Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) (9 page)

“Don’t,” I say, weakly.

“Don’t what? Don’t give a fuck that even now you’re lying to me, and that I can’t do a damn thing about it? Or. I know. How about the fact that I’ve waited six fucking
months
for you to give a shit about me. To remember that I’m down the street. But you haven’t. You’re
home
but you’re still in Boston, doing whatever the fuck was so damn important all these years.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I say, weakly.

“You came home and you fucked up everything. Eli—”

He cuts off, as abruptly as if I had ripped out his voice box, and I frown.

Shift in my seat. Study him, study the flush that’s in his cheeks.

No.
Not fucking possible.

“What about Eli?” I ask, my voice low and sharp.

“Nothing,” Gabriel says, tossing a handful of twenties on the table and leaving.

The bastard just jumps up and fucking walks out, like I’m not sitting here, like we aren’t having a fucking conversation.

Nothing in Green County changes. Not really.

I chase after him like he’s stolen my fucking bio homework and run off.

Except now, the bio homework has something to do with my brother and there’s no way this tricky bastard is gonna get away from without answers first.

I grab his arm and jerk him around, grateful, not for the first time, that Gabe only has a couple inches on my five-four. It makes it an almost even playing field.

“What the actual fuck is happening between you and my brother, Gabriel Delvin?” I snarl and he goes still.

Shrugs, a tiny almost helpless thing and that kills me.

Fucking
kills
me because it’s not Gabriel.

My Gabriel has never been helpless. He doesn’t know
how
to be helpless. Seeing that in his eyes.

It hurts.

“Nothing, Hazy. Nothing is happening. Not anymore,” he says, and it’s bitter.

Which tells me. Something. Once. Holy shit.

“Holy
shit,
Gabriel, my
brother?”
I snarl.

“You don’t get to be pissed, Hazel. You don’t get to be angry that Eli and I did whatever it took to survive. You
left
me, you bitch. And you never gave a fuck. So yeah. I used him. I said fuck dignity and I used him to find out whatever I could about you and how you were doing, and I refuse to apologize for that.”

“And that required you to fuck him?” I spit.

Gabriel flinches, and he falls back a step.

How the hell did we end up fighting? How the hell did we go from happy and finally finding a place together again, to
this.

Oh. Right. He took all of Eli’s damage and fucked him.

He
used
my brother.

“You know,” I whisper. “All of his shit, all of the girls—you know what that’s done to him. And you used him anyway, because you
missed
me? What the actual fuck, Gabriel.”

He stares at me, and his face is blank. So damn blank. But sad, too. I can see that like a fucking beacon, in his eyes.

“Are we done? Are you done?” he asks, shaking himself and I let go. Because his voice is cutting, mocking, angry.

Gabriel has never used that tone with me. He used it, so often, when we were growing up, slapping the idiots at school into place, jocks who thought I was easy and teachers who just annoyed him. Even Archer, when he was being a dick, which, let’s be fair, was more often than he wasn’t.

But Gabriel never spoke to me like that. I was his favorite, and that showed in every fucking word and smile and joke.

He unwraps a sucker, one of the handful he’s always carrying. Cocks an eyebrow and gives me a testy smirk. “He’s a sweet puppy, Hazel. You left him all alone here and then you want to give me shit, because I took the puppy home. Seems a bit hypocritical, even for you.”

“Fuck you, Gabriel,” I snap, and he smiles, wide and wolfish.

I bolt, before he can say it.

Before he can turn using my
brother
into a joke. I don’t think I’d be able to forgive him, if he did.

So I bolt, away from him, and down the tree-lined street, toward a park where I can hear kids playing, and mothers gossiping and I can get lost.

The problem is, memories. They slam into me as I slow, stepping into the playground and letting my breath out, finally. Letting my tension unravel in the quiet calm here. For a long time, I sit on the bench and, silently and watch the playground.

How many times had Archer brought me and Eli here, that first year? And then, as the years turned and we got too old to care about swings, he’d bring us here and we’d watch him hook up with girls, flirting and teasing.

Eli used to meet Amy here.

Gabriel and I would get high here, after Archer joined the Marines, and I stopped giving a fuck what people thought about me.

I wonder if Archer realizes how much I spiraled, when he left to serve and protect.

Even though I understood it. The reasons behind it. Better than Nora and Eli, I understood—I still hated it.

I shouldn’t have come to the fucking park. There’s too much open space, too many memories and regrets.

That’s fucking Green County, though.

All the memories and regrets.

The kids on the park are giggling and laughing, two little girls being watched and teased by a dark-haired, little boy, but it’s sweet. The boy is careful, even as he heckles and pushes the girls, coaxing and gently bullying them until they’re at the top of the highest slide.

The youngest slides down with no hesitation, all shrieks and skirts and laughter.

So carefree and innocent it actually hurts, even as it pulls a smile from me.

But the other two.

The little blond girl is watching the slide with these big, wary eyes, like it’s a trap she refuses to trust, and the boy is crouched at her side, talking to her patiently. Coaxing but not pushing.

Waiting.

The littlest girl scrambles back to the top, and slides down three times, while they perch there, until the girl finally,
finally
nods, and slides down, her eyes squeezed shut and her voice twisted up in a shriek.

When she lands at the bottom, she’s up and dancing, her entire body an exclamation point of excitement as the boy at the top shouts and screams encouragement.

Fucking Green County. It never changes. It’s always going to be sugar sweet and childhood and Eli and Archer. Even now—alone and furious—I’m shoved into my memories of them. Of how Archer would coax and wait, so damn patient, for me to come to him.

