He fanned the flame too far at the bar, leaning in and taunting me, and the naive, annoyingly optimistic twenty-year-old version of myself snapped, declaring loudly in his smug-ass face how I was leaving for France to become someone, and he’d stay the conceited, irritating, selfish ass he always was.
He pulled away and feigned being wounded, but he’d burned me enough to know better than to trust whatever appearance he flashed to the world.
“We’ll see, Peaches,”was all he said with a jaded expression before stomping away.
The old story should have ended there.
This ambush is an entirely unnecessary epilogue written by Eli Blythe and probably Caleb, considering our weird phone call.
“Hey, dear. Are you okay?” Maria brushes a piece of hair out of my face.
The curls atop Eli’s head bounce with the sudden jerk of his chin in my direction. He quits arguing with Liam and marches toward me. I offer a faint smile. Suddenly, everything good and cheesy in my stomach violently churns.Shit.I press my scraped hands into the wet cobblestones, ignoring the stinging pain, and urgently stand. Emptying the contents of my stomach into a nearby trashcan, I startle an unfortunate passerby.
“Désolée,” I murmur. My insides twist again. Fingers trail the back of my neck, gathering my hair as my muscles clench and release a second time. This doesn’t ease the sharp sting of betrayal, but Eli’s never been the hair-holding kind of friend, so I appreciate this sudden shift of consideration.
“Good?” My heart stutters as the rough sandpaper voice,decidedly not Eli’s,slides against my ear.
My spine stiffens. “Yup,” I squeak, cursing the gods of chaos for never looking favorably on me. Of course our first interaction in six yearsis unfolding disastrously for me.
Readying to meet his smug-ass gloating face, I take one last collecting breath and turn around for Judgement Day.
A hint of mischief flickers across Liam’s features, but otherwise, they remain soft and apologetic. Huh. That’s new. “I didn’t know,” he whispers.
“I believe you.” The words fall out of me, ignoring the cornerstone tenet of our interactions.Never trust a word that leaves that man’s mouth.
I must have whacked my noggin harder than I thought.
Liam cocks his head to the side. A crooked grin rakes across his face, and he offers up the can of cheese. “Oh, and you dropped this.”
My stomach churns again, and I shake my head. There’s another one in my purse for later, anyway. “I’m—I’m good.”
The quirk of his lips falters, and he reaches around me and tosses the can in the trash. His chest bumps into mine, and I hit the edge of the waste bin. My arms flail in a way I thought only happened in cartoons as the massive gravitational pull of my ass threatens to bring me down again. Liam’s sturdy hand falls to my back and stabilizes me, saving me from becoming one with the trash I really am.
“Steady there,” he says, fingers splayed, burning away the chill of the sidewalk. Soft crinkles edge the corners of his eyes as he peers down at me. “You took quite the hit.”
That probably explains why my insides are humming at a frequency I haven’t felt in years.
“I—uhm. I need to—there’s a certain—” I sigh, frustrated my tongue has picked this exact moment to take a vacation (hopefully it decided to go someplace nice like…Nice…). “I’m going to go yell at Ignatius,” I say, stepping around him and peeking back bashfully. “Thanks for—you know.” I gesture at the trashcan.
He dips his head, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. Of course.”
The defeated manner of his tone pricks my chest, and I toss another glance his way before marching over to Eli. His gaze cuts to mine, and his lips part as if to say more. My heartbeat falters, and I pull my attention away, directing it at the guilty party who has gone unpunished for far too long.
“Remind me to never listen to your brother again.” Eli groans, scrubbing his hands over his face.
“I shouldn’t have to remind you at all,” I grumble, pouncing back on my heels as my path of destruction is suddenly interrupted by one of the greatest dangers to pedestrians in Paris—a tourist on wheels, phone out, navigating their way over to the Iron Lady. Go home, the bitter, angry old man part of me jaws.
“For the record, your brother’s very persuasive.” Eli nervously laughs. The general merriment held in his emerald eyes diminishes, and he glances down at my hand balled to a fist at my side. “So if you feel stabby, take it out on him, please.”
Freakin’ Caleb. Of course my brother tried to pull this off. Liam’s more like a sibling to him than I am, really. The two were inseparable growing up next door, playing football in our backyard, video games in our basement, or spending hours in Caleb’s bedroom, music blaring and eating all the damn food in the house.
At the same time, I was relegated to the porch because, according to sweet Caroline, ladies don’t play football, video games, or eat. It was never apparent to me what ladies did exactly, besides bitterly observing two boys enjoying life and getting stood up by them at debutante balls. But whatever it was, it rendered me nothing more than a pretty little thing Caleb needed to protect. And somebody Liam constantly bothered, tossing me into the backyard pool fully clothed, covering me with brownie batter, and still hanging out at our house when Caleb, two years older than us, scurried off to college.
Phone calls with my brother typically end with him pleading for me to talk to Liam because “He’s perfect for you, kiddo. Come on.”
But Caleb always missed a vital piece of the puzzle. As unappealing as a relationship with the god of the Underworld sounded, there was zero chance the Wonder Boy of Tallow, Massachusetts, Mr. Prom King himself would have been interested in the nothing-burger that was and honestly still is, me. Not with the list of inadequacies my mother would be all-too-happy to point out.
“His matchmaking ass is going to pay for this.”
