I put him on the ground with one punch. Evan was already well on his way to wasted, or else he might have taken the hit better. I feel a small pang of regret when I see the blood leaking onto the asphalt, but all remorse fades when Evan lumbers to his feet and charges at me.
He drives his shoulder into my gut, grabbing me around the waist as we stumble backward against my truck. Somewhere I hear Mac screaming at us, but it’s no use. Evan is on one now. And when he lands a couple of hard jabs to my ribs, I don’t give a shit who he is anymore. Something in me snaps and my entire world reduces to the sole task of kicking my brother’s ass. We trade blows until we’re rolling around in the middle of the street, picking up road rash. Suddenly my arms are locked up and people are pulling Evan and me apart.
“Fuck you, man,” Evan shouts at me.
“You came asking for it,” I growl.
He lunges again.
My fists swing up.
Bodies crowd the space between us as we’re forcibly separated.
“What is wrong with you two?” Heidi shouts. She and Jay West cage Evan, stepping between us as I shove away the hands of at least three other guys from the party.
“I’m fine,” Evan grumbles. “Back off.” He wrestles out of their grips and storms down the street on foot.
“I’ll get him,” Steph offers, sighing softly.
Seeing the fight’s over, everyone but my closest friends drifts back to the house.
“Nah, let him cool off,” Alana advises.
Heidi side-eyes me before stalking away, Jay trailing after her like a lovesick puppy. I wonder if they came together. I hope so. Maybe then she’ll stop hating on me so much.
Steph and Alana wear matching frowns as they study me. Whatever. I don’t give a flying fuck what they think right now. Evan deserved every last blow.
Mac grabs my face, inspecting the damage. “You okay?”
I wince when her fingers skim over the rapidly swelling spot beneath my left eye. “I’m fine.” I search her face just as intently. “Are we okay?” I don’t regret slugging Evan over what he said—nobody gets to talk to Mac like that—but I am sorry she had to see it.
Fuck, if this is the thing that drives her way …
She kisses my cheek. “You should go after him.”
I hesitate.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” she promises, as if reading my mind.
I don’t have any choice but to believe her. Besides, Evan loaded up on anger and alcohol roaming the streets at night alone is begging for disaster. So I head down the road to find him. I glance over my shoulder once, twice. Sure enough, Mackenzie is still there, standing by my pickup.
Eventually I catch up to Evan, finding him on a bench in a small playground lit only by a couple of dim streetlights.
“Still got all your teeth?” I ask, taking a seat beside him.
“Yeah.” He rubs his jaw. “You hit like a ten-year-old.”
“Still kicked your ass.”
“I had you.”
“You had shit,” I say, eyeing him with a smirk.
We sit quietly for some time, watching the swings waving in the breeze. It’s been years since Evan and I fought this bad. Really going to blows. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t felt it coming. Shit’s been building up with him for a long time now. Maybe I’m the asshole for not talking to him about it sooner. Then again, taking his own issues out on Mac is weak, and I’m not about to let him keep that up.
“You were out of line back there.”
“Ah, come on. It was a little funny.” He slouches on the bench, spreading his legs like he might slip right off the thing in a pool of liquid.
“I’m serious. She hasn’t done a goddamn thing to you. You got a problem with me, grow up and say so. The snide comments and passive-aggressive bullshit, it stops now.”
“Kind of sounds like you’re giving me an ultimatum.” Evan tips his head toward me. “That what it’s come to?”
“Damn it, dude. You’re my brother. We’re blood. Nothing changes that.” I shake my head, frustrated. “So why are you getting so bent outta shape about her?”
“It’s the principle of the thing. She’s a clone, Coop. Those people, they’ve been standing on our necks since we were kids. Or don’t you remember? Assholes rolling up in their stupid golf carts, throwing drinks on us, running our bikes off the road.”
Evan ended up with a broken arm once. Flipped over his handlebars into a ditch when one of them bumped his tire. We went back a week later and slashed all four of theirs. There are years of that shit. Getting into fights. Tit for tat.
“People,” I remind him. “Not her. You can’t punish Mac for everything one of them’s ever done to you. That’s exactly what I was about to do to her if I’d stuck to the plan. And I would’ve been a bastard for it too.” I groan quietly. “Why can’t you let me have this?”
His shoulders stiffen.
I mean, hell, all of us lived through the daily soap opera that was the Evan and Genevieve show. Constantly bickering in front of everyone. Making us choose sides in arguments we wanted no part of. Breaking up. Screwing around. Getting back together like nothing happened. I never threw a tantrum about it, and I certainly didn’t treat her like crap hoping she’d go away. If Evan was in love with her, that was his own damn problem.
So why now, when I find someone I care about, does he have to be such a jackass about it?
Evan sighs. Scratches his hands through his hair. “I can’t help it, man. It gnaws at me. Why’d it have to be one of them? You could point in any direction and land on ten chicks who would fall to their knees for you.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. She’s different. If you gave her even half a chance, you’d see that.”
