I don’t deserve my brother, I really don’t. I started this mess, and yet, he’s taking the blame and not letting me face Kate alone.
“Deal.”
“I’ll see you at home,” he says, and I hang up, and go back to cleaning off the bar tops.
How in the fuck did we end up here?
“Please, Ben,”Penny begs me on the phone. “Lincoln had to go in and deal with some cluster fuck at work and these kids are driving me crazy. The weather is shit and they want to go swimming.”
“Fine,” I groan over the phone, looking at the time. Too damn early for my sister-cousin to be calling me, begging for a helping hand at the pool with my nieces and nephews.
Aiden and Jessa are using the Bahamas house this weekend and Gavin is overseeing construction for the club.
“Meet you there in twenty?”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
I put my bathing suit on and grab a T-shirt and a change of clothes, along with a protein bar and a bottle of water as I head over to the gym.
I scan my pass and head right over to the pool, where Penny has one kid on each hip.
“Uncle Benny,” Brynn says, holding out her tiny little arms that I seem to be weak for.
I climb into the pool and take her from my cousin’s arms. Penny gives me a soft look.
“Thanks for coming to help.”
“Why didn’t you just go to Aiden’s?” I ask.
“They’re having some maintenance done while they’re on vacation. Plus, there aren’t any other kids at Aiden’s.”
I glance around the gym pool. There is a kiddie section where multiple mom’s are hanging out playing with their toddlers.
“So why aren’t you in that section?”
Penny grimaces. “Brynn may or may not have said F-U-C-K really loud when we first got here, and the glares I got were borderline lethal. So I’m going to need this set of stuck up bitches to roll out and a new crop of moms to roll in.”
“Bitches,” Brynn repeats, splashing at the water.
Meanwhile, Hudson is in Penny’s arms trying to fist and swallow down the overly chlorine filled drops he catches.
“You should probably stop cursing in front of your little foul-mouthed clone here.”
Penny spins Hudson around in the water, making him giggle, and she looks over at me.
“Speaking of clones, how’s Gavin?”
I wince, covering Brynn’s ears, which she thinks is hilarious as she kicks her feet in the water.
“We might sort of be fucking the same woman and she thinks we’re one person.”
Penny’s mouth gapes open, wet tendrils of her blonde hair sticking to her face.
“Say that again?”
I sigh, swinging Brynn in the water so fast that all she can do is laugh and not pay attention to all the horrible words slipping out of my mouth.
“Gavin hooked up with her months ago. She ran into me at Avalon and assumed I was him. I didn’t correct her. I was going to tell her the truth and then she ran into Gavin and well, you can imagine what happened. So, yeah. We’re basically horrible deviants and we made a promise to only go to Avalon together from here on out so the next time we see her we can tell her the truth.”