“Hazel?”

I stiffen. Let a smile twist my lips up, and it looks real, even if it feels fake as fuck. Turn to face the owner of that low gruff voice.

I don’t need to see him to know that it’s Michael. Don’t need to look to know that John is only two steps behind him.

Here’s what I know about the twins: they’re close. Almost too close, even for a place as dysfunctional and backwards as Green Co. can be. I’ve known them most of my life, since I was thirteen and we were in high school together.

And I think I’ve seen them separated twice.

Once was when Michael got himself arrested for beating the shit out of a football player from the next county over.

And that brings me to my second point: they’re volatile.

Michael is all cold ice, and careful judgment. He’s the one who will watch with sharp black eyes, waiting for you to fuck yourself up just enough that he can destroy you, all without ever lifting a finger.

John, on the other hand.

He was all brute strength and quick anger. He was action and force, where Michael would wait. John was impatient. He didn’t care that waiting meant you’d be even more screwed in the end. He wanted quick and dirty and bloody, and I’d seen the ugly bruises on the kids he beat the hell out of, the men he tore to pieces, often enough that being here, without my brother and Archer, alone in public with the twins—well, I’m a sane girl after all.

But there’s something about this that bothers me, and that is the third thing I know about them.

“Where is Hanna?” I ask, softly.

Because if I have rarely seen the twins without the other, I’ve almost never seen them without their sister, eight months younger, a girl as delicate and lovely as they were cruel and violent.

I liked Hanna even if I did think the too close relationship and the way Michael and John watched her bordered on a creepy that made my stomach turn when I thought too much about it.

“She wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home,” Michael says smoothly, a hand touching John’s elbow. “But she’d love to see you. You should come by, in a few days.”

I study him, and everything in me, everything that makes me a damn good journalist and reporter, no matter what the hell happened in Boston that says otherwise—it’s screaming now.

It’s telling me that something is very wrong about all of this, and I take a deep breath to force myself to stay still. To not fall back a step, or worse, to bolt away and find my brothers.

Why is it that even now, four years after leaving, I still want them, almost instinctively, when I’m feeling threatened?

Above us the big clock strikes the hour, and John makes a low impatient noise in his throat.

“My brother is impatient, Hazel. We have an appointment. But. You will come and see us.”

It’s phrased as a statement, not a question. Not something I can ignore, if I don’t want to see them.

It’s a fucking demand.

But I nod, and I smile, and John falls back a step or two, almost vibrating in his impatience. Michael flicks his twin a cold stare and the other man—younger by twenty minutes, if gossip can be believed—goes still and silent, a frown still etched deep on his face.

“I apologize, Hazel,” Michael says, his voice a low hum of noise and I shrug. “John doesn’t have the best manners in the city.”

I smirk, a tiny thing, “Do you
know
my brother?” I ask, a gentle tease working up, even with my unease.

Michael smiles at that, and then he takes a step away. “It was truly good to see you, Hazel Beth. I’m glad you’ve come home.”

And then he nods at John who flashes me a blank stare before they’re walking away, the children and the park ignored, Michael’s long black coat flapping like a carrion bird at his ankles.

I watch them walk away, and feel him moving up behind me. He’d been there the whole time.

Gabe would never leave me alone with Michael and John. He leans his head on my shoulder, and that quickly, the tension slips away.

“Do you think they’ll ever not be creepy?” Gabriel asks, and I shrug.

“Probably not. I mean, they have such a fantastic streak going, why the fuck would they want to end that now?” I ask, and sit next to him.

Gabriel laughs, a low noise that rumbles against my skin and settles me.
Home.

That’s what this has been about. From the dinner last night, to Mama’s this morning and the boys and Gabe, fuck even the damn park.

I’ve been home for six. Fucking. Months. And it’s the first time I’ve acted like it means something other than just my address changing.

It’s the first time I’ve let myself
be
home.

“I’m sorry, Hazy. I should have told you.”

I slide a glance at him, weighing the words. And then, softly, “You don’t have to apologize to me, Gabriel. He’s an adult and he knows what he’s doing.” I lift a hand as his smirk turns dirty, and his mouth opens and add, “If you make a joke about my brother being good in bed, I swear to god, I’ll break my hand on your fucking face.”

Gabe laughs at that, and slings an arm around my shoulders. We walk back to my car in silence and then, “What did Creeper and McCreeperson want, Hazel?”

“To catch up. You know they were always fascinated with me and the boys in school.”

He makes a noncommittal noise, and I shrug. Slip out of his arms and open the car door. I hesitate and he stares at me. Patient. Waiting.

“No more secrets, okay?”

He nods once and I add, “If you hurt him, Gabriel—.”

“I’m not going to hurt him. I swear, Hazy. If anyone ends up hurt in this equation, it’s not gonna be gigantor.”

I nod and we slide into the car as I mull it over, but I don’t press. If. When. Gabe is ready. When he is, he’ll tell me what the fuck is happening and how he managed to go and fall in love with my brother.

E
li and I don’t pretend we’re functional. It’s something that, once we realized we needed to quit pretending, worked really well for us.

The thing is, everyone is dysfunctional to some degree. And our dysfunction, well—it keeps us whole, keeps us sharp, keeps us from spiraling into shit that neither of us really wants.

Damaged kids grown up into broken adults, and I’m a prime fucking example of that shit.

Good example of our dysfunction: We live together.

It’s not as bad as it could be. I mean, it’s not like
we
own a house.

I do.

A brick and stone thing that I built on the property that I inherited when Dad died.

Kinda a bloody legacy, especially when you consider the money I made while at war built the fucking house.