about him? Does he have a game this weekend?”
“No, it’s a bye week.” Hollis is already busy handing me a plate and utensils and digging into the piping hot lasagna to explain what that means. Luckily, I already know the term since I was raised in a family where they live and breathe sports.
In sports that play every single week during their season, each team gets one entire week off and doesn’t have a single game.
This is Tripp’s week off.
I thought he had off during Buzz’s wedding, but I must have been mistaken. Perhaps they did a good enough job planning the entire thing so he could attend, what with their agents and managers and publicists scheduling everything—they must have all coordinated so the brothers could be together.
When my plate is full—bearing garlic bread and salad, too—I am ushered to the massive table off the kitchen where a few other things are set out, tiny cheesecakes and brownie bites.
“You’re going to have to roll me out of here when we’re done,” I tease, eying a strawberry dessert. “Where did these come from?”
“I made those, dear,” Mrs. Wallace tells me, taking the chair across from me, motioning for her husband to sit down next to her. True sits next to him, Buzz on the other side of his mother, and Hollis on one side of me, leaving only one space for the remaining Wallace.
By my side.
How convenient. They couldn’t have made their strategy any more obvious.
When Tripp straddles the bench I’m on to sit his ass down, he bumps my back with his plate, nudges my knee with his thigh, and hits my arm with his elbow—as if he is an elephant in a delicate tea shop that cannot stop breaking things.
The man is about as subtle as a runaway dump truck plowing through a dining room wall.
And he has his eye on my meal.
“Are you going to eat that?” His hand is halfway between us, fingers taking on a claw shape—aka: grabby hands. Steering toward my carbs.
“Do not start that again,” I grumble, too hungry to tolerate his antics so early on in the evening. “You have a plate of food—stop bothering me.”
“I thought we were friends” comes his low reply, his teeth tearing into the garlic bread in his hand. “Friends share.”
“Just because I kissed you does not make us friends.”
“Oh yeah?” Chew, chew, swallow. “That’s weird, I thought that’s exactly what it made us, since we’re family and all.”
Ew, gross. “First of all, we are not family. Second of all—”
“Big brother, would you like to tell the rest of the class what’s so funny?” True Wallace is staring at us both, fork poised below her mouth, dark eyebrows raised as she watches her brother pouting over his dinner plate.
I clear my throat and smile, doing my best to be polite, despite the nerves in my stomach. I could kill him for adding to my anxiety but decide to go with honesty since the Wallace clan seems to be one that appreciates brutal truths and hard facts.
I’ve never heard Buzz or Tripp be anything but factual and blunt.
“Your brother has his hands all over my food.”
Next to me, the man himself shrugs. “The last time I stole her bread, she threatened to stab me with her butter knife.”
No big deal.
So casually just putting that out there for them to judge me.
Internally, I groan and want the floor to swallow me whole.
“Is there a reason you’re touching her plate, son? Haven’t you got enough food on your own—are we greedy now?” Mr. Wallace sets his utensils down, intent on lecturing his grown, firstborn offspring.
“Dad, you know I have to eat nine thousand calories a day to stay in shape. If Buzz is going to insist on feeding us rabbit food, I have to resort to subterfuge.”
Rabbit food.
Subterfuge.
I almost laugh out loud.
“Tripp Robert Wallace.” Their mother’s tone means business; she is clearly embarrassed at her oldest son’s attempts to take food off a guest’s plate at the dinner table.
Chew, chew. “Robert is Trace’s middle name.”
Buzz snorts. “No it’s not.”
“Well it’s not mine.”
“It’s not?” Mr. Wallace’s brows furrow, but then he shrugs and continues eating.
True laughs.
“For one second, can this entire evening not be about you?” Mrs. Wallace directs her question at Tripp. “Your brother just returned from his honeymoon with his bride—”
“You mean the honeymoon I wasn’t invited to?” Tripp blurts out, glaring at his brother.
“Get married and go on your own damn honeymoon,” Buzz counters, fist-bumping my cousin. The pair