12. Chapter 12
Jake
“Come on, let’s get it out, dude,” I said to my best friend.
He’d been grumpier than usual since we’d left the beach, and I purposefully made him ride with me instead of Evie, so we could talk. He knew. A ball to the face said a lot today, and so did his comments I’d let go last week in the gym. But I needed to get this off my chest.
“What’s up?” he asked casually.
“What’s up?” I mimicked. “How about the fact that you seem to hate me lately?”
Nate scoffed, turning his head to look out the window like there was something out there worth paying attention to. There wasn’t. Just the same stretch of road we’d driven a hundred times.
“I don’t hate you,” he muttered.
“Riiight,” I said, dragging the word out. “Could’ve fooled me.”
He didn’t answer right away, jaw tight, fingers tapping restlessly against his thigh. That was always the tell with Nate. He could play it cool all day long, but his body never lied.
I let out a quiet laugh, shaking my head as I slowed at a red light. “You don’t smack me in the face with a ball for nothing, Nate.”
“That wasn’t on purpose.”
“Yeah?” I glanced over at him. “Because it felt pretty damn personal.”
His head snapped back toward me, something sharper flashing across his face.
“Believe it or not, not everything is about you, Jake.”
“Then quit acting like I’ve done you a disservice,” I shot back, the patience I’d been holding on to starting to slip. “Because you’ve been off for days. I’m not stupid enough not to notice. I get that you’re protective of Seren, but she’s her own person.”
Silence stretched between us again, and it was laced with our years of friendship we’d built, hanging in a balance that suddenly felt imbalanced. I hated that.
Nate dragged a hand over his face, exhaling harshly. “She’s my sister, Jake.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you?” he snapped. “Because from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look like it.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, I see the way you look at her. I know you want her.”
The words sat there, blunt and unavoidable. There wasn’t a version of this where I could lie convincingly, not to him.
“And?” I asked instead.
“And?” he echoed, like I’d just proved his point for him. “Jesus, Jake.”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked rhetorically. “That I don’t? That I’m blind? Because I’m not gonna bullshit you.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” he bit out. “You just…do whatever the hell you want and deal with it after.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?” he challenged, huffing out a breath and shaking his head. “She’s not some girl you pick up at Pour Decisions and forget about the next day. She’s got a kid. She’s building something here. She doesn’t need complications.”
The car went still around us, the light on red for longer than I liked, and the weight of his words hanging thick in the air. I knew he didn’t intentionally mean to hurt my feelings, but there was no denying that I was always the guy who kept everything in my life casual.
It was a habit I’d grown up with. When you spent your life hopping around families and homes, promises of forever and family didn’t mean much when they came from people who could disappear without warning.
The only real stable thing in my life was rugby and this team, and because of that taste of stability, and the life I’ve made for myself, maybe I wanted more in it for me.
I swallowed, then looked back at him. “First of all, when was the last time you saw me go home with a woman?”
He didn’t answer, because it hadn’t been for at least a couple of months now.
“And I’m gonna say this because you need reminding, you don’t get to decide everything for her.” You don’t get to decide that for me is what I wanted to say.
“I’m her brother. I get to look out for her.”
“And I’m your best friend,” I shot back. “Or at least I thought I was.”
“You are,” he said immediately, frustration bleeding into his voice. “I don’t want to see you get hurt either. Seren doesn’t have time for anything right now.”
“I call bullshit. She enjoys spending time with me.”
“When else have you been together?” he asked, his tone accusatory.
I didn’t want to pretend or lie. “We grabbed a hot dog last week, and maybe coffee one other time.”
He growled a little, that beasty side of him simmering at the surface, but this needed to be all out on the table for us to deal with.
“The thrill of chasing her has to be an opportunity you don’t want to pass up, I get it, and I’ve made this worse by being an asshole, but you have to see what I see.”
That stung more than I expected. He did know me. He knew that my entire life, I’d looked for connection in all the wrong places. But this wasn’t that. I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a hookup.
I liked Seren.
And I liked Cai.
I sat with it for a second, then nodded once.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “What kind of guy do you think I am? You don’t know that I’m not messing around with her, Nate,” I added, more serious than I’d ever been about anything in my life.
“I wouldn’t do that. Not to you. Not to her. Not with Cai in the middle of it.”
He searched my face like he was trying to find the angle, the crack, the thing that proved him right. He wouldn’t find it.
“You’re telling me this is what…?” he asked genuinely.
I exhaled slowly, my fingers loosening on the wheel.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But it’s not nothing.”
That seemed to knock some of the fight out of him, even if it didn’t take the tension away completely.
The truth of it all was that I really didn’t want to make promises, but I also didn’t want to stay away from her.
It wasn’t about pissing Nate off; it was about who Seren was.
The woman I’d met at the coffee shop a few weeks ago was fierce, funny, and sexy as hell. I couldn’t just forget her.
Nate leaned back in his seat and stared ahead. “You’re gonna do it anyway.” He sighed heavily, chest deflating. “I don’t wanna see her get hurt. She’s had so much to deal with already.”
Like what? My brain asked, already pushing somewhere it probably shouldn’t. I wanted to know about Cai’s dad, where he was, if he showed up, but I kept it to myself.
Still, it didn’t leave. It turned inward instead, settling somewhere uncomfortable, because I didn’t know what it felt like to be chosen from the start.
I’d been given up before I could understand it, moved through places that were never really home, learning not to question why people didn’t stay.
Cai looked at her like she was everything, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever feel that gap I grew up with, or if Seren had already filled it so completely that he never would.
I was connected somehow, and I didn’t know how to tell Nate that.
“I don’t want this to be something that comes between us, okay? None of that macho bullshit where you throw balls at my head.”
Nate finally huffed a laugh. “No more macho bullshit. I promise I’ll try to loosen up. So long as you promise to not hurt them.”
I nodded and ended the conversation with something that might not have been my best decision. “And I promise I won’t be talking to you about my sex life from now on, especially if it—”
“Don’t fuckin’ do it. Don’t say it, Jake,” he growled as I pulled up to his apartment and slapped his shoulder.
“Love you, Nighty.”
He shrugged my hand off and skulked toward his place, grumbling about something and probably cursing me out, but at least we were back.