Pretty Thing (Naughty Things 1)

Alison frowns at me. One of those big, pouty frowns. “I’m sorry, sweets. It’s hard, I know. But you only get one life and no one understands better than Kyle right now. I didn’t know him, and I wish I had. Because you’re amazing so I know he was amazing too. But I promise you, Kali. I swear on my heart. He’d have wanted you to be happy.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“Keep calling Aiden. Bug him until he can’t ignore you anymore. Say what’s in your heart and leave it at that. If he feels the same, great. You can each have a spiritual heart-to-heart with Kyle and come to an understanding. And if he doesn’t, then it’s better to know than spend the rest of your life wondering ‘what if.’”

She’s right. “You’re right,” I say.

“Give me your phone.”

“Why?”

She smirks at me. “You know why.”

I laugh and I’m not even drunk. It feels good to laugh after the sadness and despair of the past several days.

“Come on,” she says, holding out her hand and wiggling her fingers. “Hand it over.”

“You’re gonna—”

“It’s just a text, I promise.”

I grumble, but reach into my purse and get my phone, handing it over with equal parts hesitation and relief. Alison is one of those people who just says what’s on her mind. No matter what. And while some of our friends find that annoying, I think it’s amazing. I wish I had her nerve and guts.

“Be nice though,” I say. “He’s hurting too.”

“I can be nice,” she says, then sends me a wicked grin as she scrolls through my contacts and starts typing. “There,” she says, handing it back.

I’m afraid to glance down at the screen. “Alison!”

“What?”

“‘I’m going cut off your balls and serve them for dinner if you don’t answer my calls?’”

“It’s pithy and descriptive. No room for misinterpretation. Now press send.”

I make a face.

“Do it.”

And because I love her, and because she’s better at this confrontation thing that I could ever hope to be, and (mostly) because I just want to hear Aiden’s voice—I do it. I press send.

“There,” she says, brushing taco crumbs off her mouth. “It’s done. If he doesn’t call you back, you’ll know it’s better to move on.”

I spend the next few minutes glancing down at my screen while Alison talks about her new idea for a bakery. “We already tried this,” I say, just as she’s getting started.

“We did it wrong,” she says. “This idea is good.”

So I do my best to get lost in her dream because it’s my dream too. I don’t want to cook steaks and pasta for the rest of my life. I got into cooking for the treats. It’s just so hard to make it on baking alone.

By the time we’re hugging goodbye Aiden still hasn’t called me back. I walk home from the taco place, phone in hand. Willing it to ring, or ding a text, or run out of battery so I can pretend he tried to make contact and couldn’t.

Doesn’t work.

My battery is fine, there are no texts, and no missed calls either. So I didn’t magically pass through a dead zone during the three-block walk from dinner.

My body is tired, my mind is exhausted, and my emotions are all out of whack.

And I’m sad. I miss my brother. I miss my twin. I don’t even know how to define myself anymore. And this self-pity feels over-indulgent because no one in my current city life even knows about my old small-town one.

I lie down in bed, not even bothering to get undressed. And even though I think I’ll never sleep again, I do. I sleep.

When I wake up the next morning I feel refreshed and happy for exactly two seconds. Because that’s how long it takes my brain to say, Kyle is dead and Aiden’s not speaking to you.

Work, I decide.

I go to work and hope this misery won’t get worse before it gets better.

CHAPTER ELEVEN – AIDEN

I work on the Jeep for sixteen hours straight, pulling off the fenders and the grill, the wheels and tires. Hell, I even pull out the seats. Kyle and I have been working on this Jeep since he was seventeen years old. This was how we knew we wanted to open a business together. This was our passion, our life, our connection.

And all of that feels empty now.

I go up to bed at four in the morning on Sunday. But sleep is fitful and unproductive, so I find myself back down in the garage before noon. Still ripping shit apart.

The next thing I know the guys are arriving for work on Monday and I don’t know where my weekend went. All I know is that the Jeep is in pieces and that makes me happy for some reason.

They were all at the funeral on Friday. Probably went to the reception afterward too. Hell, probably wondered why I didn’t.