Love Story (Love Unexpectedly 3)

I stand back up and blow out an irritated breath, pulling the hair tie from my wrist and twisting my hair into a messy bun. “I guess it’s just hitting me that I’m really doing this. I’m moving to another state. Another time zone.”

Brandi turns, leaning against the suitcase protruding from the trunk, and crosses her long, skinny arms as she studies me. “Nah.”

“What do you mean ‘nah’?”

“You’re all on edge because you’re about to spend two weeks with Reece. In a car. Just the two of you.”

Just the sound of his name sends something through me. I bite my lip and resist the urge to pull my phone out of my back pocket and check the time. We’d agreed to be on the road by seven A.M., so he should be here any time.

“I still can’t believe he agreed to this after what went down between you.”

I narrow my eyes. Brandi is the only one—and I mean the only one—who knows about our history, and only because at the time Reece and I had been doing whatever we were doing, she was fourteen to my eighteen, which is just about the most annoying, prying age in the history of adolescent females.

Although I suppose in some ways, it worked in my favor that she was the one who had caught us kissing once. My brother would have beat the crap out of his friend. My parents would have been…I don’t know…I think their brains would have exploded.

But Brandi had been in ninth grade when she’d walked in on us, and though she’d been wide-eyed and shocked, she’d also been totally eager to keep a secret “just between us sisters.” I’m pretty sure the sheer drama of it had fueled her for most of high school.

Six years later, she’s kept my secret, although I’m almost wishing she hadn’t. Maybe if the fam knew about just who and what Reece actually was, they wouldn’t have come up with this ridiculous plan.

“You could have warned me, you know?” I mutter.

“There wasn’t time. Truthfully I didn’t know what they were planning until the day of. I mean, I knew they were giving Reece the car, but I didn’t know that he was headed to California or that your car had bit the dust.”

“Well it’s not like you needed enough time to send a freaking telegram. A quick text, ‘Hey, sis, Mom and Dad are going to try to send you and the biggest dick on the planet on a two-week expedition together,’ would have been great.”

Brandi looks away, and I narrow my eyes.

“Tell me,” I say.

She shrugs and looks back. “I don’t know, I guess I just thought…maybe it’ll be good for you guys. Work things out. Nothing’s been the same since whatever it was went down with you two.”

Now it’s my turn to look away. Brandi knows that Reece and I were together, but doesn’t know why we broke up. That’s one piece of the puzzle that nobody knows.

Well, Reece does. Seeing as he was the cause of it.

“It’ll only be ‘good for us’?”—I put this in air quotes—“if one of us ends up dead, and that person is him,” I mutter.

Brandi merely looks at me, her eyes appearing wiser than seems fair for a twenty-year-old.

“Where is everyone?” I ask, changing the subject before she can psychoanalyze me the way she does everyone since heading off to college.

Brandi ticks off with her fingers. “Mom’s in the kitchen, packing a cooler for you and trying not to cry. Dad is pretending to fix the perfectly fine shelf in the bathroom, also trying not to cry….”

“Oh boy,” I mutter on an exhale.

She nods solemnly. “You broke the family.”

“Where’s Craig? He can say something stupid and distract the ’rents. His specialty.”

She shrugs. “He promised to see you off before he headed to work, but since he’s always running late, I wouldn’t be surprised if he meant he’d pass you on the freeway and wave. Is this all your stuff, or is there more upstairs that’s not going to fit?”

I push Brandi away from my suitcase and resume trying to shove it into the trunk. “I’ve got one more duffel and my laptop bag that need to get in there somewhere.”

“I’ll get ’em,” Brandi says, all but sprinting into the garage.

Two seconds later, I realize why she was so eager to be helpful.

“Nice of you to leave room for my stuff.”