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“You can join us too, Jenn. You should,” I said, continuing to talk so my brother couldn't.
He beat me in everything else, so I wasn't about to let him get the upper hand on me when it came to pulling a date with the new hottie in town. Jenn laughed and shook her head.
“Thanks. But, unless you want a screaming toddler on one side, and a baby attached to my boob on the other, I think I'll have to pass,” she said. “But the three of you go ahead and have fun.”
She walked back behind the booth, laughing almost hysterically as she patted Hailey playfully on the ass as she walked on by, leaving just the three of us standing together in the booth. There was definitely an awkward tension in the air as we all stared at one another, nobody knowing quite what to say. And then, yet another layer of awkward tension made an appearance.
Ben's voice came from behind me. “What's going on?”
As if the three of us standing there wasn't awkward enough, it became the four of us, making it all the worse. I cleared my throat and tried to take the bull by the horns. I wasn't about to let my older brothers steamroll me – not with somebody like Hailey standing right there in front of me.
“Just seeing if Hailey wanted to join us at the bonfire,” I said.
“Good idea,” Ben said, stepping up beside me. “I was just one my way over to ask her myself.”
“Of course you were.” I smirked.
Because if there's one thing my brothers and I have in common, it's our ego and that spirit of competition that drives us all.
CHAPTER SEVEN - QUINN
I wasn't surprised that Hailey had caught the eyes of my brothers – she was smoking hot. And I thought she was exactly what I needed to get over Shelly. While she wasn't new, she’d been gone long enough to be like new. The truth of the matter was that she seemed like a different person than the girl I met in that creative writing class all those years ago.
She seemed so unlike the girl who was so quiet, I sometimes forgot she was there. And there seemed to be a confidence about her that she didn't have before. I remember that when she read one of her poems or stories in class, her voice would be so soft and shaking so badly that nobody could really hear her anyway. Or if they did, they didn't pay attention to her.
But I was certainly paying attention to her now.
She stared back at us with her wide, emerald green eyes, her mouth open as if she wasn't sure what to say. Not that I blamed her. Hell, maybe it was a bit much – all this attention at once was probably freaking her out. Maybe we'd all come on too strong, too soon, which, given the look on her face, I figured was probably the case. She looked like she was on the verge of bolting
But I'd planned on asking her out the moment I saw her. I had no idea my brothers were planning to do the same damn thing. If I knew they were into her too, I would have staked my claim with them the minute I saw her.
Once one of us stakes a claim, the girl is off limits to the other two – that's just the rules.
“Uh sure,” she said. “That'd be – fun?”
“Great,” Cason said, the little shithead answering her before I could.
He flashed me a malicious little smirk as Hailey walked around the booth toward him.
Not so fast, Cason, buddy. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve and I wasn't about to let my little brother get over on me. It'd be a cold day in hell before I let that shit happen. I stepped between them and gave her my most thoughtful, interested expression.
“Hailey, do you still write?” I asked as we started walking deeper into the park.
It was growing darker and the moon was creeping higher, and people were setting up smaller campfires all around the park. As we walked through the growing darkness of the evening, the light of all those campfires made her porcelain skin seem to glow as she looked over at me.
“Yeah, sometimes, actually” she said, a smile creeping across her face. “I can't believe you remembered that. What about you? Are you still writing?”
“Quinn? A writer? He's lucky if he can write his own name, most days,” Ben said, swooping in on the other side of her, sharing a laugh with Cason at my expense – no doubt, trying to make himself look better.
I ignored them, choosing to avoid getting into a ragfest with them and focus on Hailey instead. If I wanted to make headway with her, that was the way to do it – not getting down into the gutter with my brothers.
“Yeah, sometimes,” I said. “When I get time, you know? My brothers work me pretty hard, so I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like.”
“Sometimes?” Cason said, chuckling. “Writing? Seriously, bro, stop lyin'. The last time you actually wrote something was probably back in high school.”
“Nah,” I said, rolling my eyes, trying not to let their taunting get to me. I was in it to win it, and I wasn't about to let my brother's attempted cockblocking get in the way. “You guys just wouldn't understand. There's things about me you don't know.”
Hailey came to my defense and piped up. “I remember that poem you wrote – about the first time you saw the ocean. It was beautiful.”
