HOW TO CATCH A BAD BOY

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Chandler willed his mind to stop cycling around those thoughts because it didn’t matter. It was like two months of his life, and that was it.

He’d get over it. He’d get over her.

His phone lit up again, and he sighed. “I don’t know what he could possibly want to say to me.”

The recliner squeaked as Paul leaned forward. “I’m curious too. Hello?”

“What are you doing?” he yelled. “Give me that phone.”

When he tried to swipe for it, Paul flipped him off. “Elijah? Yeah, this is Paul. I am with the grumpy asshole.”

Even though his leg screamed in protest, Chandler stood from the couch and towered over Paul, holding out his hand and giving him his most forbidding glare.

Paul ignored him. “Hmm. Sure, yeah. Makes sense.” He continued.

“Give me the phone, Paul.”

“Great idea, Elijah. Yeah. I like it.”

When he handed Chandler the phone, he exhaled heavily. Then he saw the call was already disconnected. Chandler blinked. “He hung up?”

“Guess so.”

His eyebrows lifted slowly. “What did he say?”

Paul leaned back in the recliner and let his hands rest on his stomach. “Gosh, I can hardly remember since I’m such an asshole.”

Muttering curses under his breath, Chandler hobbled back into the kitchen and yanked open the fridge. If he wanted to have a beer with his lunch, even Paul wouldn’t stop him.

“Tell me about her.” Paul said.

Chandler pinched his eyes shut as the first swallow of beer went down like a brick. The way she laughed slid like fog through his unwilling brain. The way she smiled. How she felt under his hands and lips. What she did to his heart, that horrible waste of an organ that refused to stop thinking about her just yet.

“I can’t,” he managed.

Paul got out of the chair, and he braced himself for the interrogation to continue.

But it didn’t. He walked past the kitchen to the front door.

“Are you leaving?” Chandler asked.

“Nope.”

Shaking his head, Chandler took another swig of beer. “You and that crazy-ass cat deserve each other.”

Paul opened the door, and when Chandler walked out of the kitchen, he almost spit out his beer when Golden Boy walked in.”What the hell are you doing here?” he roared.

The two assholes in his apartment completely ignored him, shaking hands and introducing themselves like they weren’t completely intruding on his privacy. Elijah didn’t visit him much. “Nice redecoration,” he said, looking around the house.

Neither of them flinched when Chandler slammed the beer bottle down on the counter. “You need to go.”

“Not until I talk to you.” His brother lifted his chin, and Chandler felt a begrudging pang of admiration that he was willing to drive up here and face him. And he hated, hated that he heard Elena’s voice in his head, urging him to give him a chance. Hear what he had to say. Elijah had no choice in who their parents were either. And if he ignored the fact that he still wanted to plant his fist in his face for having years with Elena right in front of him for years, he had to admit that Elijah had never treated him with the reserve that his mother did.

He spread my arms out. “Then say it. Let’s get this over with.”

Elijah sighed. “Can we sit?”

“Yes,” Paul agreed. “Let’s sit.”

“You think you get to be a part of this conversation?” Chandler asked him incredulously.

“Hell yeah, I do.” He patted Elijah on the back and led him toward the living room. “You owe me, kid. If it weren’t for Agnes, you never would’ve gotten stuck with her in the first place.”

The string of expletives that Chandler hurled at him made his booming laughter fill every corner of the room.

“What’d you do to your leg?” Elijah asked when he yanked a stool from the kitchen counter and sat on it.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

“Mountain biking,” Chandler told him. “What do you want?”

He exhaled a laugh. “Geez. You’re in as bad a mood as Elena is this week.”

The sound of her name on his lips lit Chandler’s skin with suppressed rage, feelings that he’d tried to smother all damn week about her. “If you want to escape this impromptu visit without a black eye, how about you not tell me things like that.”

Elijah cocked his head. “I only know what Emily told me since I and Lexi returned,” he explained. “I haven’t seen her.”

His shoulders relaxed, and he glared at Paul when he badly smothered a pleased smile at his reaction.

Knowing his brother hadn’t seen her soothed that immediate caveman reaction that he’d never experienced before her. And wasn’t that insane? He was the one who walked away from her. He was the one who said things that he still hadn’t forgiven himself for. And one single mention of how she was doing had every proprietary instinct roaring to life inside him. They were both eyeing him.

“I just want her out of my head, okay?”

Elijah raised an eyebrow. Paul covered his mouth with his hand.

“What? I do. If dicks like you would stop constantly reminding me about …

Elena,” his voice stumbled over her name, “then I’d be able to forget her.”

So why did his whole body seize up with panic at the very idea of that?

Elijah took a deep breath. “Chandler, I’ve been a crappy brother in a lot of ways, okay? And you haven’t been much better,” he pointed out carefully. “But I wanted you to hear from me, that even if Elena had some … crush on me for a while, I didn’t notice and I’ve never, ever looked at her that way.”

Breath was sawing violently in and out of Chandler’s chest, but he kept all his boiling thoughts inside. Apparently, he deemed it safe to keep talking because he nodded slowly.

“She’s Emily’s twin. And Emily is … my best friend. It’s like, trying to imagine me and Emily together and it just …” His voice trailed off. “It doesn’t make sense in my head.”

“You get why it makes me crazy, though, right?” Chandler asked.

“For about a day, sure.” He shrugged. “But I think what you’re doing now?

This has nothing to do with me, or whatever she felt before she met you.”