28. Emmett

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

emmett

“Everything hurts, and I’m dying,”I complain. My mouth is dry, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck, and … why is my side aching? And what the hell is that fuzz I’m lying on?

Snickers from somewhere ring in my ears, but when I lift my head and the room comes into focus, I realize I’m in the living room, face down on the carpet instead of in my bed.

“Wha—”

“Morning, sunshine,” my brother sings. He’s on the couch, his feet right next to me.

“Did … did you step over me to sit there?”

“In my defense, we put you on the couch last night. You’re the dumbass who rolled off it.”

I manage to flip onto my back, but shooting pain stabs me in my ribs. “What happened?”

“You got delightfully shitfaced.” Benny grins.

“That’s obvious. I meant with my ribs.”

“Oh, you were certain you could jump one of those light posts things that line the sidewalk along the beach. Spoiler alert: you couldn’t. You ran right into that thing.” He laughs again.

“You’re the worst brother ever.”

“Hey, I’m the one suffering from your hangover. You get no sympathy.” He rubs his head.

“You were drinking too!”

“Not as much as you.”

“I still can’t believe you two share hangovers and other side effects.” Harrison appears above me. “Do you want ice for your ribs?”

“Are they broken?”

“Felix checked you over. He thinks they’re just bruised.”

“Is Felix qualified to do that?”

Harrison shrugs. “He’s becoming a vet. It’s in the medical field.”

“Well, it’s comforting to know if I were a dog, I’d be in good hands.”

“Want me to take you to the hospital?”

“Nope. Don’t need that kind of paper trail for my dumbassery. We’re still on West’s insurance. I’m fine.” And as if trying to convince even myself, I try to sit up. I wince in pain and want to scream out, but I don’t. Because I don’t want them to think it’s as bad as it is.

“About West …” Benny bites his lip.

“No. We’re not telling him anything.”

“I don’t think we’re going to have a choice soon. Wouldn’t it be better to tell West and Asher that you’re no longer in school and I’m about to be kicked out before they find out on their own?”

“I’m thinking it might be better to move to Mexico, get new identities, and never have to face them.”

“Emmett …”

Ugh. “I guess it’s time. I didn’t want to tell them until I had a plan, and then I didn’t want to tell them because of Jonah, but I guess that’s all gone to shit now.”

“Do you have a plan?” Benny asks.

“Hockey. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

“Great plan,” Benny deadpans.

“It won’t be much of a shock to West. He knows I’ve been coaching.”

Benny shifts. “He does? Since when?”

“He was asking questions about why I was so hard to get ahold of. I had to tell him something other than ‘I’ve been avoiding you for months because I don’t want to disappoint you by telling you what’s really going on.’ He’s offered for me to transfer to CU and play for him. He thinks I could recondition and try to get a spot in the AHL or NHL if Asher could pull some strings, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’ve been out of the game for three years. That’s almost the length of an actual hockey career for some. It’s probably impossible to bounce back from that.”

I have to give Ben credit—even though I know he’s hurt that I told West before him, he swallows it down.

“We were huge names in the hockey world once upon a time. If nothing else, a team might give you a chance for the publicity. Maybe Buffalo.”

I shake my head. “That would scream nepotism, and I’d want to earn my spot on my talent over my name.”

“Then yeah, that might not be a solid plan.”

“What are you going to tell them?” I ask.

“The truth. Like you, I want my degree because I earn it. I’d only need a passing grade for all my math classes.”

“So … how do we do this? Are you calling, or am I?” My ass starts vibrating, so I reach into my back pocket—carefully because twisting my torso hurts—and pull out my phone.

“Apparently, he’s calling us.” I show Benny West’s name on my screen.

We both stare at it, slack-jawed.

“Hey, maybe your older brother has that twin ESP thing too.” Harrison might be joking, but that doesn’t make the freak-out lessen.

“Answer it,” Benny says.

I accept the call just as it cuts out. “Oh no. Missed it. We have more time to come up with a game plan of what we want to say.” It starts ringing again. “Persistent fucker.”

“Here, I’ll do it.” Benny snatches my phone from me and answers it on speaker before I can stop him. “Hey, big bro.”

“Benny?” West asks hesitantly.

“Still can’t get us straight after all these years.”

“Definitely Benny. Em’s with you?”

“Yup. We’re just hanging out.”

“Hi,” I say. No, I squeak.

“Haven’t you got classes?”

“Nah, not until this afternoon,” Benny says.

“Both of you?” The accusation of skipping classes isn’t new for him, but there’s something more in his tone this time. It’s probably paranoia, but I can’t help thinking he knows.

