Page 5

“Jesus,” Dillon hisses, righting me. It’s then I notice the circles under his eyes and how tired he looks. Normally, Dillon holds an air of calm about him, but the stress is in the slant of his eyebrows. The slight frown of his mouth, the flush of frustration on his cheeks. “Just go, Emerson. Okay? I’ll text you.”

It isn’t until I’m halfway back down the mountain that I realize he never responded.

Emerson

“What are we even doing?” Zane asks. Loudly. I grit my teeth at him with a quiet hiss and pinch his side.

“Hush, you big dummy.” The bush in front of me is the perfect size for someone my height, but if the people on the porch turn around, they will absolutely see my brother frowning at them over the top. It takes me tugging on his shirt three times before he crouches next to me, frown still firmly in place.

It’s been three days since Friday, the day Dillon said he would text me. On Friday, I barely noticed. Saturday, I was sending my phone annoyed glares every few hours. Sunday, I was typing out long, unnecessarily angry texts and then deleting them before I could send them to the person named Does Not Exist in my contact list. Today is Monday, and I have had it with sitting around, waiting for something to happen.

I need action.

I need answers.

No friendships are going to repair themselves, not when the parties in question are dude bros who express their displeasure with their fists.

“It feels like we’re spying on Morgan,” Zane says, and bless him, but what the fuck?

“Obviously we’re not spying on Morgan, Z. We’re clearly spying on Dillon.” Dillon, who is moving boxes out of his house, into a little blue car I know well. I used to make fun of Warren every time I saw him climbing out of the thing when he let Morgan drive.

It just happened that I made a wrong turn or three on my way to drop Zane off at home and noticed that there were things happening at a house I pretended wasn’t there every other time I accidentally drove by it. If it had been up to me, I would have liked to do my perusing alone, but I couldn’t risk missing whatever this is. It seems important.

Morgan is standing off to the side, pushing her bottom lip into her teeth. A habit she’s had for years. At one time I tried it myself to see if my lips got to be the same perfect berry shade hers always are. I got nothing but a slightly swollen, sore lip.

From anyone else’s point of view, it probably didn’t look like much. Just a guy moving some boxes and a girl letting him do the heavy lifting. But oh no, no, no. Not to me. To me I saw an older brother shooting some very displeased vibes right at his sister. He didn’t offer a single smile. Not a softly spoken word to his recently heartbroken sibling. He even seemed to give her a wide berth as he clambered down the stairs after retrieving another box from just inside his front door.

“Why are we stalking Dillon again?”

“We are not stalking. We are simply watching from behind a bush.”

Zane snorts. “What's the difference?”

“Stalking implies I do this often, and I most certainly do not.” Just as I’m done whispering my reply, I see Morgan drop her arm and say something to her brother. My jaw all but falls off when he completely ignores her. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“This is worse than I thought.”

“I feel like we’re on enemy territory right now,” Zane whispers, peeking between the branches.

He’s not wrong; it does sort of feel that way. If Warren could see us right now, he would be so pissed, but then he would get over it and begrudgingly ask if I heard anything because we may not be alike in a lot of ways, but we’re all Bennets. And if there is one thing that has passed down to all of us, it’s being nosy. It comes with living in a small house and always having access to everyone’s business. Plus, a southern mother.

“Does Dillon seem pissed? He does, right?” Before Zane can agree with me, Morgan says something else, and Dillon tosses the box in his arms none too gently in the car and stomps away. Z and I both gasp. “Did you see that?”

“His body language is very loud right now,” my brother says, leaning his face deeper between the branches.

“I want to know what she’s saying,” I hiss, squinting at Morgan’s mouth when it starts moving again in case I suddenly learned the art of lip reading from sixty feet away. I have not. But whatever it is doesn’t sway Dillon back in her favor because he’s already up the steps of his porch, and her lips stop moving when he strides right in and slams the door behind him. “Oh…my…”

“Fuck,” Zane breathes, looking at me with the same wide-eyed expression I’m giving him. “That was intense.”

My mouth gapes open as Morgan pulls her little blue car out of the driveway. She pauses for a split second before gunning it down the road in the opposite direction from us.

“I don’t think I have ever seen them fight.” And it’s true. She may have said a thing or two about him being overprotective in the past, but it’s hard to fight with someone who isn’t interested in fighting back. Dillon never shows much emotion. Not happiness, sadness, anger, humor. Just little kernels here and there. All these outbursts of his are as fascinating as they are concerning.

The irrational part of my brain really wants to take the wheel here, march my ass up to his door, and ask him what that was all about. If I thought there was even a sliver of a chance that he would tell me, I probably would. But alas, I can’t even get a text from the guy. He’s not likely to divulge the nitty-gritty details of his sibling feud with me.

I may or may not be considering the possible repercussions of breaking into his truck when my phone vibrates. I absolutely do not rip the device from my back pocket so fast I elbow Zane in the stomach. Nope.