Good Girl Complex(Avalon Bay #1)(64)

“Nah, let him cool off,” Alana advises.

Heidi side-eyes me before stalking away, Jay trailing after her like a lovesick puppy. I wonder if they came together. I hope so. Maybe then she’ll stop hating on me so much.

Steph and Alana wear matching frowns as they study me. Whatever. I don’t give a flying fuck what they think right now. Evan deserved every last blow.

Mac grabs my face, inspecting the damage. “You okay?”

I wince when her fingers skim over the rapidly swelling spot beneath my left eye. “I’m fine.” I search her face just as intently. “Are we okay?” I don’t regret slugging Evan over what he said—nobody gets to talk to Mac like that—but I am sorry she had to see it.

Fuck, if this is the thing that drives her way …

She kisses my cheek. “You should go after him.”

I hesitate.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” she promises, as if reading my mind.

I don’t have any choice but to believe her. Besides, Evan loaded up on anger and alcohol roaming the streets at night alone is begging for disaster. So I head down the road to find him. I glance over my shoulder once, twice. Sure enough, Mackenzie is still there, standing by my pickup.

Eventually I catch up to Evan, finding him on a bench in a small playground lit only by a couple of dim streetlights.

“Still got all your teeth?” I ask, taking a seat beside him.

“Yeah.” He rubs his jaw. “You hit like a ten-year-old.”

“Still kicked your ass.”

“I had you.”

“You had shit,” I say, eyeing him with a smirk.

We sit quietly for some time, watching the swings waving in the breeze. It’s been years since Evan and I fought this bad. Really going to blows. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t felt it coming. Shit’s been building up with him for a long time now. Maybe I’m the asshole for not talking to him about it sooner. Then again, taking his own issues out on Mac is weak, and I’m not about to let him keep that up.

“You were out of line back there.”

“Ah, come on. It was a little funny.” He slouches on the bench, spreading his legs like he might slip right off the thing in a pool of liquid.

“I’m serious. She hasn’t done a goddamn thing to you. You got a problem with me, grow up and say so. The snide comments and passive-aggressive bullshit, it stops now.”

“Kind of sounds like you’re giving me an ultimatum.” Evan tips his head toward me. “That what it’s come to?”

“Damn it, dude. You’re my brother. We’re blood. Nothing changes that.” I shake my head, frustrated. “So why are you getting so bent outta shape about her?”

“It’s the principle of the thing. She’s a clone, Coop. Those people, they’ve been standing on our necks since we were kids. Or don’t you remember? Assholes rolling up in their stupid golf carts, throwing drinks on us, running our bikes off the road.”

Evan ended up with a broken arm once. Flipped over his handlebars into a ditch when one of them bumped his tire. We went back a week later and slashed all four of theirs. There are years of that shit. Getting into fights. Tit for tat.

“People,” I remind him. “Not her. You can’t punish Mac for everything one of them’s ever done to you. That’s exactly what I was about to do to her if I’d stuck to the plan. And I would’ve been a bastard for it too.” I groan quietly. “Why can’t you let me have this?”

His shoulders stiffen.

I mean, hell, all of us lived through the daily soap opera that was the Evan and Genevieve show. Constantly bickering in front of everyone. Making us choose sides in arguments we wanted no part of. Breaking up. Screwing around. Getting back together like nothing happened. I never threw a tantrum about it, and I certainly didn’t treat her like crap hoping she’d go away. If Evan was in love with her, that was his own damn problem.

So why now, when I find someone I care about, does he have to be such a jackass about it?

Evan sighs. Scratches his hands through his hair. “I can’t help it, man. It gnaws at me. Why’d it have to be one of them? You could point in any direction and land on ten chicks who would fall to their knees for you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. She’s different. If you gave her even half a chance, you’d see that.”

There’s no good reason Mac and I should work. I can’t give him one. And hell, maybe we won’t work. She’s a stubborn, opinionated pain in my ass. She’s also gorgeous, funny, spontaneous, and ambitious. Turns out, that’s my type. She makes me crazy. I’ve never met a girl that stays on my mind days and weeks after I’ve seen her. She’s under my skin. And for all the ways we’re completely different, she gets me in a way few others do.

If I’m kidding myself, if this whole thing’s bound to blow up in my face, so be it. At least I tried.

“No talking you outta this, then?” he says, his resolve slowly crumbling.

“I’m asking you, as my brother, to accept it.”

He thinks on it. Too long for my taste. For the first time in our lives, we’re on opposite sides, and I have to wonder if there’s too much bad blood there—too much rage toward the clones—to get him back on mine.