Chapter Eighteen
Theo
“Do you think I’m making the right decision?” The question had been weighing on my mind all week but I’d decided fifteen minutes before West called was the best time to ask it. I fiddled with the sleeves of my jumper as I waited for Laurie’s answer, not wanting to look at him.
“That’s not for me to say,” Laurie said finally. “West is your brother, not mine, and you’re the one who has history with him.”
“That’s a no then. You think it’s a mistake.”
“I didn’t say that.” He sounded irritated, which meant I was right but he didn’t want to admit it.
Usually I liked being right, but now it just made me feel ill.
“Look, I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure how I feel about you and West talking—but that’s on me, not you, and it’s because I don’t want to see you get hurt.
But if you want to build a relationship with him, whatever that looks like, I’ll be here for you. ”
I nodded. “Is it weird that I don’t know what I want?”
“No, why would it be?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I reshuffled myself to sit cross-legged on the sofa.
I felt all twisted up inside and it made me want to get up and do things rather than sit still.
It felt too formal, and I wasn’t a formal person.
“Sometimes I like the idea of getting to know him—I mean, he seems pretty cool—but then other times I want him to go away because he brings up all sorts of uncomfortable feelings about my parents. And I know he’s not responsible for how they treated me.
He was just a kid and it’s not like he asked to be my replacement, but in my brain, he’s still tied up in that. ”
“And that’s okay,” Laurie said, putting his hand on my arm and squeezing gently. “You’re allowed to have complex feelings about him. On the one hand, West is largely a stranger to you, but on the other, he’s still your brother and a reminder of everything you left behind.”
“What if he…” I paused for a second, allowing my thoughts to settle into place. “What if he has expectations of me? What if he thinks I should forgive my parents? What if he wants things I’m not ready for?”
“Then you can say no. It’s a complete sentence and doesn’t require any explanation.” Laurie’s tone was firm and I was glad he’d agreed to sit with me. “And if all else fails, then you can go back to having no contact with him.”
“That would suck,” I said, pulling at my lip. “I like talking to him. I just don’t want him to ask for things I’m not ready for.” I sighed and then giggled to myself. “Who knew communication and consent could be applied to regular relationships too?”
“It does help.”
“I wish I’d realised it earlier. Then I wouldn’t have been stuck with so many shitty ex-boyfriends.
” I’d thought so many of the men I’d fucked around with in my youth had been white knights come to save me, but most of them had turned out to be villains in disguise.
I’d bounced from one controlling, emotionally abusive relationship to another until Laurie had given me the strength to break free.
I’d never told him how much he’d changed my life, but I sometimes wondered if he knew anyway.
“You know now.” Laurie put his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him before kissing my temple. “Nobody will ever have the power to make you stay somewhere or do something you don’t want ever again.”
I turned my head, not realising how close he was, and found myself gazing into his eyes. Gosh, they were pretty. His mouth was just there too, tempting and sweet like the first fresh strawberry of summer. I leant forward and kissed him, casually claiming his mouth for my own.
I tried to climb into his lap, the need for more bubbling inside me, but Laurie stopped me with a gentle hand on my thigh.
“We can’t. Not now. You’re supposed to talk to West in a few minutes and you can’t show up looking like you’ve been fooling around, and it would be rude to make him wait so you can sort yourself out. ”
“Fine,” I said, flumping back on the sofa and pouting, even though he was right. “You know I can come really quickly when I want to, right?”
“I’m sure you can, but that doesn’t mean you can do it now. You’re going to sit up, behave, and talk to your brother. Then afterwards we can do whatever you want.”
“Seriously? Whatever I want?”
“Within reason,” Laurie said. “And we’re going to talk about it first.”
I sighed dramatically, but my brain was already whirring with ideas. I wondered how Laurie would feel about tying me to a headboard…
My thoughts were disturbed by my phone pinging loudly and I grabbed it off the arm of the sofa to accept West’s call. His face appeared on the screen, and although he was smiling, he also looked nervous as fuck. Which made two of us.
“Hey,” I said, forcing myself to be calm and cheerful. I’d guested on enough Twitch streams to know how to put on a front. “It’s so nice to see you!”
