“As if I’m worried about that.” Luke’s frown deepened. “I’m more concerned that Billy will fuck up Gus’s life like he has his own. My brother is a shitshow of chaos.”
“So am I,” Mia countered. “And you both deal with that just fine.”
“Yeah, but—” Luke caught himself before the conversation strayed into a zone I was definitely not comfortable playing in. These days, dude was my BFF whether he’d admit it or not, but I wasn’t down with bearing witness to whatever dirty words had been about to come out of his mouth to my sister.
To distract myself from the smouldering smirk he sent her way instead, I let my mind drift to his brother. With his dirty blond hair and chiselled jaw, Luke had long been the hottest dude in town, if the graffiti on lampposts and toilet doors was to be believed. But for me, it had always been Billy. He was darker than Luke, in more ways than one. Wild. More hooligan than lovable rogue.
Even if I never saw him again, I’d remember his kiss forever.
Chapter Two
Billy
Calling my brother was already shaping up to be the worst idea I’d ever had. I loved him, but fuck, he got on my nerves. We hadn’t had a real relationship since he’d abandoned me to join the Navy a lifetime ago. I didn’t remember his eighteen-year-old self being so righteous.
“You’ll have to behave yourself,” he said. “And get a job. In fact, you can work with me.”
“Piss off.” I rolled my eyes in spite of my current situation, hiding from the drizzle in a bus stop, feeding a pouch of cat food to Grey while a confused clutch of pensioners looked on. “I’m not spending my life up a ladder just because you tell me to.”
“No? So what are you going to do? Get a job in town? Not likely given your reputation, is it?”
“Nah, you’re right. Rushmere’s finest would rather have me crawling around their rooftops than pulling pints in the pub. Makes perfect sense.”
“Don’t be a knob. I’m trying to help you.”
I knew he was, but we were having the same problem we always had: he didn’t know how to navigate the fact that I didn’t want his charity, and I was too much of a dick to take it easy on him, even now, when I had nowhere else to turn.
Mutinous silence bloomed between us. In another life, I might’ve hung up, but the fact that the conversation was happening at all was testament to a year spent trying to fix the clusterfuck our relationship had become. I loved my brother. I cared about him. I just...couldn’t seem to tell him.
I sighed and knocked my forehead on the grimy glass of the bus stop. “Fine. I’ll do whatever you want. But I’m bringing my cat.”
“You don’t have a cat.”
Like magic, the resentment was back. “How the fuck would you know that? Regular visitor round my gaff, are you?”
Luke legit fucking growled, and I pictured him running his hands through his hair, tugging, as he paced around our mother’s kitchen, and she looked on, wringing her hands as she despaired of her obstinate boys. Then I remembered Fran wasn’t there. That she was living the life in Spain, and my surly, irritable older brother really was my only option.
It was Luke’s turn to sigh, and he blew out a breath like the weight of the world had taken up residence in his lungs. “Okay then. Bring your fictitious cat.”
Luke ended the call, leaving me scowling at my phone and wondering how my brother could enrage me so easily when all I wanted was a cup of tea and nap. I hadn’t called him for a fight.
Or had I?
I was so tired I couldn’t remember, and my phone buzzed with a message before I could figure it out.
Luke: Gus says you can bring the cat
Billy: Gus? What’s he got to do with it?
Luke: u’re staying with him.
Wow. Four words that turned an already sucky arrangement upside down. Jesus-fucking-Christ. Gus Amour? Now there was a face I hadn’t given a second thought to since I’d reconciled myself to my spectacular—insert sarcasm—return to my hometown. And now his broad shoulders and kind eyes filled my brain, it was hard to imagine why he hadn’t been the only thought to cross my mind.
That’s right. My brother’s girlfriend’s brother. Damn. That dude had been the first bloke my nineteen-year-old self had ever kissed. Hadn’t been the last, but fuck if he wasn’t the only one I could remember as if it were yesterday. His pillowy lips and strong jaw. His gentle hands on my shoulders as he’d pushed me away and told me it could never happen cos our families were too entwined, even though his sister was—at the time—long gone, and my dickhead brother had been MIA for years. I’d pretended I was too drunk to care and had stumbled away without looking back, but no booze in the world had ever made my knees wobble the way he had, and our brief encounter had put me on a path of self-discovery I’d probably never have set foot on without him. Fantasies became realities. And somehow every soul who’d graced my bed had never held a candle to Gus Amour.
A feeling I couldn’t describe settled deep in my bones. The yard had been tucked away in the back end of nowhere, a vibe that had suited me after a shitty accident had put me on my arse. Getting my shoulder to work again had kept me occupied for six months, and then Grey had come along to keep me company. Not a girl or a boy had turned my head for so long, I’d forgotten I was even sexual, let alone fucking bisexual. But Gus Amour was something else. Even before that drunken night, I’d spent my entire puberty obsessing over him, and the hot girl who’d lived across the street,
