He drags his way out of the spring, water streaming from his clothes as he points at me. “You. Me. Walk. Now.”
Sydney has panic in her eyes. “Brooks—”
“Let me talk to him,” I say quietly. “Please.”
She hesitates, then nods, wrapping her arms around herself.
I climb out of the spring, grabbing a towel and hastily drying off before pulling on my T-shirt. Jonah is already stalking toward the wooded area at the edge of the property, his wet clothes leaving a trail of droplets on the ground.
I jog to catch up with him, my shoulder tensing back up. When we’re deep enough in the trees to be out of earshot, he rounds on me, his face purple with rage.
“You planning to stop your habit of fucking multiple women every other night?” A vein bulges on his forehead.
“Listen, Jonah—”
“I trusted you!” he explodes, shoving me in the chest. I stumble back a step but don’t retaliate. “I askedonething of you—stay away from my sister. You promised me, Kingston.”
“It’s not what you think.” I hold up my hands in a placating gesture. “We’re just faking the relationship. It’s not real.”
That stops him short. “What?”
I take a deep breath, seizing the opportunity. “We’re just pretending to date. For Meema and for Sydney’s career. She needs me for her position as sportscaster, and I need her to make Meema happy, so she responds well to her treatment. It’s a deal we made.”
Jonah stares at me, confusion replacing some of the anger. “Afakerelationship?”
“Yes. It was Sydney’s idea, actually. And it’s working—Meema’s eating better, she has more energy. And Sydney got the sports anchor position over Donny.”
“If it’s fake,” Jonah says slowly, his eyes narrowing, “then why did you have your hands on her ass?”
I run my fingers through my damp hair, struggling to find an explanation that doesn’t make me sound like a complete dickbag. “We were practicing. For the party tomorrow night. So it’d look convincing.”
“That sure as hell didn’t look like practice. That looked like you were about thirty seconds from tearing each other’s swimsuits off.”
He’s not wrong, which is the problem. “It got... carried away,” I say. “We didn’t expect—”
“Didn’t expect what? Your dick not to take charge when you’re sitting half naked together in a hot spring?” Jonah laughs, but it’s a harsh sound. “Anyone with one fucking brain cell could see that coming a mile away.”
Again, he’s not wrong. “Looking back, the timing was bad.”
“Goddamnit!” he yells, pointing at me. “You and Sydney have been dancing around this for years.”
His words hit me like a body check. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on. Everyone knows that if you two ever got past your bullshit, you’d either kill each other or fall hard. And given your lifestyle, neither of those is great for my sister.”
I have no response to that. The idea that Jonah has seen something between Sydney and me all this time—something I’ve only just started to acknowledge to myself—is a mindfuck.
Jonah inhales sharply. “Do you think you can really settle down with one woman?”
Yes. I could, if my situation was different. But I don’t want to get into that, so instead of speaking, I stand there, dumbstruck, like a fool.
Jonah points his finger at me. “Look, what’s going on with you is your business. But with your lifestyle, this canneverbecome real.”
“I know. She knows.”
“You’re playing with fire.”
“We’re not,” I say, though the words feel hollow. “What Sydney and I are doing is fake. When Meema is better, or when...” I can’t bring myself to say the alternative. “When it’s over, and I’ve fulfilled my commitments to KBVR, we’ll have a clean break. That’s the deal.”
