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“Or maybe it’s the pull-out couch in the hotel that’s harder than it looks. Your room had one of those, right?”

Beckett ground his teeth together, refusing to take the bait no matter how much his brother goaded him or how guilty he felt about lying to him. “Same as yours.”

Jackson hummed as though this information was supremely interesting, then turned his face back up to the ceiling, absentmindedly strumming his guitar again. “Mom called.”

“How is she?”

His brother chuckled. “Pretty fucking mad that her first born—”

“By two minutes.”

“—got engaged and didn’t bother to tell her.” He glanced at Beckett, as though assessing how this information landed with his twin.

Beckett couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard from their mother. Shortly after their dad died, he guessed. They’d been on tour in Europe and she was so angry that they didn’t come home for his funeral. She moved to a retirement community in Florida not long after. Beckett and his brother had visited when she first moved in, and he still sent her money every month, paid the rent and HOA fees. But he could see it in her eyes that last visit, how much they looked like their father, how hard that was for her.

“She could’ve called me,” Beckett grumbled. “Phone works both ways.”

Jackson shook his head. “You are so much like her.” Beckett frowned, not sure where his brother was going with this line of thinking. “Keep everything to yourself. Just quietly take care of everyone else.” He rolled his head to the side, running his gaze over Beckett. “It’s funny. I always thought you hated the paps as much as I do.”

“I do.”

“Didn’t mind letting them photograph your engagement announcement though. Were you always planning on doing it like that, the big public display of affection, or did you guys just say fuck it when you realized you could give the vultures something new to write about?”

Instead of me.

He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. Beckett heard it all the same. He should have known his brother would figure it out, that he wouldn’t believe Beckett and Kat were back together, much less engaged.

“Fuck, with a PR girl as good as Jojo behind you, you could probably keep this story going for, what, three, four weeks? Keep those paparazzi busy covering the happy couple and the rest of us look boring by comparison.” His eyes were piercing when they met Beckett’s, gray-blue and so similar to his own. “Did I get that right?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Beckett mumbled.

Hurt flashed behind Jackson’s eyes, a painful flicker there and gone again, replaced by the wide, boyish grin that had graced more magazine covers than Beckett could count. “You’ve gone and done it now, Becks. You know how the paps are. Fucking dog with a bone.”

“We can handle it.”

Jackson’s gaze darted over Beckett’s face, mapping it, hunting for the lie. Seemingly satisfied that his brother was telling him the truth, Jackson softened, his grin faltering, brows pulling together. “Thanks.”

Beckett shook his head, his throat suddenly tight. “Nothing to thank me for.”

Jackson reached over and gripped Beckett’s shoulder, squeezing so hard his hand shook. “We both know that’s not true.”

Beckett cleared his throat, dragging his hand over his mouth. He and his brother didn’t talk about feelings, not the big messy ones anyway. Not since they were kids. He wasn’t sure how to process the sincerity in Jackson’s voice.

Thankfully Jackson seemed as uncomfortable as he was. Releasing Beckett with a final squeeze, he took a long sip from the rocks glass of amber liquid sitting on the coffee table, setting it back down in the ring of condensation on the cheap wood, and resumed playing his guitar, the same slow arpeggios springing to life beneath his fingers.

“Is that new?” Beckett asked, tilting his chin towards the guitar.

“Just something I’ve been messing around with.” He hummed the melody again in fragments of song.

Beckett frowned. “Kind of low for you.”

“It’s not for me. It’s for you.”

“I don’t sing solos,” Beckett said.

Jackson shrugged. “You could. If someone wrote you the right song.” He hummed another line, hazy eyes focused somewhere in the distance as though he could see the notes materializing in the air in front of him. “You’ll need to write the words. I’m shit at lyrics.”

“You are not,” Beckett said. “And I don’t write.”