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“No, say it,” he demanded, anger apparent in his voice.
“I didn’t mean anything.”
He leveled me with a glare. “I’m not an idiot. I know you’ve always judged me—viewed me as this irresponsible loser just because I took a different path than you.”
“That isn’t—”
“Save it.” He held up his hand. “I’m bending over backward to get to know my only brother, and you continue to push me away with digging comments like that. Newsflash, I’m successful, okay? I have a steady income. I have savings. I own my own house. Just because I’m not a millionaire working eightyhours a week at some dumbass start-up doesn’t mean I’m not worth anything.”
My chest deflated. “That’s not what I think.”
“Isn’t it? Could have fooled me.” He regarded me with a hardened gaze.
I hadn’t seen my brother this angry in years. Maybe since high school. Of course we butted heads growing up—what brothers didn’t? But we hadn’t gotten into an argument since we lived under the same roof. Holidays were always cordial and we didn’t speak much beyond that.
I sighed. “I’m sorry, okay? That was a stupid comment to make. I don’t even know why I said it.”
“Yes, you do. At least own up to it.”
Maybe I did judge Oliver too harshly. In my mind, he had always taken the easy path in life. I was jealous he always got to be the carefree one while I had to work my ass off.
“You’re right. I can be a judgmental asshole.”
“You can say that again.” He scratched the back of his head. “Look, I know you’re only here because Mom guilted you into it. I’m not dumb. We’ve never been close, but I feel like that could change. Growing up, you being closer to Dad—me to Mom—it wasn’t always easy. But we can change that now, get to know each other.”
“I wouldn’t call whatever relationship I had with Dadclose,” I muttered. It was more like having a challenging manager always breathing down my neck to do better, work harder, achieve more. But that wasn’t Oliver’s fault. “I want to get to know you too,” I said after hesitating.
His face softened and he replaced his scowl with his famous grin. Angering Oliver felt a lot like kicking a puppy and having it turn into a dragon before your eyes.
“Good,” he said, resuming eating. “And if snowboarding isn’t your thing, there are a ton of other things we can give a try. Hiking, indoor rock climbing, biking—"
“I don’t have time,” I cut him off, not liking the direction of this conversation. I had no natural inclination toward anything adventurous.
“You can make time. This could be good for you—getting your eyes off a computer screen and doing something athletic. Isn’t all that blue light bad for your eyesight anyway?”
“I have twenty-twenty vision.”
He rolled his eyes as I made every excuse. “Fine. You’re right. You’d be awful at this stuff anyway. Huge learning curve.”
I whipped my head around to glare at him. “Excuse me? I could learn to do anything. I just don’t have the time.”
Oliver smirked. “Prove it. Because I think what you can learn is limited to your office.”
For someone claiming to be trying to get to know me, he definitely already knew my weak spot. I couldn’t let a challenge go. And I hated not being good at things.
“Fine,” I relented. “What did you have in mind?”
Chapter Eight
CHARLIE
Soft pressure pressedinto my chest. I opened my eyes to find two large green eyes staring at me.
“Edward,” I groaned, looking at my phone to see that it wasn’t even five-thirty yet. “Can’t you wait untilaftermy alarm goes off?”
He tilted his head and looked at me, before pawing at my chest again. A demanding meow escaped his mouth.
Edward, my giant Maine Coon mix, jumped off the bed and moved to his food bowl as I ripped the covers off. It seemed like he took pleasure in waking me up five minutes earlier every day for his breakfast. If I kept letting him get away with this, pretty soon I’d be up at three a.m. feeding him.
