Chapter Four
Blake
“You think I won’t throw you out of the game?”
“It’s fucking rec league,” my brother Jason yelled at the ref, stepping a little too close to the guy (who was about a foot shorter than him). “Swallow the whistle and the power trip, and let us play basketball. Christ.”
“Jace,” AJ said, grabbing Jason’s arm and pulling him back. “Will you shut the hell up so we can finish the game?”
AJ was a year younger than Jason and only slightly less confrontational. I loved my brothers, but they were overcompetitive hotheads when it came to sports.
“I’ll shut up if Chrome Dome here will stop pretending he’s an NBA official.”
Spoiler: We didn’t get to finish the game.
Because when the ref threw Jason out, that made AJ get in the ref’s face, which got his stupid ass tossed, too. And since there were only seven guys on our team, and one of them wasn’t there because his wife just had a baby, we had to forfeit because we didn’t have enough players.
Which was how it came to pass that we were eating wings at Oscar’s before it was even dark outside.
“I’m not sad about this ,” AJ said, picking up his bottle of Heineken. “I was fucking starving.”
“You’re always starving,” Chloe said, grabbing a french fry from his plate. She usually met us for postgame wings but avoided our games because they were ugly. Her words—which meant she’d fit right into this family. “The scariest part of marrying you is the fear that I’ll never have enough food to keep you happy.”
“Well, there’s that and the fact that you’re gonna have to live with that piece of shit,” Jason said while licking the wing sauce off his fingers. “Did you know that he used to talk to himself, like, all the time? And I don’t mean a little bit, I mean all the fucking time. Our next-door neighbors must’ve thought—”
“It was my coping mechanism for living with you ,” AJ said around a laugh. “A guy can only take so many hours of armpit jail before he cracks.”
“Do I want to know what armpit jail is?” Chloe asked me quietly.
“No, you don’t, and it’s exactly what it sounds like,” I told her, picking up my pint glass. “If AJ was bugging us, Jason would subject him to punishment in the form of his nose being held against Jason’s armpit.”
“It was so much worse than it sounds,” AJ said. “He’d yell, ‘Armpit jail!’ as loud as he could, over and over again, and I swear to God I could taste the smell of those pits.”
“That is so disgusting,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “Yet absolutely unsurprising. How did you live with these two animals, Blake?”
“Mommy always saved him,” Jason said matter-of-factly while tearing into a wing.
“Every time,” I agreed, shrugging. “I was her favorite.”
“Only because you’re the baby,” AJ said. “Fucking Blakey.”
That sent my brothers into a loud argument about who was the second favorite, but I lost interest because I caught a glimpse of a dark-haired woman at the bar. It wasn’t her , but it reminded me of her.
Amy slash Isabella.
Talk about a disappointment. Not that I was looking for anything relationship-shaped with some stranger I met at Scooter’s, but she’d seemed interesting to me when I hadn’t been interested in a very long time.
Until she’d revealed herself to be an adorably interesting liar.
I still couldn’t believe she’d looked me in the face and mouthed the word nope. Like, who did that?
“Who’s that?” I heard from behind me, and when I turned around, I saw Kylie, Jason’s wife, approaching the table. She nodded toward the dark-haired woman I’d been unknowingly staring at while thinking of Amy— no , Isabella. “You like her?”
Kylie was… Kylie. Perfect for my brother. Strong, independent, hilarious, and very much like she’d been born into our noisy family.
“Nope,” I said, reaching for my beer. “She just reminded me of someone.”
“Yeah, well, I want to know who.” Kylie sat down beside me, not even pausing to engage with my brothers as she reached over and snagged one of my fries. “Because you haven’t even looked at a woman since Skye.”
“I have, too,” I said. “I’m looking at you , aren’t I?”
“Gross,” she replied, rolling her eyes as she popped the french fry into her mouth. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, appreciating that she was always looking out for me, even if I didn’t want her to be. “But I’m good, Ky.”
I’d been officially single for six months, and it was absolutely true that I hadn’t noticed a woman since the breakup with Skye.
Honestly, it was like she’d killed off my ability to care.
“I saw her at the gym last week,” Kylie said, her eyes on my face like she was searching for my reaction. “And she asked about you.”
“Yeah?” I said, genuinely unaffected. My love for Skye had died the minute she lied to my face, and I wished her nothing but the best.
“Who, Skye?” Jason drained his beer before saying, “You didn’t tell me that.”
“That’s because you’re obnoxious about her,” Kylie said, picking up a napkin and handing it to him. “Your chin.”
“Thanks,” he said, wiping his beard. “And she was a lying asshole to my brother—she doesn’t deserve to know how he’s doing. She deserves my obnoxiousness.”
“I don’t like her, either,” Kylie said, pointing to the spot he was missing with the napkin. “But when you hear her name, you act like we’re discussing an ax murderer. She might be a liar, but she didn’t kill anyone, Jason.”
That made me snort, because it was true.
Jason and Skye had gotten along great until I told him what happened, and the minute he heard about her dishonesty, she became enemy number one.
Instantly dead to him.
“If I saw her at the gym,” AJ said, grinning, “I’d be super insanely nice to her, like, ‘Heyyyy, Skye, how are you,’ with the smile of a horror movie clown, just to make her paranoid.”
“Your man is terrifying.” Kylie pointed at him and said to Chloe, “Sociopathic.”
“Yeah, but it’s kind of hot.” Chloe reached out a hand to squeeze AJ’s face like he was a toddler. “See?”
“I do not .”
The night devolved into watching football and playing sports trivia, which meant that (as always) our table got loud. AJ and I ganged up on Jason for his stupid answers even though our team managed to dominate the competition, while Kylie and Chloe found another table to root for and yelled their asses off when we got beat.
So kind of a typical Monday night.
I’d managed to completely forget about the whole Amy/Isabella thing until I got home and fed the cats.
When you call tonight, make sure you have the kitties nearby so I can hear their little meows.
The minute I opened the cabinet and reached for the cat food, my brain reminded me that in another universe, one where she wasn’t a liar and on the Ellis payroll, I might be calling her at that very moment.