I hesitate. It still doesn’t feel right ratting out Isabella to someone trying to destroy her relationship—no matter how desperate I am to get into Keats’ pants.
“Look, I appreciate that you’re trying to protect your friend, and I respect that,” he says, reading my mind.
A cold finger of fear runs up my arm—what else can he discern? I’d better watch what I think around him.
“But I assure you, I wouldn’t be doing this to my brother if I weren’t pretty sure I’m in love with Isabella.”
I nod mutely, lips clamped into a tight smile, nauseous to the pit of my stomach. I knew this was going to hurt, but that was especially painful to hear.
“If…if you want to pull out of our deal…” Keats begins to offer, sounding reluctant.
No!
“You’re not getting out of it that easily. I’m driving that Audi,” I say coolly. After much bargaining, I’d managed to score ten lessons using his beloved car. I take a deep breath and start. “I don’t think Isabella changed her mind about you. She just got to know Byron better. I mean, they’d been friends since they were kids—it was just a natural progression.”
Keats nods, a thoughtful expression on his face. “See, that’s what I’m thinking of doing, too. Get to know Isabella better. Show her we can be friends—that she can confide in me. Then, if there’s trouble in paradise, guess who she’ll come running to?”
“That sounds evil.”
“That is almost exactly what Byron did to us. How is this different?” He dumps the chopped up broccoli into a colander he found under my sink.
“Your brother didn’t do it on purpose.”
“That’s arguable. Look, he should’ve made his move on her before she was with me. And like I said last time, what Dad did to Mom was shitty. But I understand now why he did it—this unrequited bullshit eats away at you. You know?”
I nod, on the verge of laughing at the irony of it all. I bite my lower lip and probably appear sympathetic instead.
“And it would be too late once Isabella’s married, or I marry someone else. And if there were kids involved? Hell, I’m not putting my kids through what my dad did to our family.”
“You want kids?”
“Yeah. Eventually. Little Keats Junior and his yet-to-be-named sister.”
Something stirs in my stomach, little butterflies of hope, at the thought of having Keats’ babies. I tense up instantly. What babies? I have no plans for babies. Mental note: check the use by date on all the condoms in my possession; cull anything close to expiring.
“My wife can name her if she likes,” he finishes, and the bugs in my belly just got massacred at the mention of his future spouse.
I can’t believe I’m jealous of an imaginary woman. Luckily, he doesn’t see me flinch since he’s facing the stove while he heats the wok.
I pay careful attention to the mushroom for extra measure—I don’t want him to see the hurt in my eyes. “I thought Linda said you weren’t the ‘marrying kind’?” I hope I sound off-hand as I put my knife down.
“I wasn’t.” He pours oil into the wok and flicks water at it from the tap over my kitchen sink. “When the oil starts to crackle, it’s hot enough,” he explains like the chef of a cooking show. He puts the garlic in the wok, later followed by the onion.
“So what changed?” The smell of caramelising garlic and onion fills the air, making my stomach grumble. I haven’t had non-diet food in five months.
“Isabella.” He looks down at the pork slices, a blush to his cheeks.
The apron he takes in his stride, but this he turns pink over? He must be in love. I’m going to be sick.
He scrapes the pork pieces into the wok, the oil instantly sizzling as it touches the meat. “Anyway, let’s start with Isabella’s favourite things,” he says pushing around the sautéing ingredients with a wooden spoon. “So, what’s her favourite colour?”
Chapter 9
“Holy fuck, Jess. Easy.” Keats winces. “Let’s just go slowly. Please.”
I grit my teeth and ignore him, going for it.
I press down on the gas, and the surroundings zoom past—trees, road, road barriers, hills in the distance, all a blur. I see the corner up ahead. I take it at high speed, angling my body in the direction I want to travel, willing my ride to make it. But the tires screech as the car skids and gravel flies. I turn my head to look at Keats sitting beside me. He’s grimacing like he wishes he’d put on a seatbelt, fingers tensely gripping his seat.
The car suddenly flips, goes airborne and I smash it into trees, landing on the asphalt upside down with a thud.
Game Over.
Keats gets off his beanbag in a huff, chucking his controller onto the saggy cloth. It’s Sunday morning, a couple of weeks since he first cooked for me, and Keats and I made plans to meet today for my very first driving lesson. I didn’t realise it meant a couple of hours using a steering wheel controller and a car racing game while he sat like the proverbial backseat driver beside me. He walks over to my TV and unplugs the game console with the crisp moves of the pissed off.
I can’t help but laugh.
“God. Chillax, Keats.”
“Don’t tell me to ‘chillax’. You just killed us.”
I laugh harder. Damn he looks amazing in a grey vee-neck knit top and khaki cargo shorts, even when he’s being a baby. “You bring over a racing game for me to practice on and you expect me to go slowly? All the other drivers were passing us.”
The corners of his mouth are down but his lips twitch like he’s ready to see the funny side of this morning’s “driving lesson”. “I couldn’t find a driving game that didn’t involve racing.”
He slips the gaming console back into its box. He brought
