Chapter 28

28

Ellie

My leg is pounding like a mother, there's an annoying light shining directly at my eyelids, something smells faintly like moldy gym socks, and there's a godawful racket coming from outside the doorway.

Sounds like?—

Oh, dammit .

Sounds like my brother trying to hit those falsetto notes Levi can reach but Beck most definitely can not . He's not bad , but they didn't add him to the band for his musical talent.

Nope, they added him for the eye candy.

Blech.

He bursts into the room, and I remember I'm not at his house.

I'm at Cooper Rock's house half a mile up the road. Because Wyatt and I tried to burn down Beck's house last night.

"Is your house still standing?" I ask, realizing I'm croaking like a frog, and also that I don't give two fucks.

The universe spoke.

I listened.

And it hurts like hell.

"Damn straight," he says. "C'mon. Get up. They haven't found the peg leg yet. I want to go look, but I can't go without a disguise."

"Go buy yourself a peg leg." I shove my head under the pillow, which smells like mothballs, and I really don't care.

Yum, mothballs.

Like death, but mothier.

"You know you broke my best friend's heart."

"Talk to the universe. I'm saving his life." My voice cracks, and I want to hit something, but I also want to roll over and go back to sleep and hope that when I wake up in five or six years, I won't have residual pain in my leg and Wyatt will have found a safe, kind, motherly type of woman that he's madly in love with who gives him blow jobs every night after she bakes cookies for Tucker.

Okay, maybe I'm not willing to go that far. I didn't even get the chance to give him a blow job before fate decided blowing up Beck's house was more important.

Great.

Now I'm dictating when his imaginary girlfriends can go down on him.

And possibly my eyes are leaking.

And if any fucking asshole woman bakes Tucker cookies?—

I squeeze my eyes shut, because Tucker's adorable and sweet, but he's not mine.

"Eeeellllliiiiiiieeeeeeee," Beck whines. "Get uuuuuuuuuppp." He pokes me in the back.

I let him.

He pokes me again.

I still don't move.

When he pokes me the third time, and I still don't react, the fucker sits on me. Right on my back with his bony butt.

"Aaahhlp!" I grunt. "Get off ."

"I missed my sister," he declares.

"I can't breathe, you ass."

He moves to sit on my calves, and now, even if I wanted to, I don't think I could bend right to punch him. "And what do I come home to? A woman who's not my sister walking around in my sister's body. What did you do with Ellie, Fake Ellie? Where'd you put her? Are you from Zygorb? Are you an alien wearing my sister's skin?"

"You are annoying as fuck."

" I'm annoying? You're the one who's pulling this shitty woe is me, the universe hates me, and for once in my life I'm gonna just lay down and take it because I'm afraid to love somebody who might actually break my heart shit."

I freeze.

Because that might be hitting too close to home.

"Go. Away."

"Wyatt's a good dude, Ellie. And he likes you despite you."

"And he flies in airplanes for his day job and we can't even kiss without dishwashers leaking and towels catching on fire and Tucker deserves to grow up with a good dad."

Beck heaves a loud, annoyed sigh and climbs off me. "Fine. Have your pity party. But if you don't get up, I'm calling Monica, and you know she'll skip her honeymoon to be here."

"Dick move. And you'd put her on a private jet and upgrade her to the fanciest cruise in the world to make it up to her."

"Yeah, but she won't know that when she comes running."

Which is why she's my best friend.

My best girl friend.

My best friend friend might be— dammit .

"And I'll send Mom," he adds. "Oh, and by the way, Wyatt was pissed when he found out Cooper lives so close. Dude thought he was bicycling up the mountain to deliver you donuts because he's angling to get into your pants. Isn't that a hoot? Ten minutes, Ell. And then I'm singing again too."

He heads out the door whistling like he has fucking sunshine in his sparkly bright soul, and I realize I'm naked.

I'm naked, with a healing black eye, a sore hip and thigh, and a big ol' pile of ash in my chest.

But that's how it has to be.

Because I've hurt enough people in my life.

I won't put Wyatt in danger. He deserves better.