Chaos & the Geek (Grace Grayson Security #1) - Elizabeth Stevens Page 0,73

tried to reconcile telling Patrick with his reaction to our hypothetical relationship. I couldn’t do it. Not yet.

“I just… I need some more time.”

“If you’ve changed your mind…?”

I shook my head wildly. “No! No. I want this. I want you. Us. I just…need a bit more time before I piss my brother off.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. But my silence can only be bought with a kiss.”

I smiled. “Kit!”

“What? One kiss? A little kiss? Please.”

I leant up and kissed him quickly. “Happy?”

His hand went to my cheek as he kissed me again. “Happy.”

“Okay. That has to be it.” I kissed him one more time. “Someone will see.”

“No one will see,” he said, drawing me back to him with a mischievously tempting smile on his face.

Just as I was about to kiss him again, we heard Patrick getting closer. “…don’t know. Is it in the linen press?”

Kit and I stepped away from each other just as Patrick opened the door. He looked between us and blinked.

“Uh, hey,” he said slowly.

“There’s a line,” Kit said, and I nodded as I stepped towards the toilet as though I was going in there.

Patrick grinned. “Go use the en suite,” he said to Kit as he pulled open the linen press “Waiting around like a chump. Bert, you know where Mum’s quote ‘good napkins’ are?”

“I’m gonna…” Kit started.

I nodded. “Good. Yeah. Okay.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and went to help Patrick.

“I thought you were peeing?” he asked as Kit sidled out.

I huffed. “You know I don’t like an audience.”

Patrick just laughed and nudged me as we continued the hunt for Mum’s good napkins.

I knew Kit was right. We had to tell everyone. I’d asked for a week. A week to work out what the hell I was going to say to my big brother. It wasn’t lost on me that we were sneaking around behind his back in a very similar manner to the way Dannie and Brent snuck around behind mine. I didn’t want Pat to find out by accident, I wanted him to hear it from us because we – and I mean I there – manned up and told him.

The prospect was just terrifying.

18

Kit

It hadn’t been a week. It had been two weeks. I’d been hiding my relationship with his little sister from my best friend for two weeks. And the fact that the ‘R’ word didn’t make me recoil in disgust, even in the privacy of my own brain, told me that I really needed to tell him. I just wasn’t sure if any of us were ready.

“I’m in love with Amber.”

I looked around like maybe it hadn’t been me who’d just blurted that fact out in front of my whole team at our daily staff meeting.

“Well,” Rollie said. “Hands up who expected that.”

Tank was looking between Hawk and me like he was concerned about the state the carpets were about to be in. Nico raised his hand without looking up from his computer and Rollie smacked him.

“No one asked you, numbnuts,” Rollie muttered.

Hawk had finished blinking and was now onto the opening and closing his mouth portion of disbelief. Finally, he found his voice.

“Do you want to run that by me one more time?” he asked slowly. “I’m sure I just heard you say you were in love with my sister.”

I sighed. “Because that’s what I said.”

Hawk laughed, but it was humourless. “You mean you fucked her.”

“What?”

“This is code for you fucked her, isn’t it? You think if you tell me you love her that I’ll… What? Take it easy on you?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s not about the sex.”

“You what?” he spat.

“Okay!” I cried. “Yes. I… We had sex–”

“How many times?”

“Dude, I don’t think–”

“You’re a fucking dead man, Grayson!” he roared and launched himself onto the table at me.

I let him grab my collar and swung him away from the table. We landed awkwardly and each got to our feet.

“I will kill you!” Hawk hissed and I believed him.

“It’s different!” I yelled as I ducked his fist.

“Different? It’s not fucking different.” He swung again and I ducked again. “You knew the rules. I thought she was safe with you!”

“She is safe with me!” I winced as Hawk’s fist whistled passed my cheek.

“You know,” I heard Tank say. “I think we really need to develop healthier coping techniques. Better dispute resolution and all that.”

“I dunno,” said Rollie. “This has always worked for us.”

I ducked another of Hawk’s swings.

“An official dispute resolution policy would take forever to sort