There’s no good reason Mac and I should work. I can’t give him one. And hell, maybe we won’t work. She’s a stubborn, opinionated pain in my ass. She’s also gorgeous, funny, spontaneous, and ambitious. Turns out, that’s my type. She makes me crazy. I’ve never met a girl that stays on my mind days and weeks after I’ve seen her. She’s under my skin. And for all the ways we’re completely different, she gets me in a way few others do.
If I’m kidding myself, if this whole thing’s bound to blow up in my face, so be it. At least I tried.
“No talking you outta this, then?” he says, his resolve slowly crumbling.
“I’m asking you, as my brother, to accept it.”
He thinks on it. Too long for my taste. For the first time in our lives, we’re on opposite sides, and I have to wonder if there’s too much bad blood there—too much rage toward the clones—to get him back on mine.
Then he sighs again and rises from the bench. “Yeah, fine. Guess there’s no saving you from yourself. I’ll back off.”
I take what I can get from Evan and we call it squashed. Back at the party, I send him home in Alana’s car to make sure he gets there safe while I drive Mac to her dorm.
“I’m sorry about that,” I tell her when she hasn’t spoken in several minutes. She’s staring out the passenger window looking deep in thought, which gets me worried. “It had nothing to do with you. Evan’s got a lot of misplaced anger.”
“Brothers shouldn’t fight.”
I wait, uncertain if there’s more to that statement. My concern deepens when more doesn’t come.
“Talk to me, Mackenzie.” My voice comes out a bit husky.
“What if this is a bad idea?”
“It isn’t.”
“Seriously.” Out of the corner of my eye, I find her watching me. “I don’t want to be the reason you fall out with him. It’s good for no one. You can’t be happy because he’s upset, and I can’t be happy because you’re upset. We all lose.”
This is exactly why Evan needs to get over his bullshit and let us be. She’s not the person he imagines in his head, and if he understood her at all, he’d realize how unfair he’s been.
“Evan will get over it.”
“But what if he doesn’t? These things can fester.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mac. Seriously.” I don’t care if my brother wants to be a cranky little brat about it, as long as he’s on his best behavior around Mac and keeps his comments to himself. My whole life I’ve lived for the two of us. Evan and me. This one thing, though, I get to have for myself.
Clearly I’m not doing a good job at easing her unhappiness, because she lets out a miserable-sounding moan. “I don’t want to come between you and your twin, Cooper.”
I glance over. Sternly. “I’ve made my choice. I want us to be together. Evan can deal.”
Distress flickers through her eyes. “What does that even mean, being together? I know earlier we said we’re dating, and I thought I was cool with that—”
“You thought?” I growl.
“But then we went to the party and did you see how everyone was looking at us? No, looking at me—like I didn’t belong there at all. That one girl? Heidi? Completely froze me out with her gaze. And I overheard a couple chicks calling me a rich snob and saying my dress is ridiculous.”
“Why is your dress ridiculous?” From where I’m sitting, her short yellow dress looks ridiculously sexy.
“Because it’s Givenchy and I guess nobody wears a thousand-dollar dress to a house party?” Mac’s cheeks redden with embarrassment. “My mom’s assistant buys most of my clothes. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t care about fashion. I live in jeans and T-shirts.” She sounds more and more anguished. “I only wore this stupid dress because it’s cute and summery and short enough that I knew it’d drive you crazy.”
I fight a laugh. I also force myself not to comment on the fact that the scrap of yellow fabric barely covering her delectable body cost a grand.
“But maybe it did come off like I was flaunting? I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to. All I know is that nobody wanted me there tonight.”
“I wanted you there.”
“You don’t count,” she grumbles.
I reach over the center console and grab her hand. Forcibly lacing our fingers together. “I’m the only one who counts,” I correct.
“They count too,” she argues. “You’ve got an entire group of friends, and you’ve all known each other forever. I have like two friends, one of whom is my roommate so she’s kind of forced to like me.”
The laugh slips out.
“I wish I had a huge friend group like yours. I’m jealous,” she says frankly. “And I really wanted everyone to like me tonight.”
I release her hand and steer the truck to the shoulder of the road. I put it in park and turn to her with a firm stare. “Babe. I like you. Okay? And my friends, they’ll come around and grow to like you too. I promise you that.”
She frowns. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I mean it. Give it a little more time,” I say gruffly. “Don’t bail on me, on this, just because the reception tonight wasn’t the warmest, and some girls got all judgmental about your dress—which, just so you know, is the hottest thing ever and I want to rip that thousand-dollar fabric off your body with my teeth.”
Mac laughs, albeit weakly.
“Please.” I almost cringe at the pleading note I hear in my voice. “Don’t bail on me, princess.”
The shadows in the truck dance over her pretty face as she sits in silence for a moment. It feels like an eternity before she finally responds.
Green eyes gleaming from the headlights of a passing vehicle, she leans toward me and kisses me. Hard. With a lot of tongue. Then she pulls back breathlessly and whispers, “I won’t bail on you.”