But how much does he know? That I got kicked out? That Benny is screwed when it comes to his degree? Maybe Jonah went on an email rampage last night and everything is already in motion. The dean knows, called West, and Benny’s paperwork is being drawn up as we speak.

We’re so fucked.

“West?” I croak. “You need to come to California.” That’s all I get out before the panic takes over.

“Yeah, no shit,” West says, sterner than I’ve probably ever heard him. “I’m already here.”

Another voice joins him. “So am I, dipshits.”

Benny and I snap our attention to each other, our eyes wide.

“A-Asher?” Benny says. “You’re in California?”

“Don’t you have a game?” I ask.

“Yes, but because you’re morons, I’m here,” Asher says.

“Asher,” West scolds. Ah, they’re going to play good cop, bad cop. Fun.

“You’re allowed to ask for time off from the NHL?” I ask, deflecting.

“Not … technically, but I told Coach I had dumbass little brothers and needed to deal with something, so he did me a favor and put me down as a healthy scratch. The press is going to have a field day with that.”

“So, where are you?” West asks.

“We’re at my apartment,” I say.

“Real helpful,” Asher says sarcastically. “Considering we thought you were still in the dorms at State, we have no idea where that is.”

“Maybe we don’t want to tell you until you stop being angry at us,” Benny says.

“We’re not angry at you.” West sounds genuine, but is he?

“I am,” Asher says. “At both of you.”

West’s voice becomes muffled, but he does a shit job of trying to hide what he’s saying. “Dude, we’re trying to get them to tell us where they are. Stop antagonizing them.”

“You know that Benny is in on it,” Asher whispers back.

Yeah, can still hear you guys.

I glance up at Benny and mouth, “What do we do?”

“Here’s the deal,” Benny says. “We’ll tell you where we are if you promise not to yell at us until we explain everything.”

Our older brothers are silent for a beat.

“I can’t wait to find out how you explain a dorm fire and getting kicked out of school and keeping it a secret for an entire semester. Give us the address.”

And even after that, Benny still gives them the address. Probably because they didn’t mention anything about our cheating scandal.

Then, as they end the call, Benny grips my shoulder. “It was really nice being your twin. I’ll miss you when they kill you.”

“That implies they’re not going to kill you too. Especially once we come clean about everything.”

“About that …”

I point at him. “No. You can’t get out of this. If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”

Of course, as I say that, Felix makes an appearance, running his hand through his wild curls and talking through a yawn. “That sounds like some hot twin porn stuff.”

“We should really ease them into this,” Benny says. “One chaos twin drama at a time, and they obviously already know about you. They can stay in the dark about me.”

“I have a question,” Felix says. “Are your big brothers really that scary? They’re not actually going to hurt you, right?”

“Of course not,” I say. “But …”

“We don’t want to disappoint them,” Benny says. “West gave up his NHL career for us, and we always felt like we had to do well at everything so it would be worth him doing that.”

“Ah. I can understand not wanting to disappoint parents.”

I stand. The pain in my ribs has somewhat subsided. Maybe I rolled on my side before I woke up and aggravated it. It still hurts, but it’s not a sharp stabbing pain when I move now, only a dull ache.

“They’re on their way. I’m going to go shower and try to get all this hangover off me.”

I walk away to Harrison’s voice, but he’s not talking to me. “I don’t think your brother knows how hangovers work.”

Maybe not, but at least in the shower, the water will cover my tears.

I want to take it all back. If time traveling was a thing, I’d go all the way back to middle school and slap past me upside the head. Then maybe bang Benny’s and my heads together and tell them to speak up. To ask for help. To turn to people who can actually help instead of each other.

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: What do you get when two dumbasses are dumb? A whole fucking mess.

Oh, wait. Jokes are supposed to be funny.

To give them credit, both West and Asher let us get the whole story out before they react, just like they promised. I only worry that it isn’t on purpose, and now they’re in some joint catatonic state.

We didn’t hold back. We told them everything.

My roommates made themselves scarce when West and Asher arrived, even Harrison. Though I assume Harrison is close by for when Ben needs him afterward. Benny didn’t want Harrison to see our dysfunction. Like that didn’t already happen when we went home for Christmas break. On the other hand, that was regular dysfunction, not life-altering drama like this. I also spent most of that trip coming up with excuses and distractions from all the questions about school.

“This is all my fault,” West mutters and leans forward on the couch, his forearms resting over his legs.

“Wait, what?” I frown.

