“He cheated on you?” my brother asked slowly, and I couldn’t help but smile over the indignation in his tone.
“He said he didn’t while we were together, like that matters. Can you believe it? That’s why I punched him in the throat. I hadn’t even considered he’d been talking to someone else before we split up, E. I felt so stupid—“
His thigh nudged my shoulder. “You are pretty stupid, but he’s an idiot, Flabby. You can’t be that surprised about it. You wanna be with some guy for the rest of your life that crab walks across the stage and wears tighter pants than you? No. No, you fucking don’t.”
I started laughing. “Yeah, I know. Shut up.”
“I know it’s hard to try to find somebody that can live up to me…” he began to say.
“Your mother,” I snorted.
Eli chucked behind me. He messed with my hair for a few minutes before finally speaking up again, his voice lower than normal. “Look, my lease in New York is gonna run out in three months. I’m kinda tired of living there, and I was thinking about moving back to Dallas for a while after this tour ends. We could get a two-bedroom apartment or a house or something, if you want. I’ll even let you split rent with me.” He nudged me again. “Think about it.”
With the amount of crap we talked about each other, to each other, it was easy to underestimate our bond. We were a tag team. We had always been one, and I would bet my life we’d be in our seventies still picking on each other. Just as I opened my mouth to tell him I would definitely think about his offer, someone banged on the door.
“Hey! Can I come in?” Mason’s voice bellowed from the other side.
“No!” we both yelled simultaneously.
He didn’t immediately respond, like he couldn’t fathom why he couldn’t. “Why?” he finally asked, sounding confused and disturbed.
“Eli’s showing me how he puts a tampon in,” I snorted, earning another sharp tug of my hair from my brother.
There was silence on the other side of the door for a minute, allowing Eli to finish my braid. It had always seemed like a miracle to me how gentle those big paws could be when they wanted. I’d seen them beat the crap out of toms, cymbals and faces alike. Hours later, those hands could make the most intricate designs to my shoulder-length hair. No one could say Eli wasn’t a multi-dimensional son of a bitch.
“I don’t get it… why can’t I come in?” Mason’s voice finally mumbled through the door again.
I hopped up and threw my arms around my brother, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek while he frantically tried to pull away in disgust. “Thanks, loser. You’re going to make my future niece a wonderful mother one day,” I told him right before he licked his index fingertip and dipped it into my ear. I made a face and swatted his hand away, afterward getting up to unlock the door.
Mason slipped in, clean-shaven and wet-haired. His alert blue eyes shifted across the small room curiously. I sat down next to Eliza, gently touching the neat strands of hair tucked across my head.
When Mason’s eyes landed on me, he frowned and ran a hand through his hair, pushing the damp strands away from his forehead. “You look like a girl.”
“I am a girl.”
Those same cobalt blue eyes narrowed and then further narrowed as he glanced down the length of my outfit before he flicked his gaze over to Eli. “Are you letting her go out like that?”
“Since when does she listen to me?” he scoffed, throwing an arm over my shoulders. “There’s nothing wrong with my Flabby if you don’t look too closely at her face.”
I laughed. Sure his wording wasn’t exactly telling me that I looked nice, but for his standards, it was as good as I would ever get.
“Why don’t you ever dress up for me?” Mason asked, taking a seat across from us.
“There’s no point; we both know you like your ladies with more facial hair than I have,” I snickered.
The imp shrugged and winked at his self-proclaimed soul mate, the man sitting next to me. “True.”
The gentle movement of the bus as it slowed to a stop made us shift slightly. There was loud talking from the front before the familiar sounds of the door opening and the guys piling out let me know we’d made it to the mall. Slapping my twin’s thigh, I told him I’d see him later before walking out. My idiots and some of the TCC guys had been planning on going to some bar that carried over three hundred different types of beer, and I wasn’t in the mood to sit through that experience. Hanging out with Sacha just seemed like a bonus. A very pleasant bonus. A very pleasant, platonic bonus, like spending time with Carter would be.
Right.
I’d barely jumped off the bus’s steps, slipping the strap of my purse across my shoulder, when I spotted Sacha and Isaiah outside waiting.
“Is it only us going?” I asked, walking up to them.
Sacha’s eyes slanted over in my direction, his mouth already opening in a certain way that let me know a smart-ass comment was going to be coming out of it in a moment, but nothing actually came out. He looked at me—my face, the bare skin of my chest above the purple cotton of the sundress, and then down the length of my body slowly. It made me self-conscious and I fidgeted. It was second nature to want to pull the front of my dress up but it wasn’t like it was low to begin with.
“It’s only us,” Isaiah’s low drawl answered. He looked at me evenly. “I like your hair.”
