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She slapped my arm. “Nice!”
I reached for her hair again, ready to retaliate, when Dad’s voice boomed from the next room.
“Stop harassing your sister. Christ.”
I pointed at her. “She started it!”
“Nuh-uh. He started it!”
Dad turned toward Beckett, as he usually did when his children were driving him bonkers. “Where did I go wrong as a parent? Why won’t they grow up?” Before Beckett could respond, Dad waved away the comment. “What am I asking you for? You’re just as bad. I really thought you had better judgment, Beckett.”
Beckett’s face fell, and I was halfway across the room before I registered even moving. “Don’t take out your anger on him. It took two of us to—”
“To what?” Dad cut in. “Behave like idiots? I’m pretty sure you both know how to do it on your own, but you sure as hell make it ten times worse together, don’t you?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I trusted you to take over the business when I retire.”
“What? This has nothing to do with work.”
“It has everything to do with it,” he argued. “You think I want to hand my legacy over to someone who’ll turn it into a big goddamned joke?”
“He’d never do that,” Beckett said quietly.
Dad sighed. “And before you two went on video and made a mockery of the Potter name, maybe I’d have believed you. Marriage is not a joke, and neither is this family. You two are supposed to be brothers!”
“Wearebrothers,” I said.
“What in the hell were you thinking, then?”
“We weren’t thinking about—”
“Damn right, you weren’t. That’s exactly the problem.”
Beck’s mom chose that moment to step out of the kitchen. She laid a hand on Dad’s arm. “Dinner will get cold. Let’s eat, hon.” Her gaze flitted to me and Beckett, a soft sweetness in her eyes that was a counterpart to Dad’s sledgehammer approach. She would never contradict Dad, but she’d temper him.
“Yeah, all right. No sense wasting good food,” he grumbled, turning away.
Andi grimaced at us as she passed by, probably realizing that her idea of an amusing night was going to be a hell of a lot tenser than she’d expected.
I bumped Beck with my shoulder. “See? We’ve got him right where we want him.”
He snorted a quiet laugh. “Yeah, it’s going really well.”
“It’s probably only going to get worse.” I grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing to me?”
“We both know I’m the wild one, and you’re the reasonable one.”
Beckett shook his head. “Then I should apologize, because I wasn’t reasonable in Vegas. Like…atall.”
I thought about all the unreasonable things we’d done, and couldn’t find it in myself to regret it. A small smirk tugged at my lips. “Definitely don’t apologize for that.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know you usually rein me in when I go too far.”
“But not this time,” he said quietly.
Not this time. Which begged the question, was the reason Beckett failed to stop me from this impulsive step because he’d been drunk and wild too—or because for once, he really hadn’t wanted to?
