“IT’S NOT OKAY! HE SWORE HE WOULD NEVER REPLACE ME ON A SUNDAY.” Swat. “What’s WORSE!” Two swats. “He did it with you!” Swat, swat, swat . . . “How dare you, Lucas! This is going to disappoint Mom and Dad all over again! I can’t believe you! And with her? She’s completely innocent! Do you want Mom to cry over you again?” She swatted him a few more times.
Laughter gurgled in my throat, though I struggled to hold it back. Oh man, that spatula was getting some action.
“Well, um, actually . . .” I moved to stand in front of him and then wrapped my arm around his neck, squeezing as tightly as I could without bruising him. “We’re seeing each other, er . . . exclusively.”
“You are?” “We are?” Erin and Lucas asked in unison.
“Yeah, you know, our little Thorn is going straight, aren’t you, baby?”
She dropped the spatula, and tears filled her eyes. “Are you serious? You’re not whoring around anymore? Cheating on poor innocent women and giving them the bullshit line that if they know—”
“—it’s not cheating,” I finished for her. “Stupid, right?”
“Stupid doesn’t even begin to cover it.” She smiled brightly through her tears. “I’m just—I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.” She ran a shaky hand through her hair. “God, Mom and Dad have been so worried about you with all of this weird dating going on, and you know how things have never been the same with our families after . . . This could literally fix everything!” She beamed at Lucas. “I mean, clearly you’re over everything now? You can move on from all this serial cheating or dating or whatever it is? I swear if Mom and Dad actually knew what you’d been up to, they’d kill you.” Her eyes filled with more tears. “My baby brother’s settling down!”
I felt slightly guilty as I squeezed him harder and said, “Kind of feels like we just took the first real steps on the moon, right?” Curse words flew under his breath as he tensed beneath my touch.
“Lucas!” She smiled. “Stop being such a baby. I won’t tell Mom and Dad. I’m just, I’m so proud that you’ve found your heart.”
“Imagine—it was in my hands this whole time! And to think we nearly sold it to Satan!” We both burst out laughing.
Lucas flinched and mumbled, “Excuse me.”
Which wasn’t like him.
I mean, he was usually polite.
But he was the type to play into schemes like that, or at least make me pay for what I just did, but hey, at least I’d made him look awesome in front of his sister and protected both of us from shaming in the process.
Instead, he walked from the room without another word.
“Maybe you should go check on him?” She frowned like she was concerned his feelings were hurt. Sorry, honey, that ship sailed long ago. The man had no feelings; he was like an emotionally neutral Switzerland.
But I went anyway—to save face.
What I didn’t expect to find was Lucas Thorn having a full-fledged panic attack in his master bathroom, or for him to be bleeding as pieces of mirror spread across the sink and onto the floor, as though he’d just tried to rip it from the wall, got frustrated, and punched it instead.
“Lucas?” I stepped around the glass to where he huddled in the corner, blood trickling down his arm and onto his jeans. “Holy crap, you’re bleeding! Are you okay?”
“Leave.”
“Lucas—”
“I don’t need your help.” He glanced up, and his eyes were unfocused. “Tell my sister I fell, tell her I saw the devil in my reflection and was fighting my own demons. But I want you out of this apartment in two minutes, or I’m going to fire your ass.”
“What?” I hissed. “I just saved you!”
“No,” he barked out. “You saved you. That wasn’t saving me—that was screwing me over, so thank you very much for ruining my life.”
“Well,” I snorted. “Payback’s a bitch.”
He eyed me up and down and whispered, “You have no idea.”
Chapter Eleven
LUCAS
I was able to convince my sister that I’d accidentally slipped and hit the mirror—it was a lame-ass excuse, but she seemed to buy it.
I thought things were cool until she texted me links to a few websites for anger management.
The very last thing I needed was for the Marysville gossip ring to start its chatter. Or for my parents to call Avery’s parents out of concern that a repeat was taking place—God, I could only imagine. I was a man on borrowed time, because even though I loved my sister, she couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.
Which meant.
I was completely screwed in every single way that mattered.
I couldn’t win.
Either I said I was with Avery and finally make everyone happy by fixing the four-year divide between our parents—or history would repeat itself: my dad’s heart would fail out of disappointment for his only son; my mother would cry herself to sleep every night; and Avery’s parents, who I loved almost as much as my own, would be angry yet again.
The worst part? My sister had cried. Again. After brunch.
I blamed her pregnancy.
She said it wasn’t about the baby but because I’d finally grown up and decided to think about someone and something other than myself and my own personal feelings. Funny, because I thought I was already there. I had a solid job, a nice apartment, a fantastic life, and I enjoyed a different girl every day of the week.