Our food came right then. I’d been so engrossed in the conversation that I didn’t even noticed our server until he was practically setting a hot plate down on my arms. I sat back, letting him put the food in front of me. He eyed Sydney for a long moment, which was super annoying, but then he left us alone.
I picked up my fork, ready to dig in, but I quickly sat it back down to say one more thing to Sydney. “Well, whatever you want to do, no matter what becomes of this thing between us, know that I’ll always have your back. Those parents of yours try to disown you and kick you out of that big, fancy house or something to that effect—then you’ll always have a place to stay with me. And I don’t mean that in some twisted sex-for-rent sort of way. I mean that in a friend sort of way.”
These big tears welled up in my girl’s eyes. She said nothing and stared at me from across the table. I certainly hadn’t meant to make her cry. Although, any time I had seen her cry, those big green eyes of hers turned only greener and into such a force of nature. A force of nature that left me feeling like a giant wave had crashed down over my head. It was disorienting and numbing all at once.
“So we’re friends,” she said, shaking her head and smiling now. The tears were still there, but maybe they were the good sort of tears.
“Of course we’re friends, princess,” I told her gently, reaching across the table to grab her hand. “We’ve always been friends. Among other things.”
She sighed. “I don’t know how you do it. But, dammit, if you don’t have this way of making me feel—”
Feel what? She stopped talking in the middle of her sentence, her eyes darting up at something…or someone. Her face paled and her breath halted. Someone else was here, at our table, and I glanced up to see what she was seeing. For moment, I thought for sure it would be Ben, hovered over us, fucking everything up to pieces.
It wasn’t Ben. It was worse than Ben.
It was her brother.
“John,” she gasped, immediately pulling her hand away from my touch. “What are you doing here?”
* * *
Why this skinny guy could scare the shit out of me?Who the hell knows? But seeing him now, I was freaked. Fucking freaked. Every visible space on him, from his neck to his toes, was covered in artwork. He was night. Sydney was day. But it wasn’t necessarily the tattoos that bothered me. Or his dyed black hair. I had no problem with those things. Instead, it was what it all added to. There was something unsettling about John, something that instantly liquefied my insides and made me feel helpless. Maybe it was the fact that he was her family, the most important person to her, and that meant he held a lot of influence over my future happiness.
“What the hell is this?” he barked at her. “A date?”
“John—” she started.
“No,” he interrupted. “You know what? I knew something was wrong. The moment you left, this nasty feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, and I couldn’t shake it. So I booked the first flight out here.” He hovered over our table, arms crossed, with his eyes only on his sister. I didn’t even exist to him. I wasn’t even good enough acknowledge. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it,” he went on. “I knew this trip was a bad idea. And sure enough, I show up, and you’re with him.”
He said the word ‘him’ like I was some sort of fungus he couldn’t get rid of. Wow. He had a hell of a lot of nerve to stand there, talking about me like this.
“Have you even seen Ben?” he asked her next.
“No,” she muttered. “I haven’t.”
“What the fuck? Fill me in here because I’m so confused right now. And, wait a minute, are you crying? Sydney?”
“It’s nothing,” she said, wiping at her face. She’d had tears in her eyes from a moment ago with me. Good tears, I believe, not the bad kind. And he was seeing the remnants of that.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” he argued, assuming the very worst, of course, automatically.
What an asshole. I had my hands in my lap. They were balled up in fists, and it was taking every ounce of my self-control to remain calm. I wanted to follow Sydney’s lead in this situation, but she wasn’t doing or saying much. I couldn’t tell if she needed me to jump in and defend her or keep my mouth shut. Hell, I couldn’t even tell if her brother had just shot our whole relationship to hell simply by showing up. Or if we were still intact. And really, as much as I could take care of myself, part of me needed her to do something right about now. Where was that strong, sassy, ‘take-no-shit’ woman that I’d gotten to know and love? All I was seeing was her shy side. Maybe there were family issues here that I didn’t understand, but I needed a little more from her.
“Oh, God,” John muttered, suddenly lowering his voice to a whisper. He started speaking slower, kinder, but that didn’t make the shit coming out of his mouth smell any better. “Are you gonna need to go to the clinic again? Seriously? Sydney, this is getting old. Why can’t you stay away from him?”
What. The. Fuck. The clinic? As in the place you go for like STD or abortions? What the hell was he talking about? I didn’t know exactly, but everything inside me snapped. I wanted to rip this asshole’s head clean off his shoulders. And I was about to do just that and start something when Sydney spoke first.
“John, you’re embarrassing me,” she told him, her voice extremely calm and even.
It occurred to me then…that a different girl in this situation might have started crying. But, unlike a little earlier, there was no trace of tears on her face. Actually, I had to reevaluate my whole previous thought process. Because I could feel something radiating off her now—something strong, something badass, something that made me sorry I’d doubted her sincerity toward me for even a second.
“Do you have any cash?” she asked me. “I only have a credit card.”
Yes, I had cash. I had plenty of cash on me. Always. Bartenders always have cash. And I understood what she meant. She wanted to pay the bill. She wanted to get the hell out of here as fast as possible. I didn’t hesitate to comply. It wasn’t like I was ever going to let her pay anyway. I dropped a few twenties on the table, our mediocre server getting incredibly lucky because our bill wasn’t nearly worth that much, and stood up from my seat. She did the same.
“We’re not having this conversation here,” she said to her brother.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
I think he expected her to walk away—without me. Because the moment that we all started to leave, and she grabbed hold of my arm—something that made my heart freaking jump inside my chest—he looked at her like she’d just drawn some sort of line in the sand. Or like her head was on fire and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “So that’s how it is?” he asked.
“That’s how it is,” she repeated.
The tension that followed could have made even the toughest man on earth squirm. Of course I was thrilled that Sydney had essentially stood up for me, for us, and defended our relationship all in one bold move. But her brother was a dick, unnecessarily, and I pretty much hated him with a passion now. I wasn’t the scum of the earth like he seemed to think I was. I could protect his sister. Hell, I would protect her even from him if need be. And right now, that need was coming close to being.
We walked through the lobby. Then outside.
“What did he mean about you going to the clinic?” I asked the moment we were all alone, standing beside the edge of the building, a safe distance away from other people.
“He made me have an STD test after our first time together. And a pregnancy test.”
“Wow.” There was fire instantly in my voice as I said this to John, not to Sydney. Because it was fucked up how much he hated me. Plus, if Sydney needed to go through any of that then she should have gone through it with me. “Was everything okay?” I asked Sydney now, my tone much gentler with her. “You weren’t pregnant were you? Then or now?”