Chapter 6 #2
I always found my best friend’s brother attractive. Truth be told, all of my brother’s best friends were good looking, but I grew up with them, so that basically made them brothers. Most of them were like brothers. The ones that didn’t hate me.
Bru wasn’t like a brother, and I certainly noticed how much space he took up in the room.
I also noticed how low his jeans hung and how well they fit his, quite frankly, tree trunk–sized thighs.
He was nearly as large as my brother, Thatcher, but had a golden retriever energy about him that was only emphasized by his large brown eyes and tousled dark hair.
He hugged Sloane right away. He had a messenger bag on his arm and slid it to the floor to fully hug his sis.
“Speaking of,” Sloane stated, hugging her brother real tight back. They looked nothing alike. Bru was white, and Sloane was a mixture of races. Even though they weren’t biological siblings, they were raised together.
Sloane dropped an arm around Bru. She wasn’t as tall as him, but definitely had height on her. She was one of the tallest girls I’d ever known personally. She grinned. “And excellent timing. We were just talking about you.”
Having been acknowledged, I popped up, but that was hard considering how I completely embarrassed myself in Bru’s car.
You idiot.
I couldn’t believe I kissed him, but I’d been vulnerable, going through stuff…
That wasn’t an excuse, but after Bru came away from the hug, he smiled at me.
He gave me his warm, kind smile when I hadn’t been kind.
I’d been stupid and I threw myself at someone who’d always been nice to me.
Bru was the only one of my brother’s friends who hung out with me, and, whenever we were together, I knew it was because he actually wanted to be.
He genuinely liked spending time with me.
Perhaps that was why I gave in to the delusion that anyone like Bru could actually be into me. I took his kindness for something else.
He lifted a hand. “Hey, Bow.”
I sat there trying not to be weird because Sloane was here, and she always knew when something was wrong with me. I waved back. “Hey.”
“You guys were talking about me?” he continued, and it was so nice because he completely switched his attention to Sloane. He didn’t put any pressure on me after what happened by staring awkwardly at me, not like I was at him.
Sloane nodded. “Yeah. Bow just asked where you were and then you came in.”
“Ah,” he said, keeping his focus on her. It truly made me hate myself for making things so awkward between us, kissing him…
“And it’s good you just came in. Dorian and I were talking earlier about getting pizza,” Sloane continued. “You guys want to come?”
Sloane had asked Bru and me both, and I said yes after he did. It would be weird if I didn’t go. Whenever our friend group went out, we all did.
“Brilliant,” Sloane said, squeezing Bru’s arm, then mine when she passed me. She called to Dorian and the others about pizza, and they all gave their version of hell yeah. The loudest had been my brother, who could easily eat his way through a pizza house.
“I’ll text Wells what we’re doing,” Dorian said as he reentered the room.
He had his phone in his hand and dropped his arm around Sloane.
Dorian wanted to grab a jacket, so Sloane went with him.
Thatcher headed to his room to change, and that wasn’t surprising since he spent more time in the mirror back home than I did when we were growing up.
Ares and Fawn decided to head out and wait in Ares’s truck, so that left Bru and me.
It awkwardly left Bru and me.
“Um, I gotta clean up my stuff.” My study session with Wells was obviously over.
I was very aware I was under Bru’s gaze and that we were now alone together for the first time since I got stupid and kissed him. I gathered my things up in quick time. My declaration was also giving Bru an excuse to leave me to my misery, but he didn’t for some reason.
“Bow.” He placed a hand on mine, and his rough touch burned into my skin.
It should have burned because of embarrassment, but that wasn’t the reason.
I mean, I was embarrassed being around him, but him taking my hand and raising it up elevated my heart rate for different reasons.
The contact of our hands coursed lava through my digits and that molten heat chased up my entire body and into my chest, my breasts…
I had to be delulu, and I knew I was, because I didn’t get a whole lot of physical attention from boys. I didn’t get any at all, really. I shook my head, unable to meet his eyes. “Bru, you don’t have to.”
I knew he was going to address what happened. It was a mistake. It was my mistake.
I bit my lip. “I’m sorry I kissed you.”
It ruined everything and made things awkward now.
I had definitely been going through things at the time of the kiss. I was still going through those same things and absolutely none of them had anything to do with him.
I started to slide my hand out of Bru’s, but he didn’t let me. I released a harsh breath. “Bru—”
“I’m not.”
