9. MATT
9
MATT
I swing the club and slice the top of the ball. It trickles off the tee. I haven’t hit a shot that bad since I was ten years old. Behind me, one of my brothers scoffs. Definitely Seb.
“Take the shot again,” Nico instructs.
“He can’t take the shot again,” Seb says. “It’s against the rules.”
Nico steps in front of me and picks up the ball. He doesn’t even glance around to check no one else is around to see. He drops it in my hand, his dark gaze searching my own. “What the fuck is going on with you? Your whole game is off.”
It’s Aries. The sauna. Her hair. Her breasts. That mouth I want to shove my dick in. But I can’t bloody tell my brothers that.
“Is it Charlie?” Nico questions. The mention of my son's name, combined with the concerned expression on my brother's face, wipes every thought of Aries from my mind. I don’t like it one bit.
“Why would it be Charlie?”
Nico shrugs, but I can tell by the tightness of his mouth that there’s more to it. My heart pinches. Charlie and I don’t have the best relationship at the moment. “Kate and I went down to school to see him. Took him out for lunch. He was a bit… sullen.”
“Isn’t he always a bit sullen?” Seb asks, stepping forward to join us. He focuses on me. “Maybe if you let him dye his hair blue again, that would cheer him up.”
I ignore this last comment. Seb knows as well as I do that the school would never let Charlie have blue hair during term time, and I won’t allow it in the holidays. Both my brothers are now standing, staring at me, perfectly attired in white golf shirts and pressed trousers. Nico’s the eldest, but I’m taller than both of them. Seb, with his blue eyes and one-sided dimple that appears when he smiles (which is often), has more boyish charm than either me or Nico.
I don’t need to look in the mirror to know I look like shit compared to them. I’m pretty sure an unhappy marriage does more to age a person than the passage of time. Nico could easily pass as a couple of years younger than me, despite being older.
Nico glances at me, and that look is still in his eyes. He’s worried about my son—maybe worried about me too—but he doesn’t want to say it out loud. Maybe he thinks I’ll take it as a personal criticism. I’m already paranoid about being a shit father. Maybe I am one. Gemma screamed it at me so many times over the years we were together that it’s an ingrained part of my identity.
“Did he say something?” I ask Nico.
Nico’s gaze slides from mine, then locks on again. “Not really. He’s your kid, and it’s not my place to speculate. But it’s probably been hard on him, this last year. The divorce and all that. It might be worth checking in.”
Shitty father, shitty father .
I nod, not sure what else to do. “Let’s keep playing.”
I bend to put the ball back on the tee, waiting for Nico and Seb to move out of the way. Then I take the shot again, but the result is the same. A trickle off the tee.
We’re all silent for a few seconds before Nico picks up the ball again.
Behind me, Seb tuts. “Who’s got your balls in a knot, Matty?”
“Oh, fuck off.” My response is so fast it reveals everything.
Nico’s eyes narrow. “Is there someone? And if you say Gemma, I’ll punch your lights out.”
I roll my eyes at his false bravado. Nico’s big, but he doesn’t have my bulk. “Of course it’s not Gemma. Plus, we don’t have any unnecessary contact. That woman’s getting nowhere near my balls.”
“Glad to hear it. She had them in a vice for long enough.” He tugs on the wrist of his glove, making it tighten over his fingers. “It’s not work, is it? There’s nothing huge looming right now. Everything’s under control.”
“It’s not work,” Seb says, grinning and pointing his finger at me. “There’s a someone .” He glances at Nico. “He’s acting exactly like you did when you first had that thing going on with Kate. Before you did the deed, you were as frustrated as fuck.”
Seb’s not wrong there, and I curse my youngest brother’s observational skills. I was out in the States when Nico started his affair with Kate Lansen, but even over the phone, I could tell there was something going on with him.
Seb looks back at me. “Someone’s under your skin. I knew something was up at the first tee. Your shoulders are as tight as a pig’s arse. No wonder you can’t hit the ball.”
“Last chance,” Nico says, putting the ball back on the tee for me, then moving out of my swing zone.
I take position and roll my shoulders. Even after the sauna, they’re still tense. “There’s no one.” I swing back, driving the club through to strike the ball, but it doesn’t go well, hooking off to the right and landing in the long grass off the side of the fairway.
They laugh.
“Liar,” says Nico. He steps up and places his own ball on the tee, swinging effortlessly, arcing the ball gracefully down the fairway.
“That’s how you hit the ball when you’re getting laid,” Seb gloats, smacking me on the shoulder.
“Hmm. How’s Kate’s spa project coming along?” I ask Nico, desperate to change the subject.
He keeps his eye on his ball, which is still rolling. When it stops, he turns his attention to me. “Don’t change the topic. It’s great. She’s great. Thanks for asking. Maybe you’ll have a partner to bring to the plunge pool by the time it’s up and built.”
