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Right then, the front door opens.Chapter Twenty-FiveNatalieI walk into the townhouse to find Connor and Noah lying flat on their backs in the living room, splayed out like starfish, catching their breaths.
“What’s going on? Why are you both on the floor? Why is your lip bleedi—did you get in a fight?!”
Noah pushes up to sit and so does Connor, both turning to look at me over their shoulders with sheepish expressions. They look like roadkill, both of them, the blood spilling down their faces accented by swelling cheeks and messy hair.
I drop my keys and a box of donuts on the table in the foyer then walk closer to inspect them better. I lean down and take Connor’s chin in my hand gently, turning his face so I can look at the damage to his cheek. There’s a small laceration from where the skin split and it’s already swelling up pretty bad. Noah’s dabbing blood from his lip, and the area around his right eye is starting to turn purple and puffy.
“What happened?” I ask gently, pushing to my feet so I can go get some ice for their wounds.
“I told Noah about us,” Connor explains. “He didn’t take it well.”
Connor’s jocular tone doesn’t sit well with my brother. He glares over at him with narrowed eyes. “Yeah, we’re not at the joking stage yet. Just to be clear, I still wouldn’t mind landing one more punch.”
I wave my hands. “No. No punches are going to be thrown in my presence. Not around the pregnant person, please.”
There are two seconds of absolute silence that follow my words, and then Noah leaps over onto Connor with full force and knocks him back to the ground.
“You got her pregnant?!” he shouts.
Oh okay. Yes. I see where I went wrong here. Connor had apparently only worked up to telling Noah about our relationship, not about the baby. My bad.
There’s more tussling and I circumvent them on the floor while they go at it. In Connor’s defense, he’s mostly just trying to push Noah off him. It’s Noah who’s overreacting. I walk straight to the freezer, grab the bucket of ice off the door, and head straight back toward them so I can dump the whole thing out onto them.
Ice cubes rain down and they hiss and jump apart. I stand over them with a proud smile and an empty bucket.
“Noah, that’s enough. Look, his cheek is swelling. And your eye looks terrible.” I feel really bad for Connor, actually. He should have waited to tell Noah with me present. Or better yet, he should have left the house, flown to another state, and let me break the news to Noah on my own. Noah would have taken it a lot better that way, I think.
Connor stands up and swipes blood off his face before reaching down for Noah’s hand. Noah looks up and scowls at him. Still, Connor doesn’t drop his hand. They stay like that, creating a silly tableau among all the scattered ice cubes.
Connor wiggles his fingers teasingly and finally Noah accepts his offer, reaching up to allow Connor to help lift him back to his feet. It’s a good start, I think.
“Remember what I said, okay?” Connor says, his voice low. “It’s true.”
Noah slices his gaze over to him, and he thinks for a moment before nodding.
I frown, wondering what he could be referring to, but I know better than to ruin this momentary peace treaty they’ve struck. Instead, I’m going to bolster it with the warm donuts I left by the door.
I hurry to grab the box and make sure to have the lid open when I walk back into the kitchen, wafting the aroma toward them with my hand. They’re like two bears I’m trying to calm down with a hunk of steak. Bears! Hey bears! Are you hungry?!
They’re at the sink, washing up, wiping their faces and turning the water light pink with their blood. It’s so strange to see them side by side, passing each other napkins when a second ago they were rolling around punching each other. It’s the strangest thing that they can fight with their fists one minute then act perfectly civil the next, standing at a sink and tending to their wounds.
I guess in their eyes, all of this was justified. Connor probably felt guilty for not telling Noah the truth from the beginning, and Noah probably felt just fine about knocking Connor on his ass for dating me behind his back. Hopefully now we can all move on, right?
“Donut anyone?!”After breakfast, Noah says he’s going to head upstairs and shower, and I don’t make a big thing of it. Oh, you’re taking a shower? Cool! Take your time! Scrub all the crevices!
Then I stay rooted to my spot as he rounds the corner, pounds up the stairs, and locks himself away in his bathroom. The shower turns on and I hear the water rush through the pipes, and in a flash, I’m on Connor. Other than the brief encounter in the bathroom, we haven’t been alone in two days. He’s at the sink and I squeeze my arms around his middle. He groans—apparently I’ve pushed on a fresh wound—but when I try to pull away gently, his hand clamps on my arm and he doesn’t let me go.
