by Lindsey Hart
He’d cried. He’d cried about his scraped palms and the gravel in his mouth. He’d cried with fear and pain. And she was there. Whooshed right down that slide after him, except with far more grace. She scooped him up into her arms and held him against her warm sunshine scented chest. The curtain of her dark, fine hair enveloped him, and she told him not to be scared. Told him he was a hero. That he looked like a bird. That she wouldn’t have been brave enough to go down if it wasn’t for him. Told him not to cry.
And he was done.
At five years old, he’d made a vow. Sydney or nothing.
Unfortunately, it was mostly nothing.
“So, I just met this really hot chick the other day,” Sam said slurring his words slightly.
Brothers. Can’t live without them. That was definitely not true.
He could definitely live without Sam coming over to his place a few times a week and insulting him if he could live without Sydney.
Sam has always been big, tall, blonde and athletic. Sam never had to wear geeky glasses or fill into hand me down shoes that were always just a little too big and made him walk funny. Sam never had to have his pant legs rolled up because they were a mile too long. Sam never had his cheeks pinched because he was ‘just too freakin’ cute.’
Sam was one of those homecomings, all American, quarterback types. Seriously. He was the high school team’s quarterback. He was homecoming king. His was pretty much one of those typical stories. Popular in high school. Had everything. Girls, friends, booze, a free ride in college. He liked to party, a little too much, blew it on the field, blew his scholarship, dropped out. Liked to live the glory days and hang out with his old buds every single weekend- made possible by the fact that they hadn’t moved on to bigger better things either, not even sixteen years after graduating.
Still lived in the same Cleveland suburb they grew up in.
Still partied hard and chased women, did the bare minimum to scrape by at a shit job.
Still had the nerve to come over without knocking, put his disgusting dirty shoes up on the coffee table, crack a beer he hadn’t paid for, raid the fridge for a sandwich he made with groceries that weren’t his, and tell his younger brother what to do with his life.
So yeah. Brothers. Definitely can’t live with them. Definitely could live without them. Okay, probably could live without them.
“Jesse? Man?” Sam leaned forward on the couch and did that annoying thing that he knew Jesse hated. He snapped his fingers right under his nose. “Where’d you go there? You just checked right out?”
“I’m tired,” Jesse ground out, beyond irritated. “It’s midnight on a Thursday night. You barge in here half an hour ago, take my kitchen apart, and slam up your muddy shoes on my coffee table after trailing them through my house.”
“So? You have a maid.” Sam bit off another huge portion of that sandwich he’d actually found the skills to assemble- impressive, since he was usually limited to cracking the top off a beer and chewed loudly, with his mouth open.
“That’s not the point.”
“Totally the point. If I was rich enough to not have to clean up after myself, I wouldn’t.”
Jesse rolled his eyes. “You don’t now, and never have, so what would be the difference? And mom isn’t your maid, just an FYI.”
“Shut it.”
“You live in their basement. You should at least bother to keep the stench of rotting food and old bedsheets from reaching the main floor. Do you even wash them in between… uh- sessions?”
Sam flipped him the bird and jammed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. “That’s sick, man. You’re my brother. Not discussing that with you.”
“No, but you think it’s okay to bring home a parade of women into mom and dad’s house when you’re thirty-four years old? Tell me how exactly mom has her hopes pinned on you for a grandchild? Oh, wait? She’s not seriously hoping you’ll slip up one night, is she? Because that’s just wrong. And I know mom and she wants a grandkid the legit way. Committed relationship and all.”
“You’re a prick, you know that?” There was no heat behind Sam’s words, though.
Jesse crossed his arms. He let his beer sweat away onto his lap, without taking a sip. He didn’t even want it, but Sam had, of course, cracked the top and passed it over, like it was his house and Jesse barged in right before midnight, not the other way around.
“Definitely not.”
“Just because you date here and there, doesn’t mean mom doesn’t know that you’re never going to give her a grandkid. Ever. Because you’re never going to be with anyone long enough to produce one. She knows that Skyndey was the only one for you. Always has. Since she won’t give you the time of day, went off and did her own thing down there in San Francisco and hasn’t called up in ten years, she knows that she’s shit out of luck when it comes to you. She’s accepted that you’re going to be single for the rest of your life.”
Sam picked up the other half of the sandwich and put it to his mouth. Raw rage rose up in Jesse, choking off his ability to be reasonable or sane or to even breathe. He could deal with the other shit, but no one- not even Sam, walked in there and called Sydney Skydney. He used to call her that all the time when they were kids, but that was a big hell no and Jesse was like a bull waiting for that red flag to be waved in front of his face.
Before he even knew what he was doing, he reached out and knocked the damn sandwich out of Sam’s hand. It hit the floor, spraying mustard, mayo, cheese, and salami all over the hardwood and up the side of the couch.
“Get the hell out,” he ground out. “Now.”
“Aw, come on, I was just having a bit of fun. It’s true. It’s true and you know it and that’s why you’re getting your damn panties in a twist.”
