Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(33)

“I don’t hate you. I told you that.”

“Your actions, however, indicate otherwise.”

My teeth are clenched so tight, my jaw should have cracked by now. “What have I done for two years that’s so egregious, hmm? So I don’t kiss your ass and indulge your playful antics. I haven’t asked you over for a Sunday barbecue on the back porch simply because we’re neighbors. After two years of biting my tongue, I gave you hell for the first time on the field at practice. And frankly, that was long overdue. You know why? Because you hide who you really are behind that sunshiny shit, and I’m tired of it. You’re suffocating someone inside you who is capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for, and I demand that greatness, for your sake and the team’s.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Oliver says, anger hardening his features. “You don’t know me, Hayes. You don’t get to hold me at arm’s length for years, then try to speak into my life—”

I lean in until our noses nearly touch, and it’s the locker room and my kitchen all over again, except, God help me, I’m so much closer to giving in, to taking what I want and damn the consequences, but I can’t. I won’t.

“I know you better than you think,” I tell him. “And I see straight through the illusion you’ve so deftly crafted. I’ve told you I don’t hate you, and I mean it. If I hate anything, it’s the lie you make yourself live and force everyone around you to maintain.”

Silence rings between us. Oliver stares at me, eyes wide, mouth parted like I’ve stunned him. I should stop. God, I should stop. But I can’t.

I close the distance between us, my mouth nearly brushing the shell of his ear. I breathe him in because I can’t help myself, and the ache inside me knots so tight, I have no choice but to bathe in the scent of him, trapped in my lungs. Until air finally leaves me on a slow, pained exhale. “Actions speak louder than words, isn’t that the saying? I held your hand across a fucking continent, Oliver Bergman. Do with that what you will.”

Before I give in and crush my mouth to his, I step back, grab my room key, and storm right out the way that I came.





10





OLIVER





Playlist: “Young & Sad,” Noah Cyrus





The door snicks closed at the same moment I realize my jaw is hanging open.

“Holy shit,” I whisper to the room.

I plop onto the mattress like I’ve been knocked there. I think I have been. By shock.

“Shit, shit, shit.” I fumble in my bag for my phone and call Viggo.

“You rang?”

Standing, I pace the room and tug at my hair. “What did you do?”

“I mean, I’ve done lots of things since I last saw you. Which one—”

“Viggo.” I make a fist with my empty hand, wishing it was the front of his shirt and I could give him a good shake. “Something is…something’s going on with Gavin and…” I exhale heavily, scrubbing my face.

“Gavin and…?” he prompts.

I sigh miserably. “And me.”

“Hmm.” He sniffs. I can see him leaning against the kitchen counter at Mom and Dad’s house, which is where he’s living right now. Next comes the crunch of an apple between his teeth. Around his bite, he says, “Why would you think I’ve done something?”

It sounds ridiculous, but that doesn’t make my suspicion that he and my brothers have wreaked some kind of covert havoc on my psyche any less unprecedented. “Because ever since we sat out in Freya and Aiden’s backyard and you dipshits forced a Bergman Brothers Summit on me, things have completely changed between us.”

Another crunch on his apple. “Isn’t change what you wanted?”

“Dammit, Viggo, not this kind of change! I did not want to escalate my antagonism between my now co-captain and myself beyond the level of mutual juvenile pranks, to holding hands across the goddamn country, then being stuck in the same hotel room WITH ONLY ONE BED!”

There’s a brief pause. “Did you say only one bed?”

“Viggo!”

“What? I’m asking a question!”

I groan in frustration, dropping my head back and staring up at the ceiling. “Yes,” I mutter bleakly. “Only one bed.”

“And you…held hands?” he asks carefully.

I glare up at the ceiling. “I had a panic attack during the flight. He held my hand and talked to me, helped me calm down before it got bad. Then I fell asleep and woke up and he was still holding my hand, and now we’re in a hotel room together and he was acting all intense and concerned about what happened on the plane, and then he said something really cryptic, and it freaked me out, because this makes no sense. He’s a giant asshole who hates me and who I frankly cannot stand either, but holy shit, we keep getting really in each other’s personal spaces, and now he drops this, like, poetic bomb on me!” I barrel on, sucking in a sharp breath. “‘I held your hand across a fucking continent, Oliver Bergman. Do with that what you will.’ That’s what he said!”

Finally, I’m done. The other end of the line is silent for a moment, until my brother lets out a long, slow whistle. “Wow. That is poetic. He really said that?”