Chapter 22
Jeremy
Austin practically vibrated with nerves, but I had a feeling I knew why he was hesitating.
This was a huge step for me. There was a big chance that Leah would never forgive us for what we’d done the last few days.
This was a spur of the moment decision on my part and we’d come up there with no plan.
“I’m—I’m okay with telling her whatever you want to. It’s Christmas, and I’d hate to cause more issues with your family. I think I’ve already pissed them off enough.”
Austin huffed out a laugh, pulling me in closer, placing a soft kiss on my cheek. Maybe it was meant to be reassuring, but the move only made me more tense.
“We’ll play it by ear. If she starts to get too mad, we’ll leave it in the past. We can tell her the rest later. It’s not ideal, because she’ll still be pissed later, but you're right that maybe we shouldn’t completely fuck up the holiday.”
When we both finally worked up the guts to knock on the door, we did it at the same time. That way, neither of us had the opportunity to chicken out.
The door swung wide, Leah standing there, her makeup smudged again as she folded her arms over her chest and glared.
“What do you guys want?”
I closed my eyes, swallowing hard, my mouth and throat suddenly too dry to form a coherent sentence. The best part of it was that I didn’t have to. Austin was there to save the day. He knew his sister far better than anyone else and how to keep this situation as calm as possible.
“Can we talk for a second?”
She rolled her eyes. “I think it’s a little too late. What the hell was that? What aren’t you telling me, Austin?”
He sighed, running a hand down his face. “That’s what we need to talk to you about. This took us just as much by surprise as it did you.”
That had Leah’s attention, as she stepped aside to let us into her room. The necklace that I’d gotten her, that she’d put on so happily that morning, was now sitting on top of her dresser. Not that I could blame her, she had to be feeling betrayed by what she saw.
“I didn’t think you two would actually do it. Yes, I pressured you, but that wasn’t just any quick kiss...” Leah collapsed onto her bed, flopped onto her back while she stared up at the ceiling.
“That’s because, before you even brought him here, Jeremy and I had met before.”
Leah sat up and looked between us, her eyes wide.
“What do you mean?”
My heart slammed into my ribcage as I still struggled to swallow. There was no way around this, it wasn’t fair to make Austin do all the talking.
“I transferred to NYU.”
Leah nodded enthusiastically. She’d known that because she’d helped me move into the dorms. This was another sign of just how terrible a couple we really were, because I never told her where I’d transferred from.
“I know, kind of hard to forget some of those details when I had eyes for you right from the start.”
That had me blushing, but I needed to keep the conversation on track.
“What I’d never said was that I’d come to New York from San Francisco. UC Berkeley, to be exact.”
You could see the moment the light bulb clicked on. I didn’t think it was possible for Leah’s eyes to get any wider, but they did. She jumped from the bed, the next thing I knew, she was punching me in the shoulder.
“What the hell was that for?” I grumbled, rubbing at the spot where she’d hit me.
“You’re the guy.”
“He’s the guy,” Austin confirmed. He shifted from side to side, his arms tucked behind his back, while I wanted to be mad that he didn’t try to stop his sister from hitting me, she’d probably been waiting years to do that.
The reality was that a punch in the shoulder was pretty small compared to some of the other damage she could have done.
I’d seen her get into a few catfights back in college, and it hadn’t been pretty. The girl could hold her own.
She stared dumbfounded for a moment.
“You two let me parade around here like you didn’t already know each other. Why would you do that?”
Austin shrugged his shoulders, but I had the answer. “I had no idea that you two were even related until we got here. You brought me to meet your family over Christmas, and forgive me if I didn’t want to cause waves over a major holiday.”
“I agree. There was no reason to cause problems. We could have talked about it later...”
And then Leah looked horrified. “I made you kiss him. Oh, my God. Austin? I’m so freaking sorry. You must still be so hurt, I made you do that, I’m such a terrible sister—”
He held up a hand to stop her rambling.
“That’s the other thing we need to talk about.”
When Leah froze, the little bit of ease I’d been feeling over the entire situation vanished.
This was the part we were unsure of. She hadn’t seemed upset, but this could quickly change things.
It was one thing to tell her that we’d known each other in the past; it was different to say that we’d jumped right back into bed together the second things had ended between us.
She knew.
We didn’t have to say anything because she knew. With a shaking hand, she tugged at her ponytail before swallowing thickly.
“I think I need a drink.” She brushed past us and out of the room, rushing down the stairs to the kitchen.
I looked at Austin because I didn’t know whether we should follow her or not. Their parents were still in the kitchen, if we followed, it meant sharing this with everyone, and that wasn’t where I was at mentally.
Turns out, we didn’t need to worry about following Leah, because a few minutes later she came marching back up the stairs with a full wineglass,the rest of the bottle tucked under her arm.
The second she saw us waiting for her in her doorway, she took a large swig of the wine in her glass before thinking again then chugging back the rest of the glass.
We were back to the binge drinking that she’d been doing over the last few days.
As she entered the room, pulling the cork out of the wine bottle with her teeth. She took a large swig from the bottle before sitting on the edge of her bed to glare at us.
“So what I’m hearing is... I ended things, and since you conveniently had to stay with my brother, you took the opportunity to climb back into bed with him?”
I raised my hands in surrender, because obviously Austin had told her about us hooking up. It had to hurt knowing I couldn’t do the same with her. She’d spent years with me, and while I loved her deeply, it was more on a platonic level. I didn’t want to sleep with her.
“That’s not—”
She took another swig of the wine, and I gulped because, at the rate she was going, she wasn’t going to be feeling very good soon. If I had been in her shoes, I would have been just as upset.
This wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear.
“Leah, to be fair...” Austin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. This whole conversation was extremely uncomfortable. “…we didn’t intend for any of this to happen. But—but knowing what happened, I don’t know...”
Leah set the bottle and her glass on her nightstand before she stood and hugged her brother. It was a complete one-eighty from where she’d been a moment ago. All I could do was stand there as the pair hugged it out. Like she understood him without him saying anything.
The emotions in this room were giving me whiplash.
Out of nowhere, Leah let go of Austin swung around to face me, sticking her pointer finger in my face, right between my eyes, causing me to go cross-eyed.
“Now, you…” Oh yeah, she was feeling her alcohol. “I love my brother very much. If you so much as ever think about hurting him like that ever again...”
What was even happening here? See, so much emotional whiplash.
Leah had gone from pissed off to lecturing me about not harming her brother so quickly. “I promise. I wouldn’t dream of it ever again. It was stupid to do it back then, and I should have known better.”
She jammed her finger into the bridge of my nose. It hurt, but I didn’t flinch because she was obviously trying to prove a point.
“This is my baby brother. You make him cry, and I’ll make you cry.”
The whole situation was bordering on insane.
It was taking everything in me not to double over laughing, my stomach ached with the effort it took to hold it all in. When I looked over at Austin, the look on his face said he was having the same problem. He sported a crooked smile as he bit his bottom lip in order to contain his own laughter.
Leah marched back over to her drink, snatched it from the end table and guzzled the rest down. Once the glass was empty, she almost missed the nightstand, but got it there before she collapsed face first onto the bed.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked Austin as he slowly started backing out of the room.
“She’s fine. She might not like herself very much in the morning, but we should get downstairs for dessert.”