Chapter 4
JONAH
“Jesus man, what was that?” Sawyer calls out, dropping the basketball and rubbing his palms against his jeans. “You practically took my arm off with that pass.” He shakes his hands out. “That shit fucking stings.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” I mutter.
He picks up the ball, bouncing it a few times while he studies me. I hate the appraising look on his face. This is the worst thing about being a twin—it’s impossible to hide anything from him.
“Seriously, what’s your deal?” he asks. “You’ve been stomping around here all weekend.”
“I don’t have a deal.” I hold up my hands for him to pass the ball. “I just want to play.”
I can tell he wants to argue some more, but he mercifully drops it, sending the ball back my way with the same amount of force I threw to him. And, okay, he has a point. That shit does sting my palms.
I dribble a few times, managing to get past him, then take my shot. The ball goes wide, hitting the backstop and bouncing right off the court.
“God damn it,” I shout, putting my hands to my head. Frustration and anger are boiling through me and I just want to fucking break something.
“Okay, game’s over,” Sawyer says, walking off the court to fetch the ball. “Seriously, man. What the hell is going on?”
I sink down onto the bench, rubbing a hand over my sweaty face. “I’m so fucked.”
My brother joins me, sitting sideways on the bench and eyeing me. “This have something to do with the girl you banged in the staff bathroom Friday night?”
I gape at him. “How in the hell did you know about that?”
He rolls his eyes. “Dude. We live in a town the size of a postage stamp. You think anything happens in that bar that doesn’t get repeated to one of your brothers?”
Good point. I rub my hand over my face again, suddenly tired. I’ve been sleeping like shit. “We didn’t bang,” I mutter. “Just fooled around.”
“And that’s what has you pissed off?” he asks. “You mad you didn’t get to score?”
“No,” I snap, then reconsider. “I mean, yes. I guess. Kind of.”
He barks out a laugh. “On second thought, maybe we should call Jules for this conversation. You sound like a fucking woman, dude.”
I point at him. “If you tell our little sister a single word about my sex life, I will kick your ass.”
He grimaces. “It’s bad enough I have to live with the knowledge that she has a sex life. I went to pick up Nick for poker night last week and walked in on them making out in the kitchen.”
I shudder. Maybe we should have murdered our best friend when he started up with our little sister. We probably would have, if he hadn’t gone and saved her life from a robbery gone wrong.
I look up and catch a flash of darkness in Sawyer’s eyes and I know he’s thinking exactly the same thing as I am. The twin mind-reading goes both ways.
“We hung out and talked for a while,” he says in a forced-casual tone. “Seems like she’s doing real good. Happy and shit.”
I nod, looking away. I don’t think anyone in our family has quite recovered from the scare we got when Jules was held at gunpoint last spring. I still have fucking nightmares about it. If Nick had gotten there just a few minutes later…
I can’t think about that. And I know Sawyer feels the same way because he quickly changes the subject.
“So what’s the deal with the chick?”
“Ellie,” I say. “Her name was Ellie. And she…” I shake my head, not quite sure how to put into words how I’ve been feeling.
“She took off before I could get her number,” I finally say. After she promised she would wait for me.
“That sucks,” he says. “But not the end of the world. I mean, does she live around here? It’s not exactly difficult to find people in Solitude.”
He has a point. Solitude, North Carolina is a small town, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else. All it would take is a few well-placed questions. If she’s even staying here.
God, I don’t even know her last name.
“Maybe she was visiting or something,” I grumble, ready to be done talking about this. I just need to accept the fact that I won’t be seeing Ellie again any time soon.
It shouldn’t bother me this much. We spent less than an hour together.
It’s just that it was the best hour I’ve had in a really long time. I’ve never felt that kind of connection with a woman before, never had that all-encompassing need to know someone. To claim someone. I took one look at Ellie and wanted her to be mine.
And it kind of kills me that she obviously didn’t feel the same way.
“Let’s go out this weekend,” Sawyer says. “We can hit a club over in Mount Casper. Find you someone to take your mind off the mystery bathroom chick.”
I laugh, even though the thought of hooking up with anyone else holds zero appeal to me right now. “Maybe. I think I’m on the schedule at the Low Bar.”
He scoffs. “What’s the point in owning the place if you can’t get a minion to cover for you?”
