Chapter 13
thirteen
Zeke: Will. What’s for dinner?
Benji: Zeke, this is the group chat.
Zeke: I know. Will won’t answer his phone. Benji, tell Will to answer his phone.
Benji: Will, answer your phone.
Will: Holy shot, you guys. Be home in 10.
Will: *Shot
Will: *Shot
Will: OMG SHIT
“Bro. You smell like sex.”
It’s the first thing Zeke says to me when I walk in the door. I dump my briefcase near the entryway and stalk into the kitchen. He’s leaning backward on his elbows against the counter, his phone lying face up next to him.
“Damn, Will!” A rich, gravelly voice comes from the speaker of Zeke’s phone, and I instantly recognize it as our brother, Benji. “What’s the story? You get some?”
“Hi, Benji,” I say, ignoring their ribbing.
“It’s that librarian,” Zeke announces. “I’d bet money on it.”
“Money you don’t have,” Benji says. He beat me to it.
“Well, I’d have it after I win this bet,” Zeke insists. He hoists himself up, so he’s sitting on the counter. “Because I’m right. You can’t see his face right now, Benj, but Will looks guilty as fuck.”
Benji laughs. “Okay, but I think I missed something. What’s this about a librarian?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Zeke’s just being an asshole.”
“I mean, guilty as charged about the asshole thing,” Zeke says. “But you know how Will’s in charge of renovating the Hawthorne Bay library? Apparently, he and the assistant librarian—who’s really nice, by the way, offered to help me with my resume—hate each other. But Will’s got the hots for her.”
“I do not,” I grumble as I pull out pans to make something for dinner.
Zeke sniffs the air. “That’s not what the scent you’re giving off says.”
At this, Benji bursts out laughing. “You can’t hide it, Will. Not with Zeke there on scout duty.”
“Fine. You guys are such dipshits,” I say. There’s no use bothering to hide it anymore. My brothers will stop at nothing.
“So you like her?” Benji asks.
God. Leave it to Benji to get straight to the feelings stuff.
“No, actually,” I say.
Zeke arches an eyebrow. “Then how come you went out of your way to say hi to her at the Farmers Market? And bought her those caramel apples?”
“Because I feel bad, okay? She’s got… I don’t know, some weird connection to the library and wants to keep it the way it is. Something about her childhood. Her mom.”
Zeke looks at me. “Her mom? What, like a ghost thing?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. She’s never let on that she… has the sight.”
Curse is the word I’d normally use for this gift we’ve all got, but Benji gets weird when I call it that, so I swallow it back.
“Did you also bang her because you felt bad for her?” Benji asks.
“No. We got into an argument and—”
“Yeeessssss,” Zeke cuts in with a slow clap. “I’m on board with a good hate fuck!”
I just shake my head at him and grunt. I didn’t actually fuck Lydia, at least not in the way he’s thinking.
The way every single fiber of my body was begging me to.
And I’m still not exactly sure why I didn’t.
All I know is, in that moment, with her back against the wall and my hand up her skirt, I didn’t want to take more from her than I already am. It’d be a dick move.
“It was a one-time thing. And anyway, we didn’t fuck.”
“Okay, he likes her,” Benji announces, his voice tinny as it erupts from the phone speaker.
Zeke raises his eyebrows. He looks pointedly at me from his perch on the counter even as he speaks to Benji. “Well, he’s fucking up that library she’s weirdly attached to, so I’d say he’ll have plenty of opportunities for hate fucking.”
I don’t answer, just start cracking eggs into a pan. God knows Zeke’s not going to do it.
“Yeah, what are you going to do about that?” Benji asks me.
“Do about what?”
“The fact that you clearly like this chick, but you’re still in charge of the project that’s, by the sounds of it, going to sever a connection she has with her mother. Which, by the way—what’s the story there?”