Jesse sat back on the couch. He realized that he’d spilled his beer down his shirt and that only made him more pissed off. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask his brother why he couldn’t just get his shit together, stop leaching off their parents- which was really leaching off of him, because he was the one who had given them the money to retire, paid them back for all they’d done for him- and grow the fuck up, but he bit it back.
Sam knew. He knew that he’d screwed up his life in a big way. He didn’t know how to fix it and even though Jesse didn’t want to feel sorry for the guy, he kind of did.
And he was his brother.
The curse of can’t live without ‘em and all that.
Instead of retorting something he’d definitely regret, he flicked open his phone and distracted himself with a few mindless minutes of browsing the black void of social media while he calmed the hell down. Since his company took off in a big way and people knew who he was, he had an account under a fake name that was kept ultra-private with only his close friends and family on there. He did it just because his mom had broken down almost a year back and begged him to make one, just so his grandma and grandpa in Georgia could keep in touch. He didn’t do calls and he was admittedly shitty at personal emails, so he kind of got her point. He couldn’t stand to see his mom crying, so he’d given in. Let her make it for him.
He rarely used it.
Correction.
He rarely used it because his mom had gone and done the craziest thing and added Sydney Underhill to it, along with most of his old high school and college friends that he was still close with.
His mom didn’t know what happened with him and Syd, so he could excuse her for that. Syd never reached out to him. Never even acknowledged he was on her friends list other than accepting the request in the first place. Probably because it was the token nice girl thing to do and even though she’d moved on with her life and moved away after he spouted off that bunch of nonsense about loving her and wanting to marry her one day when they were both adult enough to do it, she was still nice.
Probably because to her, he’d always be that little kid she held after he’d bombed off the slide. Her geeky friend. Her roommate. A guy who was so deep in the frien
d’s zone, it wasn’t even funny.
Because yeah, it was definitely not funny what happened.
It ruined everything.
She’d moved away the next damn morning, just packed the most important things in her car and left. Without a word.
Ten years, one month, and six days ago.
He’d kept track. Because he was entirely, utterly, pathetic.
Jesse kept mindlessly scrolling, talking himself down from smashing his fist into his brother’s face, which would have been about the tenth time that month. His mom didn’t need another headache or a bloody nose to clean up, so he got himself the freaking heck under control.
His thumb kept flipping, moving that screen up, his eyes seeing none of it until he stopped because he’d stop every single time he saw her name. Sydney Underhill.
It was the large S that caught his eyes, but then he scanned the rest of what she’d written.
His stomach bottomed out. The world stopped. Time stopped. Everything stopped.
“Looks like you’re in luck,” he found himself saying woodenly into the room, just putting those impossible words out there because they bubbled up inside of him and erupted from his throat before he could take them back. “Looks like I’m getting married.”
CHAPTER 2
Sydney
The infuriating pounding on her door could only mean one thing.
Her mother.
Which, after celebrating her thirty-second birthday in complete style with her friends, even if it was a Thursday night and they showed up at her apartment unannounced and took her out and got her completely hammered at a really nice restaurant on really expensive drinks that they splurged for even though they didn’t have the money, was something she couldn’t deal with.
Sydney had called in sick to work. No one there knew it was her birthday the night before, so she had no doubt she’d get away with the flu she claimed to have.
Her aching head, sloshing stomach, elevated pulse, and the saliva that flooded her mouth like a warning every single time she moved an inch on her bed certainly felt like a bad flu. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever drunk so much. Or been so hungover.
Maybe it was just that she didn’t really drink anymore. Other than a glass of wine here and there, mostly so that she could stomach the terrible dates she went on, she didn’t touch anything more than tea.
Her best friend, Jasmine, rolled up to her apartment at eight the night before. Sydney remembered that much. She’d brought an entire army of their friends with her. Or at least, they were Jasmine’s friends, so that was close enough.
She couldn’t let her wallow in self-pity on her birthday. It had been all of a few months since she’d found out that her boyfriend was cheating on her. For like, the entire six months that they’d gone out. She’d gone over to his place to surprise him. There wasn’t anyone there with him, but by the time she hit the bed with Blane, the lights were still on and she’d found some sketchy red hairs in the bed that clearly didn’t belong to either of them.
The whole thing came spilling out, how he just couldn’t help himself. How he was bored and thought their relationship was stale, but he didn’t want to lose her. Blah, blah, fucking blah.
She’d basically kept herself locked in her apartment since it happened, even though she wasn’t that interested in the guy. Or any guy. Or in dating in general. It was just the assholishness and the humiliation of the act that burned her up and made her want to hibernate in her apartment and never come back out.
Just thinking about it brought a hot wave of bile splashing up Sydney’s throat. She groaned and turned over in the bed, her entire body protesting both the pounding at the door and the movement.
She balled up the sheet in her hand and called out a savage greeting. “If you have a key, why the heck do you even bothering knocking?”
The pounding kept right on going and she cursed her mom. Her mom also moved out to San Francisco to be closer to Sydney. Really, it was because she couldn’t deal with trying to make her own way in the real world and needed the help, but maybe that was just semantics.
