Bad Girl Reputation (Avalon Bay #2)(75)

Playing with Daisy, he shouts something at me about pizza for dinner. I nod absently, while Shelley is telling me there’s a stray cat hanging around outside her work, and she’s gotten it in her head she’s going to take it home. Which makes me think she probably should have had to practice with a pet before having twins, but what the hell do I know?

A chewed-up, sandy tennis ball suddenly lands in my lap. Then a blur of golden fur is flying at my face. Daisy barrels into me to snatch the ball before running away again.

“Hey! What the hell?” I sputter.

Cooper stands over me, all puffed up and bothered. “You talking to Gen?”

Not this again. “No. Fuck off.”

“You’ve been hunched over that thing ever since Riley left. Who is it?”

“Since when do you care?”

“Leave him alone,” shouts Mac, who’s still tossing the ball with Daisy at the tide line.

Cooper does the opposite—he yanks the phone from my hand. Instantly, I’m on my feet, wrestling him for it.

“Why are you such a drama queen?” I get one hand on the phone before he sweeps my leg and we end up rolling around in the sand.

“Grow up,” Cooper grunts back. He digs his elbow into my kidney, still reaching for the phone while we toss around. “What are you hiding?”

“Come on, quit it.” Mac stands over us now with Daisy barking like she’s waiting to get tagged in.

Fed up, I throw sand in his face and climb to my feet, brushing myself off. I shrug in response to Mac’s looks of exasperation.

“He started it.”

She rolls her eyes.

“You’re up to something.” Shaking sand out of his hair, Cooper stands up and snarls at me like he’s ready for round two. “What is it?”

“Eat shit.”

“Quit it, will you?” Mac, ever the peacemaker, utterly fails to get through to him. “You’re both being ridiculous.”

I don’t particularly care that Coop’s suspicious or annoyed. It’s whatever. But he’s got this perpetual sense of entitlement to know and have an opinion on everything I do—and I’m so over it. Over him acting out his hang-ups on me. My twin brother playing a poor approximation of a father I never asked for.

“Can we move on?” Mac says in frustration, glancing between the two of us. “Please?”

But it’s too late now. I’m pissed, and the only thing that will make me feel better is rubbing it in his self-righteous face. “It’s Shelley.”

Cooper comes up short. His face is expressionless for a moment, as if he isn’t sure he heard me right. Then he smirks, shaking his head. “Right.”

I throw my phone at him.

He looks at the screen, then at me. All humor and disbelief has been replaced by cold, quiet rage. “Your brain fall out of your head?”

“She’s getting better.”

“Jesus Christ, Evan. You get how stupid you sound?”

Rather than answer, I glance at Mac. “This is why I didn’t tell him.”

When I turn back, Cooper’s up in my face, all but standing on my toes. “That woman was ready to run off with our life savings and you just, what, go crawling back to Mommy the first chance you get?”

I set my jaw and back away from him. “I didn’t ask you to like it. She’s my mother. And I’m not kidding—she’s making a real effort, man. She has a steady job, her own apartment. She enrolled in beauty school to get her hairdressing certificate. Hasn’t had so much as a sip of booze in months.”

“Months? You’ve been doing this behind my back for months? And you actually believe her crap?”

I swallow a tired sigh. “She’s trying, Coop.”

“You’re pathetic.” When he spits out the words, it’s like he’s had them sitting in his mouth for twenty years. “The time for getting over your mommy issues was when you stopped sleeping with a night-light.”

“Dude, I’m not the one flying off the handle at the mention of her.”

“Look at what you’re doing.” He advances on me, and I take another step back, only because I was just praising my self-restraint to Gen earlier. “One drunk, deadbeat woman walks out on you, so you go fall in love with another one. Man, you can’t hang on to either one of them, and you never will.”

My fist itches to put a dent in Cooper’s face. He can say what he wants about our mother. He’s earned his anger the honest way. But no one talks like that about Gen while I’m around.

“Because you’re my blood, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” I tell him, my voice tight with restraint. “But if you feel like you got too many teeth in your mouth, go ahead and try that shit again.”

“Hey, hey.” Mac wedges herself between us and manages to walk Coop back a couple paces, though his glare still says he’s thinking about my offer. “Both of you take it down a notch.” She puts both hands on Cooper’s chest until he drops his gaze to hers. A few breaths later, she’s got his attention. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe give Evan the benefit of the doubt.”

“We tried that last time.” He flicks his gaze to me. “How’d that turn out?”