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“Viggo, seriously?” Ziggy snaps. “Why do I need to go looking for that right now?”
I glance over my shoulder, frowning in concern. Everything okay? I mouth.
She rolls her eyes, then mouths, Just Viggo being Viggo.
I snort, then turn back, drinking in the view—cool blue water stretched along the other end of the property, a wide, winding trail that looks well-loved and worn, a bowing ancient tree whose cloud-white blossoms drift across the path.
Ziggy growls in frustration, then stomps inside, slamming the door behind her. I glance toward the door, half grimace, half amused smile. I feel bad that she’s annoyed, but Ziggy fired up is always going to turn my crank. I love her feisty side.
Just as I’m turning back, something clocks me right in the side of the head. I look down. A soccer ball.
“What the fuck?” I walk to that end of the porch. This time I catch the next ball that comes straight for my face with a snap between my hands. I set the ball at my side and glare toward the direction it came.
This makes no sense.
Curious, annoyed, I hop easily over the porch railing and drop to the ground, following the path that I think the balls took. That’s when another one comes straight for my face. I dodge it. Barely.
“Viggo!” I hear a voice hiss. “Stop aiming for his goddamn head!”
“You’re not the boss of me,” Viggo hisses back.
“Someone should be,” says a voice I vaguely recognize.
Enough of this bullshit. I stop walking and yell, “Hey!”
A hand claps over my mouth. It’s surprisingly strong. I shove it off and spin around. Ryder. He lifts a finger to his mouth.
I shake my head, so damn confused.
“Fashionable Sebastian.” Viggo reveals himself from the crest on the path, pointing over his shoulder. “We’d like a word.”
“Fuck off.”
He sighs. “I had a feeling you’d say that. Which leaves me no choice but to—”
“Okay.” Axel, the oldest and tallest brother, with his serious expression, who looks a little like Viggo, but with Ziggy’s sharp green eyes, steps out from behind a tree. “Enough of the Godfather shit. Just tell the poor man what you want.”
“You’ve turned into such a softie,” Viggo says to him, clearly exasperated.
“Jesus Christ, Viggo.” Oliver marches up to me. “Would you kindly join us in the storage shed?”
Oliver points over his shoulder to a structure a little further down the hill.
Sighing, I drop the soccer ball to my feet. “Fine.”
“Welcome,” Viggo says, “to your first, and possibly only, Bergman Brothers Summit, Seb.”
Oliver, Ryder, and Axel sit, slumped on boxes and upturned buckets, looking as displeased with this development as I am. It makes me feel marginally better.
“I’d say ‘happy to be here,’ but I’ve turned over a new leaf, and I don’t blow smoke up people’s asses anymore. So I’ll be honest: I’m actually not one bit pleased I’m sitting in a musty shed with you fools rather than the woman I lo—”
I stop myself, clenching my jaw. They don’t get to hear that word from me before Ziggy does.
Oliver’s eyes widen. He sits up and smacks Viggo in the chest. “Told you! I told you! Now you cough it up, honey bunch.”
Viggo scowls at his brother. “I didn’t bet you money on this.”
“I know!” Oliver says. “I mean your dignity. Cough up your dignity, because this is ridiculous. He’s here because he loves her, because he’s been spending the past half year trying to be a person he feels is worthy of Ziggy, which, ya know, long time and all for poor Zigs, who really does not like to wait, but still, kudos to him for the commitment—do it once and do it well, am I right?” he says to me, before turning back to Viggo. “After all that, he’s finally here, and what do you do? You knock him in the head with a soccer ball and lure him into this damn shed to tell him something he already knows. Isn’t that right, Seb?”
