Chapter 3: Evan
EVAN
This is what I get for trying to be a nice guy. She needed to forget for a little while—that’s cool. I’ll never, ever complain about kissing Genevieve. But she could’ve at least played nice afterward.
Let’s get together later and have a drink, catch up
. Blowing me off altogether is harsh even for her.
Gen has always had sharp edges. Hell, it’s one of the things that draws me to her. But she’s never looked at me with such dead disinterest. Like I was nobody to her.
Brutal.
As we leave the West house and walk toward Cooper’s truck, he gives me a look of suspicion. Beyond appearances, we’re entirely different people. If we weren’t brothers, we probably wouldn’t even be friends. But we are brothers—even worse, twins—which means we can read each other’s minds with one measly look.
“You’re kidding me,” he says, sighing with what has become a near-permanent state of judgment plastered on his face. For months now, he’s been on my case about every little thing.
“Leave it.” Honestly, I’m not in the mood to hear it.
He pulls away from the curb among the long line of cars parked on the street for the reception. “Unbelievable. You hooked up with her.” He slides a side-eye at me, which I
ignore. “Jesus Christ. You were gone for ten minutes. What, you were like, I’m so sorry for your loss, here, have my penis?”
“Fuck off, Coop.” When he phrases it like that, it does sound kind of bad.
Kind of?
Fine. Alright. Maybe nearly having sex at her mother’s funeral reception wasn’t the brightest of ideas, but … but I missed her, damn it. Seeing Gen again, after more than a year apart, was like a punch to the gut. My need to touch her, kiss her, had bordered on desperation.
Maybe that makes me a weak bastard, but there you have it.
“I think you’ve done enough of that for the both of us.”
I grit my teeth and force my gaze out the window. The thing about Cooper—when our dad died and then our mom basically abandoned us as kids, he somehow got it in his head that I wanted him to become both. A constantly nagging, grumpy bastard who’s always disappointed in me. For a little while, things got better after he settled down with his girlfriend Mackenzie, who managed to yank the stick out of his ass. But now it seems like finally being in his first stable relationship has got him back to thinking he’s qualified to pass judgment on my life.
“It wasn’t like that,” I tell him. Because I can feel him fuming at me. “Some people cry when they’re grieving. Gen’s not a crier.”
He half shakes his head, twisting his hands on the steering wheel while his jaw works on grinding down his molars, like I can’t hear what he’s thinking.
“Don’t give yourself an aneurysm, bro. Just spit it out.”
“She’s barely been in town a week and already you’re in it up to your neck. I told you it was a bad idea going over there.”
I would never give Cooper the
satisfaction, but he’s right. Genevieve shows up and I lose my damn mind. It’s always been that way with us. We’re two mostly harmless chemicals that when mixed become an explosive combination, leveling a city block with salt water.
“You act like we robbed a liquor store. Relax. All we did was kiss.”
Cooper’s disapproval pours off him. “Today it’s just a kiss. Tomorrow is another story.”
And? It’s not as if we’re hurting anybody. I frown at him. “Dude, what does it matter to you?”
He and Genevieve used to be cool. Even friends. I get that maybe he holds a grudge about how she left town, but it’s not like she did it to him. Anyway, it’s been a year. If I’m not still making a thing of it, why should he?
At a stoplight, he turns to meet my eyes. “Look, you’re my brother and I love you, but you’re an ass when she’s around. These last few months you’ve really gotten your shit together. Don’t throw all that away on a chick who’s never going to stop being a mess.”
Something about it—I don’t know, the contempt in his voice, the condescension—sticks right in my craw. Cooper can be a real self-righteous prick when he wants to be.
“It’s not like I’m dating her again, okay? Don’t be so dramatic.”
We pull up to our house, the two-story, low-country cottage-style on the beach that’s been in our family for three generations. The place was all but falling apart before we started making renovations over the past several months. It’s taken most of our savings and more of our time, but it’s coming along.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” Cooper shuts off the engine with an exasperated breath. “Same old pattern: takes off whenever she wants, suddenly pops back in, and
you’re ready to bake cookies together. Sound like any other woman you know?” With that, he hops out of the truck and slams the door shut.
Well, that was uncalled for.
Of the two of us, Cooper has held the hardest grudge against our mother, to the point he’s resented me for not needing to hate her as much as he does. In her latest episode, though, I backed him up. Told her she wasn’t welcome to hang around anymore, not after what she did to him. Shelley Hartley had finally crossed one line too many.
But I guess taking Cooper’s side wasn’t enough to get him to ease up on me. Everyone’s full of low blows today.
At dinner later, Cooper still hasn’t let the Genevieve thing go. Not in his nature.
It’s damn irritating. I’m trying to eat my damned spaghetti, and this asshole is still laying into me while he tells Mackenzie, who’s been living with us for the past few months, about how I basically screwed my ex on top of the still-warm casket of her dead mother.
“Evan says he’ll just be a minute, then leaves me by myself in that house to give our condolences to her dad and five brothers, who pretty much think it’s Evan’s fault she ran out of town a year ago,” Cooper grumbles, stabbing a meatball with his fork. “They’re asking where he is; meanwhile, he’s got Mr. West’s baby girl bent over the bathtub or whatever.”
