I turn to Nick. “Do you have any siblings? Help us convince Cole.”
The shake of his head is smooth. “Only child, I’m afraid.”
“What a wonderful thing,” Cole sighs, and we all laugh as I pretend to flip him off.
“To be fair, you gave me a lot of things to tease you about. You made it easy, Lairy.”
“Are you victim-blaming?” I shake my head at my big brother in mock outrage. “I’d advise you to stop talking right about now.”
“Or what? You’re going to get our lawyers involved? We have the same ones.” He laughs good-naturedly and reaches out to rest his arm around Skye’s shoulder. “You had a crush on a new guy every week. It was great fodder for jokes.”
Skye and Nick both laugh. I don’t, the smile on my face growing just a tad tighter. “You kept bringing your friends over. It was very easy to.” My voice is carefully cheerful. My mingling voice, honed by years of parties. Inside, I’m trying to telepathically tell my brother to shut the hell up.
Skye takes a sip of her alcohol-free cider. “As if you didn’t have crushes when you were a teenager.”
Cole leans his head back against the couch. He looks the picture of ease, at peace and amused. Shouldn’t people who’ve found their happiness be kind? Not, you know, ruin it for others? My brother hasn’t gotten that memo, because he destroys everything.
“Not like Blair did. Didn’t you have a crush on Nick when we first became friends?”
Several things happen at once, then.
In my peripheral view, I see Nick still.
Skye frowns at her husband in clear disapproval.
Cole grins at me and Nick, thinking this is nothing but a fun joke. Something we’ll laugh about.
I force my voice to obey. It comes out unhurried, unforced. “That was such a long time ago,” I say. “And it lasted for exactly a week.”
“Until you discovered what a brute he is.” Cole nods to Nick, his smile growing wider.
Nick smiles back. It’s his sardonic one, the one that says he’s laughing at his own private joke. “Not fit for anyone’s little sister,” he says.
“Exactly.” Cole takes a sip of his own whiskey and glances down at Skye. Her displeasure is still plain, and as he sees it, he pauses. “What?”
She shakes her head at him, but thankfully doesn’t say anything.
“Should we turn the tables?” I ask instead. “Who was the one who crashed Dad’s old Corvette a month after he got his license?”
Cole groans and Nick latches on to the story immediately, asking for details. I breathe a shaky sigh of relief, even though I know it’s only temporary.
There’s no way Nick will let me live this down.
And somehow, when it’s time to leave, Nick is the one who stands and faces me. “I’ll drive you home,” he says.
The walk to his car is silent. I glance at him twice from the corner of my eye, but he looks like he’s retreated, back into the cold impassivity I’d been used to for years.
I repress a sigh as I climb into the passenger seat of his Land Rover. “Come on. Didn’t we behave ourselves perfectly in there? I kept my promise.”
He nods.
“And?” I let the word drawl. “Don’t we both get a gold star?”
His hands grip the wheel tightly as he pulls out of my brother’s driveway. We pause on the other side of the gate, blocking the way while the giant wrought-iron gates close behind us. Always security-minded.
“So you had a crush on me.” His voice is tight. “What an interesting little tidbit.”
“You can’t just ignore that, can you? Pretend you never heard it?”
“Not likely, Blair.”
“It was a long time ago,” I say. There’s no need for him to know all the gory details—that the crush had lingered throughout the years, that every time I’d seen him it had reawakened and kept me wishing.
“So it had nothing to do with yesterday? With the last couple weeks of…” His voice dies out, but I hear the words. Of throwing yourself at me.
Can you sink through a car with embarrassment? I’m about to, burning a hole through the steel until his expensive car becomes a Fred Flintstone vehicle.
A hundred different responses flit through my mind. Do I play it off as a joke, too? There’s no way Nick will handle it well if I say yes.
“It had nothing to do with that,” I say firmly. “I was what, eighteen when we met? No, it’s in the past. Cole was an ass to bring it up,