Chapter 32

Hunter

I woke up late the next day with a sour gut and an even sourer head. Not from a hangover this time, I'd only had one beer, but the aftermath of rejection was apparently even worse. I blinked, staring at my ceiling and seeing it, the minute Jamie walked, then ran away.

Fuck.

Everything I'd said, she'd said, and then Hayden said replayed over and over in my head until I got out of bed and wandered down to the bathroom. As I took care of business, the quiet of the house settled over me. Hayden had gone out this morning, probably surfing.

Because he can't stand to see your fucking face , I thought.

I stared into the mirror as I washed my hands and saw why. I had a face like a smacked arse, and that wouldn't do. This was always going to be a suicide mission, trying to get Jamie to see us as more than Millie's brothers. I just didn't expect to flame out that fucking fast. My feet shuffled across the floor as I went into the kitchen and started making a coffee, only for the front door to slam open.

Here we go.

I closed my eyes, sucking in a breath as the sound of the kettle boiling drowned out Hayden's steps. Time to gird my loins and prepare for battle. Hay Bale mighta been out surfing all day, but half the time the adrenalin of that just got us pumped up more, rather than calmed us down. No doubt Emo Boy was ready for round two of the fight we had last night. I dropped the teaspoon in my mug, fixed a smile I didn't feel on my face, and turned around, only to have it wiped away seconds later. My brother was sporting the kind of grin that only came from getting laid long, hard, and completely satisfactorily.

What the fuck…?

I think I just muttered that as he walked into the kitchen, grabbing a cup and making his own coffee.

"Where did you get to?" I asked, but I already knew.

"Went surfing."

The fuck, he was going to play that game, was he?

"After that, dickwad, because unless Kelly fucking Slater decided to drop into our shitty local break, you wouldn't come in here looking like that."

"I went round to Jamie's to try to fix your mistakes," he said, trying for serious and failing. Did I look like that when I was giving him shit? Because I had no idea how he stopped himself from punching me in the face most days if I did. Prick looked like the cat that got the cream.

Jamie's cream.

"And how'd that go?"

"Good."

"That's it?" I demanded, reaching over to flip the kettle off when it boiled. "Good?"

"Good." I watched him pour his coffee and mine, and when my teeth started grinding together, his grin widened. "Really, really good."

"So fucking help me, you need to quit it with this Cheshire Cat bullshit and start being a whole lot more forthcoming," I growled.

"I sorted things out," he replied more seriously. "It's not perfect. Jamie's still very, very skittish." His frown was a relief when it came. "I'd love to know why. I mean she was going out with one dickhead after another…"

Our hatred of Jamie's ex-boyfriends was something that united all three of us brothers. How a beautiful girl like her ended up with such deadshits, I had no idea.

"But all you need to know is she's poised to run. Move too fast, talk too much, and we'll lose her," he continued, shooting me a meaningful look.

"But sex isn't off the table." I meant that as a joke, but the acid edge to my voice turned it to something harsh because her faint floral perfume hung around him like a cloud. "That isn't going to send her running."

"Sex seems to be something else altogether. Jamie splits sex and love real well." He rubbed at his forehead. "Like during…" My brother shot me a wary look, seeming to remember who his audience was. "There was something completely uninhibited about her, but afterwards?"

I almost felt sorry for Hayden, because his face fell, but then I remembered why. While I had been sleeping off my mistakes, he'd been rolling around enjoying some horizontal refreshment with the girl we each wanted to make ours. He shook his head.

"It's like the walls come back up twice as high, maybe because she let them down in the first place. I can't work out why." He stared at me. "Like I know her family is shit, but still…"

"I'll ask her if I ever get the chance to sleep with her, shall I?" I snarked and then took a long drink from my coffee. Black and bitter, it suited my mood perfectly.

"You're on your own there. Gotta make amends yourself first."

Some of the light seemed to go out of Hayden as he sipped on his coffee thoughtfully.

"Guess I'll head around there tonight then," I replied.

"Can't." The spark was back in his eyes. "She said she's hanging out with Millie at the pub." Oh, was she? "Girls only. Figure we could catch up on that TV series?—"

"You're on your own, brother dear," I replied, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "Billy called and wants to meet for drinks to discuss the next campaign." Billy was the advertising director of the surfwear company we modelled for. "He's invited us to that swanky place on the bay."