“You too,” West said. His voice was deeper than mine, with a soft London accent.
He had the same cornflower blue eyes that I saw every day in the mirror, but his face was slightly broader than mine with a stronger jaw.
His nose had definitely been broken at least once, but there was a smattering of adorable freckles across his nose…
and a stunning purple bruise across his cheek.
It looked like his lip had been split recently too.
“Sorry, I look like shit today. I meant to send you a message but I, er…”
“He collided with one of our wingers in training and took a knee to the face,” said another voice from behind West. A broad, smiling face appeared over my brother’s shoulder. “Hi, I’m Mason. I’m here as West’s emotional support and to stop him saying something stupid.”
“For fuck’s sake,” West muttered but he was still smiling. “What happened to sitting quietly in the background?”
“That was before you took a bloody knee to the face. We should’ve gotten you some concealer or something.”
I laughed, my worries vanishing in a puff of smoke. “Don’t worry, I have emotional support with me too. This is Laurie!” I turned my phone so the camera panned across Laurie’s face. He gave a little wave.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Hey, nice to meet you too!” West beamed, then winced. I wondered if he’d broken any of the bones in his face. “Theo talks about you all the time.”
My heart skipped because while it wasn’t totally untrue, I didn’t want Laurie to know that. “He’s too cool not to,” I said, pulling the camera back to face me. “Sorry, Mason, West hasn’t mentioned you.”
“I’m not surprised,” Mason said with a wry smile. “But I am glad you’re chatting, and it’s nice to meet you in person. We watched your stream last night and I’ll have to get West to pick your brain for some games to try.”
“Yes, definitely! I love giving recs. Just let me know what sort of thing you like to play.”
“Will do,” Mason said. He grinned at West and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll go stick the kettle on before I take over. Nice to meet you.”
“And you,” I said as he disappeared from the frame. West watched him go, shaking his head fondly. “He’s so nice!”
“Yeah, he’s all right,” West said. “Bit of a wanker at times, but he’s also the one who encouraged me to reach out to you, so… guess I can’t be too mad at him. I’ll just keep taking the piss out of him for being an absolutely crap shot when we play Call of Duty.”
“Okay, I have to confess I really hate Call of Duty,” I said. “Don’t hate me. I’ve just never gotten into it. Although maybe it’s because the groups I’ve played online with were all shitty and homophobic.”
West pulled a face. “Fuck that. You should play with us sometime—I mean like, me, Mason, and there’s a couple of other guys from the team who play.
We’re not the best, but we mostly do it for fun.
You don’t have to, obviously. Fuck, I didn’t want to make it awkward by forcing you to do something with me. ”
I smiled and my heart melted. He was so freaking sweet I didn’t know why I’d been worried. “You’re fine. That would be fun! Oh, have you ever done multiplayer on Age of Blood? We could do that too.”
“Er, I’ve seen you play Age of Blood. I’m pretty sure I suck compared to you.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “You can’t be any worse than Laurie.”
“I resent that,” Laurie said quietly. “You can’t use me as a comparison because you know I’m not a gamer.”
“Exactly, so if you’re like, the bottom of the scale, then everyone else will be better.” I grinned at him and Laurie fixed me with a hard stare that I was sure meant I was going to be in trouble later. I couldn’t wait.
I looked back at West and added, “The multiplayer is fun because you can do horde mode where you basically have to face down a marauding zombie horde as a team! And you can pick and choose the types of zombies included to make it harder. It’s amazing if you’ve had a bad day and need to take your emotions out on something.
And you can do it with, like, two people too, so it’s not like you need a big group of you.
I often play it with our friend Alex because he’s got feral honey badger energy but he’s always got your back too. ”
“You need that, though. Otherwise you just end up getting shredded,” West said. He looked more relaxed now, and I was glad we had something in common to talk about.
In fact, talking about games with West was surprisingly easy, and we spent at least an hour talking about things we’d played recently, things we were looking forward to, old games we loved, and things I’d done on Twitch.
Laurie sat patiently beside me the whole time, mostly reading his book but keeping his thigh pressed against mine.