Accidentally Wild (The Wilder Brothers)

Fuck. She was really going to do this now.

I sat up from my bed as my hair dripped down my back. I slowly made my way to the door, trying to put myself in the right frame of mind for this conversation. I opened my front door, eyeing Jessica hard as she stood there shuffling on her feet. Her eyes fell to my towel before she nodded and cleared her throat, then her eyes looked around my apartment.

“Everett still here?” she asked.

“No,” I said flatly.

“So, it’s just you?”

“Yep.”

“Could I come in then?”

“Depends.”

“On what?” she asked.

“On why you want in.”

“Because I want to apologize.”

I drew in a deep breath before I stepped over to the side.

I ushered Jessica in and closed the door behind her. She went and sat on my couch, her feet curled in and her elbows on her knees. She looked down at her clasped hands, her fingers picking at the beds of her nails.

“That’s a terrible habit you should stop,” I said.

“I’m really sorry, Andrea,” she said breathlessly.

I shook my head and bit down onto my tongue to keep from yelling at her.

“I know I screwed up. It just all happened so fast. Lucas made some small joke about you and Everett always disappearing in Vegas and how it was probably because you two were hooking up. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know where he was going with it, but honestly? I kind of thought he knew already. Lucas always says that out of all his brothers, he’s the closest to Everett.”

I shook my head as memories of earlier that morning pummeled my mind.

“What?” Jessica asked.

“You don’t have the right to ask questions right now,” I said.

“Well, Lucas started making all these jokes about how you two might hook up when you guys got back from Vegas and I made the small comment that sometimes Vegas follows you home. Then, he just started pressing me for information. Bombarding me with questions about what I knew that he didn’t and he got really defensive, right? You know, like a brother.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I didn’t feel like I could lie to him, Andrea. He’s my best friend. My confidant. I love him. I didn’t want to lie to him.”

“Uh huh.”

“So, I told him.”

“Good for you,” I said flatly.

“And at first, he seemed calm about it, you know? He even laughed about it a little bit when I first told him. Then, he got all serious when he realized I was serious and that’s when everything changed.”

“I’m sure it did.”

“He started calling Everett out of the blue and getting angry that he wasn’t answering his phone. He kept asking me how I could keep something like that from him about his brother and I told him that my best friend told me in confidence.”

“I thought Lucas was your best friend,” I said.