"You can go." Hayden pretty much just did modelling because I enjoyed it and the novelty of twins was what sold us as models, but as a result, he left most of the negotiating to me. "Just don't sign us up for too many shoots. I'm not spending all my bloody weekends doing that anymore."

He was imagining night after night with his arms wrapped around Jamie and I was happy for him to delude himself.

I tapped out a message to Billy with intent, offering to meet him at a cafe instead, and much earlier than he proposed. I jumped in the shower and got dressed in something nice, Hayden barely looking up as I walked towards the door.

"Bit early for a drink, isn't it?" he asked, staring at the football game playing on the TV.

"There's this whole function thing on…" I said, watching his turn away in disinterest. Inside I smiled to myself. I'd told Billy we'd conduct a quick and dirty meeting at the cafe, because tonight I had somewhere else to be. "Don't wait up."

All I got was a snort from my brother in recognition.

As I got into my van, I punched in my sister's number, letting it ring as I pulled out onto the street.

"What do you want, dickhead? I give you a prime opportunity to take my bestie out and you?—"

"Have to make amends. I shot my mouth off, which we know I have done in the past and will do again, but this time I need to apologise, make clear that I'm sorry. Hayden said Jamie's hanging out with you tonight."

"And you want to encroach on my girl time? I take it all back, you, Hayden, and Brock are banned from dating Jamie. She was my friend first."

"And I want to spend my life making her happy."

I talked shit, cracked jokes and generally made a fool of myself, and the benefit of that was when I was serious, people actually paid attention.

"Even if that means stepping aside for Brock or Hayden?"

Millie was testing me, I knew that.

"Did I stutter?" I replied. "If that's… who she needs to be happy, I'm not gonna get in their way, but she hasn't decided yet."

"And you want to come to my pub and make some big apology to my best friend when she came to hang out with me?" she said.

"What's it gonna take, Mills?"

"Build those goddamn walk-in wardrobes you promised to do months ago."

I could hear her grin down the phone line. One sigh and then I was nodding.

"Fine, you got it."

"OK, here's what you need to do…"

"That's a girl that got the good D," Annie, one of the women who worked for my sister said, her words like a punch to my gut.

I knew academically that my brother and Jamie had slept together, but that didn't make the reality of it any easier to digest. For Jamie either, it seemed, because she started to back up. My hands went up, ready to stop her from colliding with me, but when they wrapped around her shoulders, everything my sister said went in one ear and out the other.

"That right?" Shut up! a small voice said inside my head. Shut the fuck up! "Hay Bale looked after you good, did he, Jamie?"

Then she looked up at me.

My mouth went dry, my hands snatched back as she frowned and then spun around.

"I thought I told you…" That line between her brows smoothed away and she blinked. "Hunter."

"The guy most voted to completely screw up a date?" I raised a hand and smiled weakly. "One and the same. So I know you've got a girl's night planned and you probably really don't want to talk to me right now, but I needed to apologise for last night."

Jamie crossed her arms, waiting me out.

"Hi, my name is Hunter." I saw we were getting quite the audience because there wasn't much else happening at the pub. "And I'm a dickhead." Her brows jerked up as I went down on one knee. "I shoot my mouth off, thinking that I need to bestow my little ‘pearls' of wisdom on everyone around me. I think that my idea of truth is so important, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or feels."

"Did you put him up to this?" Jamie asked Millie, but my sister just shrugged, then nodded for me to continue the speech we had practised.

"I literally call them truth bombs, not realising…" The fact it was only now I was starting to digest the content of Millie's speech said something about my character, but better late than never I guess. "Realising that bombs destroy shit, even people. I didn't want to lie to you." Millie's brows drew down. I was going off script, and it was sounding too much like I was trying to justify myself. "In my head, I saw you finding out how we felt and assumed you'd feel… betrayed. Yeah, betrayed."

"If I say I forgive you, will you get up and shut up?" Jamie hissed, eyeing the crowd that was watching this all go down.

"Would you mean it?"

I got to my feet and walked closer, searching her face for the answer.

"A double rum and Coke and whatever he's having," Jamie said to Millie, her and Annie moving to make the drinks then sliding them across the bar. She grabbed hers and a beer for me, then handed it over. "Maybe we could talk about this a little more privately?"

Privately? Well, Jamie didn't slap me in the face and tell me to piss off, so that was automatically better than I had anticipated. I grinned down at her and said, "Sure. Lead the way."