“I did,” I admit, feigning nonchalance. “There’s no point trying to hide it. She wasn’t a sex worker though. She was just a regular college girl at the time.”
“That’s somehow worse,” Julia murmurs, shaking her head. “Right? That’s somehow even more screwed up. What’s wrong with you? Paying educated women to sleep with you?”
“I paid her ten thousand dollars once I realized that Kieran had offered her only five thousand dollars to sleep with me. I only found out after the fact, and needless to say, it messed me up for a long time. She got an internship in M&A this summer, and yes, we slept together. A lot. But just to round out this absolutely remarkable fairytale, I asked her last week to be with me for real, and she turned me down. Rejected me. So, there you have it. I risked my job, my reputation, and my mental health. I risked all of that for a woman who didn’t want me back. Turns out, you can be an heir to a billion-dollar fortune, a VP at the most valuable holding company in the world, and six-foot-four and still not get the girl.” With that, I pick up my own champagne flute. “Cheers, right?”
I drink it, well aware that everyone at the table is gaping at me with varying expressions of disbelief.
“Kieran, what the hell did you do?” Julia demands quietly, staring daggers at him as she speaks.
“Me?” He holds his hand to his chest. “What part of that story makes you think it’s my fault that Davis can’t get a girlfriend?”
“The part where you’ve woken up and chugged a big, steaming hot cup of jealousy every morning since we were teenagers,” she replies without missing a beat.
Kieran lets out a pointed scoff. “I have nothing to be jealous of him for.”
“Is that why you’ve been seething all night and trying to find ways to get back at him for doing the toast?” Julia challenges, batting harder for me than she ever has before. “He didn’t even want to do it. Dad is making him do it because you’re such an unbelievable brat.”
“Are you kidding me? I—”
“That’s it,” I interrupt, cutting him off. “Get up. Let’s go.” I rise as I speak, buttoning up my jacket in the process.
My brother furrows his brow in confusion. “What do you mean, ‘let’s go?’ Are you going to fight me, Davis?”
“I’m going to talk to you,” I clarify calmly, “in private. Like mature, grown men. Let’s go.”
“If you end up killing him, let me know,” Peter chimes in, finally speaking. “I’ve always wanted to hide a body.”
I’m surprised when Kieran throws his napkin down. “Fine,” he agrees. “Let’s go talk like mature, grown men.”
We weave past the tables and towards the house, where a door is open for the waitstaff to continue the dinner service. After a line of servers carrying foie gras or some other expensive shit passes us, I lead the way into the cigar room.
Yes, the cigar room.
Kieran follows me in and closes the door behind us. He lingers there though, his hands in his pockets as he waits. His posture is stiff, like he can’t let his guard down or I might actually turn this physical.
“Relax. I’m not going to hit you,” I reiterate.
“You wouldn’t win anyway.”
“I would,” I counter—and we both know it’s the truth.
Exhaling, Kieran shifts his hands from his pockets and crosses them over his chest. “What do you want to talk about, Davis?”
“Olivia told me that you offered her a hundred grand to leave me.”
He has the dignity not to deny it. “I was getting ready to pay her back, but now that she’s gone against my instructions and told you, I don’t think I will.”
“She wouldn’t have taken it,” I reply as I allow myself to lean back against one of the bookcases. “We’re still done though. So thanks to you, all three of us lose.”
As is typical, Kieran doesn’t react. He merely raises an eyebrow and waits.
“I’ve lost Olivia. She didn’t get a dime of your money in exchange for leaving me. And you, Kieran, are so damn lost.”
“Lost?”
“Yeah, I think you’re lost,” I repeat. “You’re angry with anyone who has the audacity not to love you, and yet you don’t realize how you push people away. Me. Elizabeth. Dad. You resent us because you can’t understand why we don’t love you as much as you love us.”
Uncomfortable, Kieran shifts before saying, “Don’t make up fantasies. It’s embarrassing for both of us.”
“I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt,” I continue. “I’ve spent eight years thinking back on that night in Amsterdam and wondering why you made that offer to Olivia. You have no idea how much sleep I’ve lost wondering why my brother would concoct the cruelest possible plan to hurt me. Then a week ago, someone suggested that you did it because you love me. Looking at you now, I think that’s true.”
Kieran doesn’t respond. He keeps his expression stony and his posture rigid as he watches me from his spot by the door.
“I think that eight years ago you saw me express interest in a woman for the first time in my life, and in a weird, rich kid way, you thought you were helping me.” I push away from the bookcase. “However misguided, you were trying to do me a favor.”
“Load of good that did us both.”
I raise a shoulder. “If you hadn’t interfered with me and Olivia that night, I don’t know if I would be the person I am today. If it had been up to Olivia and me, she and I would have slept together for free, said an awkward goodbye in the morning, and then we never would have seen each other again. I would have continued to be an insecure, awkward guy with anxiety who went to Wharton because his dad told him to. She would have been…I don’t know, an accounting major destined for a small-scale office job for the rest of her life. Or she would have been stuck in Amsterdam. It’s tough to say. But either way, it’s not all bad. I got to see her again, and I had eight or nine weeks with her. That’s more than I ever thought I would get.”
“Did you really like her, Davis?” Kieran asks. “Because I just thought you were fucking with her. I didn’t know that there was more.”
“I think I loved her,” I say aloud for the first time. Surely, I never thought Kieran would be the person I would confess this to, but the timing is right.
Kieran raises both eyebrows. “No shit. And this is my fault?”
“If all it took to ruin a relationship was one exceedingly spoiled brother, there wasn’t much there. Don’t blame yourself. But I’m not here to talk about Olivia. We’re here to talk about finding a way to coexist as brothers—and maybe even be brothers.”
“Since when has that mattered to you?”