“I should’ve done better. I should’ve known you were struggling. I should’ve⁠—”

“As much as I would love to blame you for it all,” Asher says, “this is the fault of our circumstance.”

“When did you get all insightful?” Benny snarks.

“I don’t know. Maybe when you were cheating your way through life?” Asher snarks back.

Those two are so much alike. Fight snark with snark.

“Asher’s right though,” I say. “It was a mistake we never should’ve started because once we’d gotten away with it, we realized it was easier to keep it going than deal with it. We were already dealing with so much.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t ask for help,” West says. “Well, I do understand. We were all going through so much back then, and⁠—”

“And you were coming to terms with being a guardian of kids who you barely had anything to do with,” Asher adds.

“On top of losing our parents,” Benny chimes in.

I hate that it’s all come down to this. “We knew you were struggling with us from the beginning. You couldn’t tell us apart, and you were always so frazzled, and Asher was chasing after Rhys half the time, who kept sneaking out with his girlfriend.”

Benny hangs his head. “I went to Rhys for help with my math, but even the math genius couldn’t help me.”

“We took the easy way out, and it might have taken us a long time to learn our lesson, but once we’d been doing it for most of high school, we realized we were both too far behind to own up to it. And then with the SATs, we knew there was no way we’d get high enough scores to get into college without cheating. It was something that got away from us, and if Harrison hadn’t found out about it, I have no doubts we’d still be doing it.”

Asher runs his hand through his hair. “Okay, that’s one clusterfuck we need to work out. What about the other one? The fire. Why did you take the blame for your roommate? If you hated college so much, you could’ve told us and dropped out. I’d never planned to go to college, you know that, so why⁠—”

“Again, it was the easy way out. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. I didn’t want to tell you and disappoint you until I had a plan, but then I met Jonah, and coming up with a plan was put on the back burner.”

“He’s skirting the real issue,” Benny says. “Yes, he hated classes and the whole college experience, but I half think he hated it because he never truly believed he deserved it. If we had gotten here on our own⁠—”

I cut him off. “You’re wrong.”

He cocks his eyebrow at me. “Am I?”

“Mostly. You’re right that I think I don’t deserve to get a degree, but I also don’t want one. At least, not in engineering.”

“What do you want to do?” Asher asks.

“Anything hockey related. Coaching. Playing. Anything. All I know is three years was way too long to go without it.”

“You could come home and go to CU to get a teaching degree with a coaching-specific certificate and play for us in the meantime,” West suggests. For, like, the fifth time since I told him about my coaching job.

“Screw that,” Asher says. “I’ll talk to Buffalo. As soon as you’re back in good shape, you’re signed.”

“And to get back in good shape, you could play D1 college hockey,” West says.

I glance at Benny, who’s already staring at me. “If you finish your degree in Vermont, West can bribe Jasper with sex so he can teach you math.”

“Jas is going to be so pissed when I tell him,” West says. “The kid he helped raise since ten years old cheated in math. He’s the head of the math department, for fuck’s sake.”

“Hey, yeah,” Benny says. “How come he didn’t notice us switching?”

“Too busy making sure West was okay while West was trying to make sure you were all okay,” Asher says. “With five kids to make sure they’re not drowning in grief, it was easy to miss it. Plus, you two were pro con artists from birth. You even used to pull that switching shit on Dad.”

True.

“But that’s all in the past now,” Asher continues. “So that’s behind us, and what we need to focus on are steps to work toward a goal. Is the goal going to be moving back home to finish off degrees and train to get back in your best physical shape?”

“I was kind of hoping I could stay and do most of my degree here and pick up the math subjects back home,” Benny says.

“If you don’t get expelled first when Jonah goes to the dean,” I point out.

“You think he will?” West asks.

“I dunno. He’s really pissed at us, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t. Another professor was there when it all came out too, so if Jonah doesn’t, Dr. Sinclair probably will.”

“Okay,” Asher says, a concentration line forming on his forehead. “Where can I find Jonah and this other professor?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m gonna go talk to him.”

“Talk or threaten?” Benny asks.

“Talk. If the cheating news is going to get to the dean, there’s no way Benny could finish his degree here, and we’ll know what our next step is—moving you both back home where West and Jasper will be able to keep an eye on you so you don’t fuck everything up again.”

Even though West is the oldest, Asher has always been better at problem-solving. West gets flustered way too easily and overwhelmed. Asher has so much chaos inside him that he thrives under pressure because it’s just another day for him.

Where Benny takes after Asher, I take after both of them. I’m chaotic and flustered.

Well, didn’t I win the genetic lottery?