My stomach does a weird flip at the suggestion, and an image of Aries in her tiny wet t-shirt and skimpy pyjama shorts flashes in my mind. “I’ll give the plunge pool a miss.”
Seb steps up to take his turn. “Stop trying to avoid the question. Who’s the someone? You know we’ll have it out of you by the eighteenth hole, so you might as well tell us now. Maybe we can help.”
“Don’t pretend you want to help,” I say. “You want to have a laugh at my expense. You’re already grinning like a fucking monkey.”
Seb tries to contain his smile, but fails spectacularly. “Okay. Fine. But we’ll have it out of you either way.”
I heave a great sigh and my resistance melts. I need to talk about this situation with someone, and my brothers are the only people I can safely chat about this shit with. “It’s the nanny.”
“Oof,” Seb says, putting a hand on his heart and pretending to fall backwards. “Did you fuck her?”
“Is she hot?” Nico asks.
“No, I did not fuck the nanny. And yes, she’s hot. Smoking. She looks like Jessica Rabbit .”
Seb’s eyes widen. “Jessica Rabbit? Like… the big tits and the red hair, Jessica Rabbit? The cartoon?”
“Exactly. I feel like the big guy in the sky is fucking with my head. I’m barely through the divorce after the shittiest marriage known to man, and then this? A drop-dead gorgeous twenty-six-year-old walking around my house with bare feet and tiny pyjamas. A Scottish redhead with an accent that goes straight to my dick.” I run a hand down my face. “I don’t know what the fuck to do with myself.”
For a second, neither of them say anything, then they both speak at once.
“Fuck her,” Seb replies.
“Fire her,” Nico instructs.
I address Nico’s suggestion first. “I can’t fire her. I dropped my towel in the sauna this morning and she got an eyeful.”
“You didn’t.” Seb laughs, eyes widening. He’s enjoying this way too much.
Nico shakes his head, lips tight. “You’re setting yourself up for a sexual harassment charge.”
“Oh, come off it,” Seb says to Nico before turning to me. “You didn’t whip the towel off deliberately did you? You weren’t flashing the poor girl?”
“Fuck’s sake. No. She slipped and grabbed my towel.”
Seb’s eyes dance with amusement, and his lips split into a smile, revealing straight white teeth. “So she pulled your towel off?”
“Yes. Accidentally. But then she stared at my dick in the mirror like she’d never seen one before.”
“Are we talking shock here?” Nico asks. “Because again, I’m going with potential sexual harassment charges.”
“I don’t know if it was shock. I have no idea what she’s thinking. She just… swore. A lot.”
“Did it turn you on?” Seb is barely controlling his amusement. The fucker is smiling so wide, it looks like his head’s about to explode.
“The swearing?”
“No.” Seb waves his hand in the air like he’s slapping the obtuseness out of me. “The whole thing. You being naked, her looking. Did that turn you on?”
“No.” Yes . “I’m not a horny teenager who can’t control himself.”
Seb rolls his eyes. “Whatever. If I’m dropping my towel in front of Jessica Rabbit, who’s staring at it with her mouth hanging open, then my dick’s gonna be enjoying the show.”
“That’s because you’re filthy,” I tell him.
His eyebrow twitches upwards and a smirk contorts one side of his lips, as if to say, You know you’re as bad as I am.
And he’s right. But I can’t give him the satisfaction. I cannot share that I got a raging hard-on because of whatever the hell is going on between me and Aries, and had to go and sort myself out in the shower afterwards. I pumped my dick like I wanted to punish it. I’m surprised there’s any skin left after I beat it so hard. It wasn’t even a satisfactory orgasm; it was functional and fast. But I couldn’t stop picturing Aries… those full, pink lips around my cock… her breasts, so round, begging me to take a handful. How I wanted to suck on those nipples that were pointing right at me…
Fuck’s sake . Maybe Nico’s right. I need to let her go before I do something I’ll regret. But I infinitely prefer Seb’s solution: fuck her. But I can’t do that, can I?
“Okay, you can’t fire her,” Seb says, like he’s read my mind. He positions himself to take his shot. “So fuck her.”
“Is that what you would do?” I ask.
His upper lip curls with distaste. “No. I would never fuck someone who works for me, at home or in the office. I might be filthy, but I keep my business clean.” He shoots an accusatory glance at Nico, who rolls his eyes.
“She might quit, you know. I’d probably quit if you came at me naked,” Nico replies, entirely serious. “Problem solved.”
Seb’s still grinning when he swings the club in a perfect arc. The ball cruises into the air, landing even further than Nico’s, just short of the green. It’s a great shot.
When the ball finally comes to a standstill, he looks over his shoulder at me. “Go have sex. Then you might be able to keep up with us.”