I open my mouth to remind him that our staff are employees, not minions, but I don’t get the words out. A basketball bounces on the pavement right in front of us and I have to get my hands out fast to catch it before it nails me in the face.
“Sorry!” a little kid says, running up behind the ball, out of breath. He’s a tiny little thing with skinny legs and a big gap-toothed smile. The ball is about the same size as his entire torso.
“No problem.” I hold it out for him to take, looking over his shoulder to see if he has an adult with him. The kid looks way too young to be playing by himself.
He sees our basketball at my feet and his smile turns to a grin. “Can you play basketball? I’m real good. My mom says I’ll make the varsity team when I get big, just like she did. You’re big. Are you big enough to dunk? Can you teach me?”
I laugh, a little overwhelmed by the rapid questioning.
“Sorry, buddy,” my twin says next to me.
“If you’re looking for someone to teach you to dunk, you came to the wrong guy.
” He jabs me with an elbow, then lowers his voice, like he’s about to impart some great secret.
“My little brother is a really crummy ball player.”
The kid hoots with laughter, looking positively delighted. Then his eyes widen more as he looks between the two of us. “You guys have the same face!”
We both bark out a laugh. “That’s ’cause we’re twins,” I tell him.
“I have twins in my class at school!” The kid says.
“Logan and Conner H. We call him Conner H. because there are like, five Conners in my class.” He goes on to list the last initial of all five Conners and I find myself laughing.
I don’t have a lot of experience with kids, so I can’t say if this frantic information dump is normal, but it’s pretty damn amusing.
“But that was my old school. We don’t live there anymore,” he says then his expression morphs into something crestfallen. “I wish I had a twin. I don’t have any brothers or sisters at all.”
“Nah, having a twin is pretty annoying.” I jab an elbow at my brother. “No one can ever tell us a part and we had to share clothes and he always took my favorite comic books.”
“I love comic books!” the kid cries, jumping up and down as he begins listing out all his favorite superheroes and explaining why they’re “so super cool!” Jesus, do all kids all have this much energy? I don’t know how parents do it—I’m feeling tired just looking at him.
He’s just started to explain why he thinks Iron Man is better than Batman when a shrill voice calls out, “Lucas! There you are!”
The kid’s face falls. “Aw, shoot. I’m totally gonna be in trouble.”
The woman who had called him runs up, face red and out of breath. “We were looking for you! You know you’re not supposed to run off like that.”
“My ball bounced away,” he argues and I have to bite back a laugh when he bats his eyelashes up at the woman, looking as sweet and innocent as a puppy dog. Sawyer meets my eye and winks—this kid has some game.
“Then you’re supposed to tell us,” she insists, tossing a glance over her shoulder.
“You scared your mom. And you’re not supposed to talk to strangers—” Her voice cuts off suddenly as she looks up at us, her eyes going wide.
And shit, I knew she looked familiar. This is the woman from the bar, Ellie’s friend, the one who intentionally spilled the drink on her.
She gapes between me and my brother and when she speaks, her voice comes out in a high-pitched squeak. “There are two of you? Sweet fancy Moses on buttered toast, I knew God was a woman.”
Before either of us can react to that, another woman skids into view, reaching for the boy, and my heart stills. “Lucas,” she gasps. “I was looking for you!”
“Ellie?” I bark out. Sawyer’s eyes snap to my face and I know he didn’t forget the name of the woman we were talking about earlier.
She glances up at me and it stings when I don’t see any recognition there, her gaze bouncing right back to the kid, as if pulled by a magnet, clearly unconcerned with anyone else. “Are you okay?” she demands, her hands running up and down his arms as if checking for injuries.
“Mom, stop,” he says, trying to dance away from her hands. “I was just chasing my ball and then I stopped to make friends.”
Mom? Ellie is someone’s mom? What the hell?
“You don’t make friends with strangers,” she says in a choked voice, still reaching for him. The panicked expression on her face makes a little seed of some dark emotion take root in my gut.
“Who else am I supposed to make friends with?” he asks. “If they weren’t strangers, I would already be friends with them.”
The brunette laughs. “He’s got a point there, El.”
“Don’t encourage him,” she snaps. “You know he can’t be talking to strangers in the park.”
“His ball just bounced over a second ago,” Sawyer says. “We were about to ask him if he needed help finding his grown up.”
She gives him a distracted glance, then does a double take, her eyes traveling between the two of us. “Jonah?” she squeaks out.