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She’s safe.
In my peripheral, I already see the Cinderella and his wife exiting the elevator. Sulli is cowering away from Thatcher and Jane.
Christ.
How am I supposed to unfuck whatever my twin brother fucked? And Jane—Sulli is running away from Jane. Her older cousin.
“Sulli!” Janie calls out brightly.
Sulli looks ashen, and with her back turned, she waves sheepishly in Jane’s direction. She never faces Jane. “Uh, Banks, you want to go to the hotel bar? Beckett is down there. I think I might go now.” She jabs a thumb in the opposite direction of Jane.
I see right through her. “The elevator is the other way, mermaid.”
“Staircase? Kits? We’re leaving.”
He notices Jane and Thatcher, and the two of them are all too happy to bail and avoid our friends and family. Self-preservation has been the name of the game we’ve been stuck inside for a while now, and I’m not throwing two people I love into a situation they’re not ready to face.
They haven’t thrown me in one. Hell, Akara just abridged that interview for me.
Honestly, I’m about to accompany Sulli and Akara. My heart is with them, but a few steps forward, Jane shouts, “Banks!”
I stop in place halfway in the hall.
Thatcher is my twin. Janie is his wife, who I sincerely love—and I can’t cold-shoulder them so easily. I don’t want to.
Akara glances back at me.
I nod to him. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
He nods, then hangs an arm over Sulli’s shoulders, steering her towards the staircase. Her extra security tags along, and they all disappear into the stairwell.
Spinning around, I see Jane’s crestfallen face, her blue eyes on the heavy door that shuts behind the temp guards and her cousin. More noticeably, her five-month baby bump is clear beneath a cheetah-print blouse, some sort of crocheted vest, and a pastel blue skirt. Her frizzy hair is tied into a low pony with velvet ribbon, and my brother has a loving arm around her body.
I don’t have to meet them halfway. They already reach me.
Thatcher is grimacing. Pained. “That’s my fault.”
It hurts me seeing him hurting. “Why do you care if Akara walks away? You act like you don’t want to be friends with him anymore.”
“I chose you over him—I’m always going to choose you over him—and he doesn’t deserve a friend like that, Banks.” He’s cut up over the fallout. That much, I can see.
“Yeah, he doesn’t. But there are no sides. From now until I’m in a fucking grave, it’s gonna be me and Akara and Sulli. You don’t need to keep choosing between us, Thatcher.”
I might be the bridge between two sides, but it’s not up to me whether Thatcher or Akara crosses. Whether Jane or Sulli crosses. I can’t force them to take a step forward.
Jane rests her chin on Thatcher’s bicep. Staring up at him, she speaks in a breezy voice, “If Akara is willing to forgive you, then possibly there is hope after all.”
Thatcher stares down at her. “I don’t know if he should, honey.”
“You’re worthy of forgiveness,” she emphasizes.
I think Thatcher wants to believe this. Especially coming from Jane. He swallows hard, his hardened eyes lifting to me. “He has you. He doesn’t need me.”
I’ve been hoping I can be enough for Akara as a friend—in the terrible case that my brother never comes around—but I know the truth.
So I tell my brother, “I will never be friends with Akara the way you are. You and I—we’re not the fucking same, Thatcher. I can’t replace you. I never could.” I smack his chest. “And I honestly prefer it that way. He’s never treated us like we’re one in the same—and I love him for that. I know you do too.”
Thatcher lets this sink in, staring out at the shut stairwell door. “I thought it’d be easier for both of us to move on.”
“How’s that working for you?” I ask him.
“Hurts like all hell.”
For me too.
I need both my brother and my metamour to stop standing there with their foot on their dicks and do something about it.
“Can you tell Sullivan something?” Thatcher asks.
“Yeah?”
He checks down the hallway, then drops his voice another octave. We’re also standing away from any hotel rooms so no one can peek through a peephole and recognize us. “I know she’s still angry that I told you and Akara she’s pregnant, but can you tell her not to take my mistake out on Jane? I fucked it five ways to hell, and I hate that it’s ruining the relationship between my wife and your girlfriend.”
Mother of God, my brother has this wrong. I clamp a hand over my mouth, groaning inside at the pain I might cause Jane.
Jane reads me well. I’m not hiding this agonized second. “Is she not angry with Thatcher?”
I drop my hand. “I’m not sure it’s my place to say what Sulli is feeling right now.” I dig in my pocket. Craving a cigarette, but I fit a toothpick between my lips.
