door and collapsing against it before letting the first sob escape from deep in her aching chest.

She never wanted to see Grant Underwood again.