“We just kissed,” I say in exasperation.
“Coop, come on,” Mac says, wincing away from her fork, which is coiled with pasta and hanging mid-
air. “I’m trying to eat.”
“Yeah, have some tact, jackass,” I chide.
When they’re not looking, I slip a piece of meatball to Daisy, the golden retriever puppy at my feet. Cooper and Mac rescued her off the jetty last year and she’s nearly doubled in size since then. At first I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking care of this creature Cooper’s new girlfriend had dumped on us, but then she spent a night curled up at the end of my bed having puppy dreams, and I broke like a cheap toy. Dog’s had me wrapped around her paw ever since. She’s the only girl I can trust not to take off on me. Luckily, Coop and Mac worked out, so we didn’t have to fight a custody battle.
It’s funny how life works out sometimes. Last year, Cooper and I hatched an admittedly mean-spirited plot to sabotage Mac’s relationship with her boyfriend at the time. In our defense, the guy was a douchebag. Then Cooper had to spoil all the fun and catch feelings for the rich college girl. I couldn’t stand her at first, but it turned out I’d read Mackenzie Cabot all wrong. I was at least man enough to admit I’d misjudged her. Cooper, on the other hand, can’t keep his thoughts to himself so far as Gen’s concerned. Typical.
“So what’s the real story with you two?” Mac asks, curiosity flickering in her dark-green eyes.
The real story? How do I even begin to answer that? Genevieve and I have history. Lots of it. Some of it great. Some, not so good. Things have always been complicated with us.
“We got together freshman year of high school,” I tell Mac. “She was basically my best friend. Always good for a laugh and down for anything.”
My mind is suddenly flooded with images of us messing around on dirt bikes at two in the morning with a fifth of tequila between us. Surfing the swells as a hurricane moved
in, then riding out the storm in the back of her brother’s Jeep. Gen and I constantly dared each other’s limits of adventure, getting into a few scrapes with death or mutilation that we had no right escaping unscathed. There was no adult in the relationship, so there was never a point when someone said stop. We were always chasing the rush.
And Gen was a rush. Fearless and undaunted. Unapologetically herself, and to hell what anyone had to say about it. She made me crazy; more than once I broke my hand wrestling some asshole cornering her in a bar. Yeah, maybe I was possessive, but no more than she was. She’d drag a chick out by her hair for looking at me the wrong way. Most of it had something to do with the off-and-on part—getting jealous, fighting, and turning around to make the other one jealous. It was a little messed up, but it was our language. I was hers and she was mine. We were addicted to make-up sex.
The quiet moments were just as addictive. Lying on a beach blanket at our favorite spot in the Bay, her head in the crook of my neck, my arm slung around her as we looked up at the stars. Whispering our darkest secrets to each other and knowing there’d never be any judgment on the other end. Hell, aside from Cooper, she’s the only one to ever see me cry.
“There was a lot of breaking up and making up,” I admit. “But that was our thing. And then last year, she was suddenly gone. One day she just picked up and left town. Didn’t say a word to anyone.”
My heart squeezes painfully at the memory. I thought it was a joke at first. That Gen had taken off with her girlfriends and wanted me to freak out and drive to Florida or something to track her down, then fight a little and bang it out. Until the girls promised me they hadn’t heard a peep from her.
“I found out later she’d settled down in
Charleston and started a new life. Just like that.” I swallow the bitterness that clogs my throat.
Mac contemplates me for a moment. We’ve grown fairly close since she started living here, so I know when she’s trying to formulate a nice way to tell me I’m a disaster. Not like it’s anything I don’t know.
“Go ahead, princess. Say what’s on your mind.”
She puts her fork down and pushes her plate away. “Sounds like a toxic situation for both of you. Maybe Gen was right to end it for good. It might be better you two stay away from each other.”
At that, Cooper slides me a glare because there is almost nothing he loves more than an I-told-you-so.
“I said the same thing to Cooper about you,” I remind her. “And now look at you guys.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Cooper throws his utensils on his plate, and his chair squeaks against the wooden floor. “You can’t compare the two. Not even close. Genevieve is a mess. The best thing she ever did for you was stop taking your calls. Let it go, dude. She’s not here for you.”
“Yeah, you must be loving this,” I say, wiping my mouth with my napkin before tossing it on the table. “Because this is payback, right?”
He sighs, rubbing his eyes like I’m some dog refusing to be house-trained. Condescending prick. “I’m trying to look out for you because you’re too dick-blinded to see where this will end. Where you two always end up.”
“You know,” I say, getting up from the table. “Maybe you should stop projecting all your hang-ups onto me. Genevieve isn’t Shelley. Stop trying to punish me because you’re mad your mommy left you.”
I regret the words even as they leave my mouth, but I don’t turn back as Daisy follows me to the kitchen
door and we head for the beach. Truth is, no one knows better than me all the messed-up shit Gen and I have been through. How inescapable we are. But that’s just it. Now that she’s back, I can’t ignore her.
This thing between us, this pull—it won’t let me.