This is way more than I bargained for when I walked in the door. And, truth be told, it’s way more than came to my mind as I let myself give into my primal side this afternoon. Because there’s no getting around it. I was thinking with my dick. But leave it to Benji to cut right through the noise.
“Fuck, man,” I say. I slide a spatula under one of the eggs to check the bottoms. “I don’t know. I don’t know about any of it, okay? I wasn’t thinking. It was a stupid thing to do.”
“No offense, Will, but it sounds kind of irresponsible,” Benji says. I can hear the skepticism in his voice, despite the fuzziness of the speaker.
Zeke slaps the counter. “Benjamin! Shots fired.”
I’m already tensing at that word. Irresponsible. As if being irresponsible is a luxury I’ve ever had. I’m half tempted to tell him that if it’s irresponsibility he wants to talk about, he’s got the wrong brother. He knows very well I’ve had to be the backbone of this family.
“Well, I’m just saying…” Benji continues.
“That’s your career you’re fucking with.
Didn’t you say Ethan Wilde’s on that board?
If you’re still trying to win him over for that housing project, banging the librarian doesn’t exactly scream professionalism.
And don’t even get me started on how you’re fucking with this woman’s feelings… ”
I close my eyes. This is not what I need. My body hasn’t forgotten that I didn’t get a release this afternoon, and I’m this close to lashing out at my brothers, no matter how well intentioned they—well, at least Benji—might be.
“I don’t need a lecture, Benj.”
“Alright. You do you. But hey. Maybe there’s something you can do to soften the blow of the library renovation? You’re good at restoring shit. You wouldn’t have got this gig if you weren’t.”
I slide a plate of eggs toward Zeke and toss him a fork, which lands on the counter with a clatter. I cut into my eggs, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” Benji says. “Like, compromise a little. Pick a piece of the library to preserve—a sort of homage to the building’s history—and add it to the plans. She’d probably like it, and it’d be cool regardless.”
I pull myself up onto the counter next to Zeke.
The wheels in my mind are already turning.
I’m thinking back to the stakeholder meeting, where Lydia all but begged me to change the project plans.
She’d talked about her childhood then, hadn’t she?
Something about sliding down the banister in the foyer, pretending she was a princess on a quest?
That’s it. The banister. She pointed it out to me on our walkthrough as well.
Right now, the plans we drew up have the banister replaced with something sleek and modern.
But it’s the floor plan and the structure, the shelving and lighting—the computer lab—that the board really wants to modernize.
As long as I can make sure the main floor is wheelchair accessible, I might be able to keep the banister there…
Benji’s got a point. Preserving a historic piece of the library, especially one that plays such a fond part in Lydia’s childhood memories, is something I can do for her. It might even earn me a little artistic credit with the board. Showing off my range to Ethan Wilde can’t hurt.
“Interesting,” I say, scratching the scruff on my chin. “That’s not a bad idea.”
Zeke shoots me a malicious grin. “She might even let you fuck her for real.”
“That is not the problem,” I huff. “Some of us have self restraint.”
But even after Zeke ends the call with Benji and heads out the door to god knows where, his words still echo through my head.
I keep thinking back to that mask Lydia so expertly slid over her face once the rapture was over and she realized what the fuck we were doing. How she all but pushed me out the door.
Maybe Zeke’s right. Maybe the reason it ended where it did this afternoon wasn’t because of me, but because of her. Would I have kept going if she’d wanted to? If she hadn’t turned suddenly icy, pulling her skirt back down and shoving me away?
I honestly don’t know. I thought it was obvious that Lydia hated me—and that I found her annoying as shit—but do people who hate each other really do what we just did this afternoon? Zeke seems to think so, but this kind of thing is entirely out of my wheelhouse.
One thing’s for sure: I know I’m no good for her. I’m no good for any woman. But as I stand here in the empty kitchen, loading the dishwasher, there’s a weird sort of sinking in my gut when I realize that Lydia really may not want anything to do with me.
And I don’t know how the fuck to feel about that.