I blinked.
“I mean, I should be,” he continued, scanning my hand. He flipped it over. “You’re Thatch’s little sister and what happened shouldn’t have been okay. But…”
His rough digits dragged down my palm achingly slow. His fingers only skimmed my flesh, but it felt like he was touching me all over.
I opened my mouth to say his name, but I couldn’t say anything. I was one hundred percent trying to focus on breathing.
“I should be sorry,” he said, closing my hand. He gave it back to me, and when he did, he took a step back. His eyes narrowed. “I shouldn’t have liked it, Bow.”
I shouldn’t have liked it.
It took me a second to mull over what he said. I didn’t think I heard him right.
“You liked it?” I didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t real, but suddenly, Bruno Sloane-Mallick was inches away from me. He was breathing his own harsh air into the room, and I didn’t know what was happening.
He touched my chin. “I shouldn’t have liked it, Bow. For a lot of reasons,” he said. He closed his eyes. “I think there’s someone else.”
Of course there was.
Of course.
There was no way a guy like him, someone so kind and wonderful, was actually available. I glanced away, but he brought me back. He pinched my chin. “I’m fucked in the head right now, and it wouldn’t be fair to you. That, and you are Thatcher’s little sister.”
It was like the waves of reality crashed into me. I hung on to that last part more than what he said before. There was always something. If I wasn’t evil, there was something else that made me not worth it. I wasn’t worthy.
I was nothing.
I stepped back and the door opened yet again. This time it was the smell of sea breeze and ocean waves that entered the room.
I used to love the way Wells Ambrose smelled.
I used to love Wells Ambrose.
I’d had a little kid crush. But that was before he hated me.
Wells had his hoodie on, his hands in his jeans pockets. A smoky smell lingered in the background of his clean scent, but not in a bad way, never in a bad way. His head cocked at Bru. “What’s going on?”
He glanced over at me next, and I guess it did look kind of weird. Bru and I were just staring at each other. I’d put distance between us, but we still looked like we were having some kind of intense conversation.
I mumbled nothing before wrestling around with the study materials again. I jammed my stuff into my book bag, and, when I glanced up, Wells and Bru were staring at each other. Wells had his eyes narrowed, and Bru did too.
Bru’s eyes narrowed harder.
“Yeah, it’s nothing,” Bru said before leaving the room. He mentioned something about heading downstairs to wait in the truck with Ares and Fawn, and, though I said something similar about our conversation meaning nothing, it felt different when Bru said it, harsher.
My insides tightening, I swallowed, but I was forced to push everything away when my phone buzzed.
Unknown: Stop ignoring me.
Unknown: Come back to me.
“You high in demand or something, Squeak? I find that hard to believe since you barely have any friends.”
I glanced up to find green eyes studying me, analyzing me. There was no way Wells saw my text from across the table. He was just being mean.
His head cocked, his stark blond hair passing over his eyes.
Wells was just as beautiful as Bru, but in different ways, and I hated that he lost who he was.
He became someone else because of me. He became darker and completely different than who he used to be when we were growing up. There had been a reason I loved him.
I said nothing to him, and, apparently bored with me, he started to leave the room.
I took a step toward him. “Can we have our next tutoring session on the quad tomorrow around two o’clock?
The forecast says it will be warm enough to study outside.
” The Midwest had weird weather like that.
One day it was scorching hot and the next blistering cold.
Especially when seasons changed from winter to spring.
I gnawed my lip. “The quad’s out in the open and people will be able to see us there. ”
He would be able to see us.
My phone buzzed again, but I ignored it as Wells stepped up to me. He towered over me and looked at me like I was the worst person in the world.
He wasn’t far off.
I’d never be able to take back what I did to him, and I knew that as he analyzed me as if I was a piece of crap.
Like I was worthless. His nostrils flared.
“I’ll meet you. But remember, I’m playing your game because I need you.
But, like I said in the library, no amount of looking buddy buddy will ever make me forget what you did, Squeak.
It won’t because I know you, Squeak. I see you. ”
He did see me, and in the next moment…
He looked right through me.
I couldn’t remember the last time Wells saw me as a person. I may have been Thatcher’s little sister to Bru and a great friend to his sister, Sloane, but, to the rest of the world, I was the girl who screwed Wells Ambrose over.
I was the one who killed a girl.