“Yes,” I confirm. “Exceedingly so.”
“And that… is a problem?” he asks, voice weak.
“I wouldn’t call it a problem,” I disagree. “I would call it a massive annoyance. Like I am. Right now. Calling it a massive annoyance.”
His jaw works, drawing my attention and my scorn. “See.” I point. “Like that. That’s just not fair in any way. Why is it always the jerks who get the strong, sharp jawlines?”
“I’m not sure this is doing what you want it to do,” he grits, voice low and grainy. “At all.”
I contemplate that, running my gaze over his burning ears and reddened cheeks. His hands fist on the counter, then fall to his sides, where he shoves them in his pockets to hide his discomfort and irritation.
“No,” I respond mildly. “I’m pretty sure it’s doing exactly what I want it to do.”
He bites his lip, and I scrunch my nose, glaring at his teeth digging into the plush, sensitive skin.
He curses, spins, and grabs my plate. Letting it fall with aclunkin front of me, he slashes a hand over the food. “Eat,” he orders. “You have twenty minutes, then we’re leaving.” Then, he takes his plate, stomps out of the kitchen, through the living room, and down the hall.
His door slams.
A smile slides across my face. He’s so easy to rile up.
Content in the knowledge that I’ve messed up his bright, sunny morning just as much as he’s messed up my beloved sleep schedule, I cut into my pancake.
“Oh,” I mutter around a cheekful. “This isdelicious.” Almost as delicious as watching a hot, early-bird jerk blush.
Maybe next time I can make him squirm, too.
Chapter Twelve
?
Only good choices are made in this chapter. Surely.
Fox
I’m not going to survive until Poem’s house is fixed. Not if she’s saying things likeexceedingly soin regards to how attractive she finds my body. And especially not if she implies that the attraction is special, and specific, and all for me—notWolfe.
I’ve been dreaming of her saying words like that to me for so long, but even in my dreams, I never dared to wish that her desires would differentiate between my brother and me on a physical level. Emotionally, yes, of course. We’re much different. Physically, though? When I say we’re identical, I mean it. Our tattoos and our hair alone give us our differences, and both of those are things we had to curate ourselves.
But Poem doesn’t see us the same underneath those pieces of ourselves we’ve forced to stray from each other. When she looks at me, she doesn’t see him at all.
She seesme.
And, sure, she seesmeas a frustrating jerk that she’s unhappily attracted to.
But.
She’sattractedtomeandnotWolfe.
It’s a miracle I found the willpower to not vault over my kitchen counter, take her into my arms, and ravish her. It’s a miracle I resisted when I rejoined her, plate empty and heart still racing. It’s a miracle I’m resisting now, as we stand outside her house and she hypes herself up to face the damage inside.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, reminding them to keep to themselves. “It’s probably not any worse than yesterday,” I offer, then tilt my chin toward the Big Ron’s Contracting trucks lining the driveway and the massive industrial-sized dumpster sitting against the road. “It looks like they’ve already gotten started, so it’ll be a mess, but the good sort of mess. The fixing sort of mess.” The getting Poem back into her house and away from my tempted hands sort of mess.
“I know,” she mumbles, mouth tilting into a frowny pout. “I’m not super worried about the mess. Well, I kind of am, because Ijusthad it renovated and I’m still paying that off, but I can’t do much of anything about that. It will be what it will be, I fear, but what it will be is fine in the end if that’s my only problem. My biggest worry is the smell.”
Ah. “The windows were open all night,” I remind her. “Dad triple checked before they left, and he ran some fans while he was getting stuff sorted with Emerson and Warren. If it does smell, it won’t be too bad.” Probably. I’m not an expert on the flooding-to-bad-smell pipeline, though.
“Our house had water damage when I was a kid,” she says, startling me. Poem never talks about her childhood. Ever. Not to me, definitely, but not to anyone else, either. Not even to Almond, per my sister’s concerned mutterings every few months. Shock is not a big enough word to describe how I feel at her bringing her past up now, of all times.
