Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
It’s just that this is fairly new. As in, him actually bringing it up. Love has made him a changed man, and I think he’s embracing more of an open approach. I take another pull of my beer and wish I was more into alcohol. That way I could get drunk and avoid whatever conversation he wants to have. “Been busy.”
He watches me for a moment before throwing me a short nod. “Okay, I’ll give you that.” Then he sighs and speaks before I can. “The reason I’ve been calling you, wanting to get together, is because I wanted you to hear it from me first.”
“Hear what from you first?”
He waits a moment to answer. “I’ve accepted another job.”
I go still for a few seconds, thinking I heard him wrong. “What?”
“New England,” he says, his eyes—identical to mine—staring at me. “They’re looking for a new coach and they sought me out. I said yes.”
I turn to him fully, my frown thick and deep. “You said yes.”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re moving to fucking New England?”
Again, he watches me for a few beats before replying, “Yes.”
I clench my jaw and lower my beer bottle before clipping, “No.”
It feels strange coming out of my mouth, my real feelings. The truth. Especially when it comes to Stellan. My twin brother and I, we never really had a very close relationship. We’ve always been different, radically in fact. But instead of bridging the gap between our two contrasting selves, we’ve always ended up widening it.
Our difficult relationship only got worse when I realized he wanted Isadora, same as me. I’ll be the first to say I didn’t make it easy for him. I knew he liked her, and yet I forged ahead with my relationship with Isadora. I could’ve talked to him, discussed it, but that was never our way. I also realize if it were someone else, Ledger or Conrad, I would’ve stepped aside right away. But with Stellan, things are different. He’s my twin and the fact that he’s always kept me at a distance—due to his own reasons—bugged me more than I’d like to admit. And my anger always came out in strange ways. In ways that I would fuck with him for all sorts of reasons. But anyway, in the end, I never could have taken his girl from him. He’s my brother, my family. I’ll do anything for family.
Only now that he actually is happy, I can’t really see it. Maybe I truly am a fucking asshole.
“No what?” he asks, confused.
“No, we made a promise,” I state.
“What promise?”
“Promise,” I say, my voice biting. “To stay together. To stay close to each other. To look out for our sister.”
Stellan is silent for a bit, something going on behind his eyes, and I’m too agitated to figure out what it is. When I’m about to snap him out of whatever daydream he’s entertaining, he speaks. “Callie’s married. Happily married, with two kids. She’s finally, fucking finally, going to Juilliard next year. Because her jackass of a husband loves her too much to knock her up a third time, no matter how much she wants him to. So I don’t think she needs looking out for, because as much as Reed still bugs me, he loves her. More than either of us can imagine.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he keeps going. “And in case you haven’t noticed, our baby brother is settled as well. He’s got two kids, a wife that keeps his hands full, and they’re already thinking about expanding the family even though the twins are hardly a year old.”
Again I try to speak, but he doesn’t let me. “Even Conrad’s settled. Wyn’s planning the wedding and I’m sure as soon as they tie the knot, they’ll be talking about expanding the family too. In fact, the only reason they haven’t is because Con is probably being his usual hardass self and wants Wyn to be absolutely fucking sure about wanting babies because according to him, she’s still too young.”
A pulse beats in my cheek by the time he finishes. “You got a point?”
Again, I can see something is flashing through his eyes and again, I don’t give a fuck about it. “You know, people think that us Thorne brothers are so strong, and we are. In a way. We lived through pretty tragic times, and we came out the other side. Most people think we came out on top, but I beg to differ. Some of us are still trying to make our way up.”
“What the fuck,” I growl, squeezing the neck of the beer bottle, “are you talking about?”
“I never worried about you,” he keeps going in that same tone, and I swear to everything that’s holy, I’m going to throw this bottle at him if he doesn’t get to the point. “Well, aside from the fact that I wanted to protect you from me and my issues, and so I kept you at a distance and spent my entire life being a shitty brother. All you ever did was party too hard and break a few too many rules. Made a few too many jokes. Your grades were always fine. Your soccer was fucking phenomenal. You’re arguably the best of us. And I always thought, back when I used to push you away, that if someone was going to cope with that, it would be you. I always thought, Shep will be fine. Shep can handle it. Shep can handle anything. He isn’t like the rest of us.”