Enemies With Benefits (Loveless Brothers 1)

With that, he turns on his heel and strides back into the lodge. Violet slumps onto a chair, her face in her hands. I sit next to her, Lydia on the other side, Zane still standing awkwardly.

Martin melts into the darkness, presumably because he can turn into slime at will.

“Shit,” Violet whispers.Chapter Thirty-FourVioletThe next morning I wake up with a hangover and Eli’s arm draped over me. It’s not the worst hangover I’ve ever had, but it’s unpleasant. My mouth is sticky. My limbs feel like lead. My head feels like it’s filled with cotton.

Eli rolls over, looks at me. There are circles under his eyes, and his hair’s an unholy mess.

“You look rough,” I say, half my face still smashed against the pillow.

“Well, you look like Miss America,” he says, rolling onto his back, his arms under his head.

I flip him off, and he laughs.

“You want breakfast?” he asks.* * *I drink approximately a gallon of water and a gallon of coffee. I eat the bacon and eggs that Eli makes. I didn’t know I had bacon and eggs in the house, but apparently he’s started stocking my fridge when I’m not looking.

That probably means something. It probably also means something that I’ve given him a key and that he has his own toothbrush on my sink, but I’m too tired and hungover to think about any of that right now.

I’m also too tired to think about the fact that everyone in Sprucevale knows about us, too tired to think about the mechanical bull incident last night, and very definitely too tired to contemplate what my chances at the twenty grand are looking like right now.

I drink another gallon of coffee. Eli kisses me and leaves. As I watch him go, I wonder how I could ever think that we were keeping a secret.

After another hour, I finally force myself to put on jeans and leave the house. I go get flowers, then take them to the hospital.

“Mom, it was my fault,” Kevin’s saying when I reach his room. “You don’t need to sue Bramblebush. I got on the bull myself, I swear —”

“That gate should never have been unlocked,” she’s saying, steel in her voice, when I step in. “Someone’s going to pay for this.”

They both look up: his mom’s mouth a thin line, Kevin looking absolutely mortified.

“Hi,” I say. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says. “They’re releasing me in a few hours, they just kept me overnight as a precaution.”

His mom glares at me. I vaguely recollect that she’s some kind of lawyer, and I wonder if I’ve already said too much as she goes back to rearranging his pillow.

It’s familiar, in a way. I’m acquainted with hospital rooms and I’m acquainted with endlessly rearranging someone’s pillows, though in my case, the roles were reversed.

A quick, sharp pang of jealousy spikes in my chest, but I banish it. I step into the room, give Kevin his flowers. He apologizes to me over and over again for sneaking into the pool. I think he’s still apologizing even when I finally say goodbye.

There. I accomplished something, one single, simple task. I head back to my trailer, turn on Netflix, and zone out, because I have too many things to think about and I don’t want to do any of it.

It’s three when I suddenly remember Clarabelle’s invitation.

I’m on my couch. I’m comfy. I’m half-asleep and watching old episodes of House Hunters International, avoiding my problems by getting annoyed at people with million-dollar budgets.

“No,” I say out loud, to no one. “That’s not today.”

I sit up, press the heels of my hands into my eyes, try to remember what Clara said yesterday.

She said Sunday dinner. She said four p.m.

And, yeah, she said it was today.

“Why?” I ask my empty living room.

Then I roll myself off the couch and finally take a shower.* * *At 4:05, I climb the wooden stairs to the Loveless homestead with an apple pie in my hand, bought last-second from Kroger because nothing else is open on a Sunday. In my defense, I at least put it on a nice plate, and I’m pretty good at putting things on nice plates.

The house is an old farmhouse, probably at least a hundred years old if not older, and it’s huge. I’ve been inside a few times before, since Eli and I have always been in the same class and there’s an age when you have to invite everyone to your birthday, but it’s been at least twenty years.

As I raise my hand to knock, it suddenly occurs to me: I didn’t tell Eli I was coming. Last night I was, you know, distracted, and then this morning I completely forgot.

Clara told him, right? Or is Eli about to be surprised that I’m showing up at his house with pie?