Except I’m not. Not really.
I think about Beth’s flushed cheeks as she stormed out of the party, as I caught up to her outside. I think about the way she accused me of treating her like a child by ordering her away from Falco, and how much more selfish my true motivations actually were. And then I think about what he’d said to her—how he’d called her “pretty.”
Fucking pretty.
But Bea isn’t just fucking pretty, she’s more than than, and any guy who can’t see the fucking difference doesn’t deserve so much as a chance with her—least of all Brian-fucking-Falco, who, as it happens, I never really had a problem with before tonight. But now—now, I can see him for the slimeball he fucking is, even if Beth can’t.
“We can pay him a little visit tomorrow. Explain the situation,” Cap says calmly. But under the calm lies a storm I know well, one I’ve been known to both feed and feed on, in turn. Cap and me, Tuck and rest of the boys—we’ve always had one another’s backs.
The glance I toss Cap makes sure he knows I’m up for whatever is necessary. I always have been, when it comes to the Caplans, especially. There have been times when they’ve felt more like family to me than my own, and I may have my jackass moments, but I’m loyal as fuck above all else, and Cap fucking knows it.
I picture the way Beth blushed for Falco and bile rises in my throat. But I’m not an idiot. I know why this is fucking me up so badly, and it isn’t overprotectiveness—that’s Cap’s thing, after all. What’s got my stomach rolled tighter than this goddamned joint is what happened after I caught her outside that party. It’s the way she looked up at me from under those fucking lashes, how she reacted when I told her the truth. That Falco was wrong. That she wasn’t pretty—that she was motherfucking beautiful.
It’s the way my eyes fell to those strawberry fucking lips, and, for the first time, actually considered stealing a taste.
Thank fucking God Cap announced himself by calling after Beth. That would not have been a good sight for him to walk in on.
“It isn’t going to stop, you know,” I murmur, and Cap’s brow furrows. “Guys are going to want her,” I explain. “She’s…” I trail off. Beth is his kid sister, but Cap has fucking eyes. And it’s more than that. It’s always been more than that. Beth is just…different. More.
Deep inside my chest, an ember glows, warm and familiar, slowly igniting the ones around it, spreading, until my mouth twitches into a smile. Beth does it to me every damned time.
“Fuck if that’s going to happen,” Cap says yet again—the same line anytime somebody brings up the possibility of Beth dating anyone at all. But he’s got to know that’s not realistic. Not for a girl who looks like her. I mean, fuck, she came to one party and she’s already got an incoming senior hot on her tail.
“But it is going to happen, Cap,” I say bluntly.
He turns to face me, handing me back the joint, which I take a deep pull from. “As long as we can help it, it isn’t,” he says adamantly.
I shake my head at him. Not because I don’t think we can handle the guys at our school, but because I’m not sure he’s even considered Beth herself in this equation at all. “How long you think she’s going to let us get away with that shit, huh?” I ask him. “Weeks? Months if we’re lucky?” I bark out a humorless laugh. “She’ll start dating some douche bag just to prove she can.”
Cap swallows nervously. He knows I’m right. “Fucking shit,” he mutters to himself.
“What if—” I shut my mouth tight just as fast as the words are out. But it’s too late. I can’t shove them back down my throat any more than I can bury the idea back into the depths of my mind.
“What if what?” Cap asks.
I take an even longer, deeper pull, holding the smoke in my lungs before blowing out a slow, calming exhale. I pass what’s left of the joint back to Cap, checking to make sure the cherry is still lit. Now I’m the one with the anxious swallow. “You know…Beth and me…we’ve always been…close. Right?”
Cap shrugs, hitting the joint. “You think you can talk some sense into her?” he guesses.
Wrong. So wrong. “Sense? As in, not dating in high school at all?”
Cap clenches his eyes shut. He knows we aren’t going to get away with that shit, and anything else isn’t a picture he wants to see. Beth will always be his baby sister, after all, and he will always be her protector first and foremost.
“I meant…” I try starting again, and Cap’s eyes open, hopeful, desperate, and that ember in my chest glows with hope as well. “What if…I mean—”
“You’re stuttering now, Dave?” Cap busts my balls, and he should.
I don’t stammer over words, because I don’t give a fuck. But this…this is one of the few things in this world I do give a fuck about. So I just come right out and say it. “I want to take her out.”
Cap blinks at me. “Out where?”
“Like, on a date…?” I don’t mean for it to come out like a question, but it is. Because I don’t take girls on fucking dates—neither of us do. We hook up.
“Who?” Cap asks, like his mind can’t seem to wrap itself around the idea of what I’m suggesting, and I don’t blame him. It’s hard for me to get there myself, to be honest.
But those strawberry fucking lips…
“Beth,” I say clearly. “Fuck Falco. And fuck the rest of the guys that will want her. I care about her. You know that.”
