“You’re my least favorite brother,” I say to Lincoln and he grins.
“That makes sense,” my oldest brother says, and Lincoln turns his glare on him.
“So, how are you going to apologize?” Jessa says, the sweetest of anyone in the family, it’s hard to be rude to her. Even if we do occasionally mortify her by knowing the little roleplay games her and Aiden like to play.
“What do you do when you fuck up?” I ask Aiden.
He shrugs. “I don’t fuck up.”
“Me either,” Lincoln says smugly.
“Oh, be so fucking for real,” Penny says, rolling her eyes. “You were persistent as a chronic illness, trying to get me to be with you.”
“Sure, but I had nothing to apologize for,” Lincoln says.
“God, Penny, you could have done so much better,” Ben says, and we laugh as the conversation takes a turn into Lincoln’s business, which used to be our father’s.
“Dennis Commercial is crushing us right now, outbidding us on everything by lowballing our estimates. This will be the fifth commercial building this year,” he complains.
“How are they even making a profit?” Aiden asks.
“That’s the thing, we have no fucking clue, but I’m going to see what I can figure out and hopefully these clients will realize they’re making a mistake by going with them instead of us,” Lincoln huffs and nods his chin. “How’s the club coming along?”
“Good, should only be a few weeks before the grand opening. All of you degenerates are invited, of course.”
“Good, we need a good night out,” Penny says, and Lincoln’s face softens for her ever so slightly.
Jessa clears her throat, clearly still locked in on the previous conversation. “What if you see her at Avalon again?” she says.
Ben and I blink at her and then look at each other.
I hadn’t thought about that. But I know the idea of her walking back to a private room with another man has bile sizzling in my throat. It’s a foreign feeling, and I don’t like it one bit.
Benand I go to Avalon for the next four nights in a row. Kate isn’t there, and no one interests us.
17
CHOCOLATE APOLOGIES
I’m a mess.
One of my repeat shows is on, it’s basically background noise at this point. Michelangelo is sitting between my legs and I stalk my DoorDash driver on my phone.
I didn’t just double dash. I fuckingtripledashed. Currently, Marvin is on his way to my house with Chicken Alfredo, Oreo cookies, and a bottle of Moscato. I haven’t showered in two days, and my hair clearly shows it as I sit here and feel sorry for myself.
The only solace I can take is that my uterine lining is currently waging war against my body at the moment. It’s also why I’m giving myself grace over the way I handled the whole twin switcheroo situation.
God, I was more vocally angry with them than I was when Will told me he got his mistress pregnant.
I’m absolutely blaming the mimosas and my luteal phase for my absolute freak out. Even though I feel like I had every right to be as pissed as I was, I mean, who does that? Maybe my trauma made the situation worse, but what they did was messed up.
I thought I found the guy that I could really safely experiment with. Someone I could put trust in to go further with my kink exploration and he turns out to be a literal two-faced liar.
Maybe I should have heard them out. Maybe I shouldn’t care so much about the whole ordeal when we never made any promises to each other.
A bunch of what ifs won’t do me shit. Right now, all I feel is sad.
There’s a knock at my door and my brows furrow. I chose for the driver to leave everything at the door so he wouldn’t have to see me braless or the shame of grabbing all my purchases. I did leave him a large tip for going multiple places.
