Beautiful Sacrifice (The Maddox Brothers, #3)(26)

Taylor didn’t hesitate. “Not even a little. I know exactly what to expect from you.”

“And how is that?”

“Because I’m fairly certain that we’re the same person.”

My eyebrows shot up, unable to hide my surprise at his conclusion, and I offered a single nod. “Aliens it is.”

“You going to quit busting my balls?” he asked, crossing his arms.

I crawled back over to the chair and sat down, hooking my legs over the arm. “Probably not, but it’ll just be run-of-the-mill Falyn bitchery, and it won’t be because I’m trying to get rid of you.”

Taylor sat on his knees in front of the television, pulled on the knob to turn it on, and then twisted the dial to channel three. “You forgot the movie.”

I went to the closet and pulled it from a stack before tossing it to him. He pulled the tape out of its cover and fed it into the VCR’s front slot. Once the tape settled in, the movie began to play. For a few seconds, the picture along with the somber violins playing during the opening credits became fuzzy, and then it all cleared up just as Ripley’s spaceship appeared in the distance, a tiny speck of white among the darkness.

Taylor walked on his knees to the sofa before crawling up and stretching out.

As I returned to my chair, a tiny part of me wanted to be polite and explain why I was being so hard on him, but I squashed it down to where I kept the old me. Explanations and apologies were a waste for someone like me. Facing forward and remembering to forget were the only things I had, and under no conditions would I ever allow myself to feel—for anyone—and risk any other similar feelings to come to the surface.

Taylor reached down to the crotch of his shorts and adjusted, tugging at the navy fabric. Once he was satisfied with the location of his junk, he pulled down his T-shirt.

I rolled my eyes. He didn’t notice.

One arm was propping his head as he sat with his eyes glued on the screen.

Just as the rescue ship crashed and Ripley was apologizing to Newt, Taylor put our jeans in the dryer and started a new load in the washer. He returned to the couch, repeating Newt’s line with a perfect young girl’s British accent, “‘They mewstly come at night … mewstly.’”

I chuckled, but he ignored me, not saying another word until the end credits.

My eyes were heavy. I was feeling the effects of a long Saturday on my feet.

“You’re right,” he said, standing up. “It’s a classic.”

“It might take a while to get all those jeans dry,” I said.

Taylor opened the dryer door and checked. “Yep, still damp.” He turned the knob to reset the time, and then he stretched out on the sofa again, his eyes blinking twice before they closed.

“You can’t sleep here,” I said.

“Okay. But can I accidentally fall asleep here?”

“No.”

He shook his head, his eyes still closed. “I’m even doing your damn laundry. You could at least let me take a nap between loads.”

“I’m going to bed soon. You can’t be here while I’m sleeping.”

“Why not?”

“I’m still not convinced that you aren’t a serial killer.”

“You think I just wanted to wait to murder you until after we enjoyed a movie together? I hate to break it to you, Ivy League, but I don’t need to wait for you to fall asleep to overpower you. You might be scrappy, but I’ve got at least fifty pounds of muscle on you.”

“I’ll give you that. You still can’t stay here. Just because you don’t want to sexually assault me doesn’t mean you don’t want to rob me.”

He shot me a dubious look. “Sorry, but I don’t need your retro Zenith. I have a badass seventy-two-inch flat screen on my wall at home.”

“Where is home? In Estes Park?”

“Yep. I’ve thought about moving here a few times, but all my buddies and my brother are living either there or in Fort Collins. But it seems like the Alpine group always ends up here.”

“One of your brothers lives in Estes?”

“Yeah.” His voice strained as he stretched. “We’ve always been kind of inseparable. I have two brothers back in Illinois and one in San Diego.”

I paused. “Do you ever go home?”

“As much as I can. Between fire seasons.”

“So, after October?”

“Yeah. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays. My baby brother got married this past spring, kind of on the fly. They’re planning a real ceremony on their anniversary, after the bachelor party and stuff. I’ll be going back for that for sure.”

“Why?”

“The second ceremony? I guess her best friend was kind of pissed that she wasn’t invited to the first one.”

“So … you went to the same college in the same town where you graduated high school?”

“Yes, Falyn. What insult would you like to issue for that?”

“None. It’s cute. I imagine that it’s a little like high school but with less rules.”

“Isn’t that what college is anyway?”

“Not really. But I went to Dartmouth.”

“Shut up.”

I nuzzled my cheek against the arm of the chair, utterly content with how mean we were being to each other. Taylor began tapping at his cell phone, and I relaxed, feeling like an invisible one-hundred-pound blanket was draped over me.