Being an only child, her mom was her best friend, when it came right down to it, so Sydney tried not to mind the constant loss of privacy and the many boundaries her mom crossed. She had keys to the apartment and unfortunately, Sydney had come home quite a few times to find her mom there, doing laundry that wasn’t hers, rearranging the fridge and cupboards, doing the dishes… it was completely humiliating.
“God, I’m coming!” Sydney shoved off the bed in one harsh movement that brought on a volley of stars at the edges of her darkened vision.
She mumbled curses, mostly at herself and Jasmine, under her breath as she made her way to the door. She flung it open without thinking, so sure that it was going to be her mom standing there that she hadn’t even bothered to change out of her rumpled pink pajama shorts and matching tank.
On her way to the buzzer to let her mom up, since she obviously must have forgotten her keys, she realized how dank the apartment smelled. Like she really was an animal hibernating in there. Yuk.
She hurried over across her small living room to crack open the large window that stood above the couch. A rush of cool summer morning air rushed up to greet her, pebbling her skin and, unfortunately, her nipples as well.
She stalked over to the intercom, stubbing her toe on the couch in the process. She tried not to curse as she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and blinked back tears at the pain tearing all the way up her leg. She slammed down the button and waited.
Not more than a minute later, a knock sounded at her door. Sydney walked over, muttering things about her mom being forgetful and making up extra keys just so she could glue them to her forehead. She ripped open the door and let out a shriek of surprise at finding a man standing there, a tall, middle-aged man with greying hair and an immaculate black suit. She quickly slammed her arm up over her breasts, since even she could tell that her nipples were hard as rocks from the open window blowing in cool air. It didn’t help that the old dude’s eyes went straight to her chest. When she looked back up at his face, there was a flush riding high on his cheeks, which made her want to die on the spot.
“Jesus,” she muttered. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m pretty sure you have the wrong place.”
The guy actually pulled a sleek looking cell out of his pocket and double checked it. “Nope. I have the right address. Miss Underhill?”
“Er- no…” Sydney went to slam the door on his face, but he stuck a polished shoe out, blocking her way. He flipped the phone around in one wrinkled hand that was surprisingly tanned, to reveal a picture that was unmistakably her.
“I believe this is you? No?”
“No,” she ground out.
She tried even harder to shut the door, actually moved it back an inch and slammed it forward, but the guy’s foot didn’t budge. Something inside of her nearly snapped and fear pulsed through her already pounding brain. What if the guy had ties to the mafia or something? Had she done something to piss off someone from the underworld?
Holy fucking shit. The night before was pretty much a complete blackout after the first few drinks. What the hell had she done? Seeing as she’d woken up, aching all over and cursing herself, in her own bed, she was pretty sure that nothing crazy went down and her friends carried her limp ass body straight into her condo and put her to bed.
“I’m pretty sure this is you.”
“Nope. I have a twin sister. That’s her. You’ll want to go to her place. This is just a big mistake, really…”
“I’m also sure that you’re an only child.”
“How the hell would you know that?” Sydney thought briefly about running, locking herself in the bathroom, and calling the cops, but something about the way the guy was looking at her, with burning deep green eyes and a kindly, far too amused smile, kept her rooted to the spot.
There was also the fact that she couldn’t move faster than the pac
e of a snail without wanting to bend over double and retch up everything she’d eaten for a week.
God, I am never drinking again.
“I have a very specific set of instructions.”
The man stuck out one of those weathered hands. It looked non-threatening, with the blunt fingers and the square nails. The guy was shorter than she was, around five foot eight probably, and likely weighed no more than a buck forty. She figured she could take him down if things ended up getting dicey.
Her hand slowly closed around his. Her curiosity had always been her downfall. Years ago, she’d made the fatal mistake of wondering what it would be like to sleep with a guy who was pretty much her best friend since childhood. That went to hell in a damn handbasket in like, two and a half seconds. She’d moved to San Francisco because she wanted to see if she could make it on her own. Her sense of adventure drove her from home, drove her to try and make something of herself. Which she’d failed pretty miserably at too.
Every single guy she’d ever dated was all wrong. They were mysterious though, handsome. They’d find her at the grocery store, in the park, jogging, when she was out with her friends, when she was volunteering, on public transit. They’d corner her with that mischievous glint in their eye and a wicked smile on their face and she was done. Hook line and sinker because she couldn’t help herself. She just kept thinking that she couldn’t pass up the chance at finding out if it could work, if there was still a single decent guy left in the world.
Unfortunately, she’d found out the hard way there wasn’t and after her latest dating disaster, she’d drunk herself under the table in the most epic of ways. Okay, pretty much the only way one could do that. Likely literally, though she couldn’t remember if her friends had literally fished her out from under the grimy, gum infested underside of a table off sticky floor tiles, thank god.
She arched a brow as her hand curled over his. He had a surprisingly strong grip, for a guy that was likely pushing sixty.
“Francis, right?”