Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(65)

“You believe we’re cursed?” I ask Beck.

“Nah. Met too many witch doctors over the years. Your case is too boring.”

He was always unpredictable even before the boy band days. Now, he’s unpredictable with a worldly bent, which is mildly terrifying at times.

“Can you convince Ellie?” I ask.

“You want me to convince my sister that I know more than she does about something? Dude. It’s one thing to say you love her. It’s another to act like you don’t know her at all.”

“The Ellie I know would say fuck the universe.”

His smile drops. “Yeah. Fucking Blond Caveman.”

I start. “You—”

“Her ex. The douche-nugget.”

“Didn’t know you called him that too.” A thought strikes me, and I squint at him. “Was this your plan when you asked me to annoy her?”

“That you break my dishwasher and burn my house down?”

“To hook me and Ellie up.”

“Nah. That was Levi.”

I owe another buddy a text. “Levi,” I repeat doubtfully.

“After you showed up at the hospital, he said the only other time he’s seen that look on a man’s face was Tripp, when Jessie had all those complications with delivery.”

“You miss the part where it was my fault she was on the road?”

“Oh, go shove your responsibility complex up your ass. You weren’t the drunk shitbag who hit her, and you weren’t the fuckweasel who dumped her on Christmas Eve. She made up her mind she wasn’t staying at Mom and Dad’s that night the minute she saw you, and we both know it. She just wanted to pick a fight, just like you wanted to pick a fight. It was shitty timing, but it wasn’t your fault. Got it?”

“Yeah,” I mutter.

I don’t know if I believe him yet, but I hear him.

Maybe Ellie’s right.

Maybe we are safer apart.





Twenty-Eight





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 cannot. 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.”