Page 117 of The Very Naughty List

“Lucas, stop! You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

My brother turns to look at me, but he clearly doesn’t want to listen. He’s got his mind made up that his three best friends have gone behind his back and taken advantage of his little sister, and he’s just as hurt and angry as I was afraid he would be.

But I can’t have them all fighting. I care too much about all of them to watch their friendship fracture. I need to do something to try to calm him down and de-escalate this whole situation.

“Lucas,listen,” I say, my voice as strong as I can make it, even though I still feel a bit woozy. “You can’t just go around believing rumors and gossip that you see on social media. You know better. It was nothing. We were all just… having a bit of fun together. It started out as fake dating, like we said, and itstill is. We just hooked up once or twice—it’s nothing serious and nothing that’s going to continue. It’s not even worth being mad about.”

All three of the Cooper brothers turn to look at me, expressions I can’t quite read on their faces. I’m downplaying all of this to my brother to keep things from escalating, but it feels like I’m lying morenowthan I was before, when we were keeping all of this from him.

Still, I let my words stand. I can’t have all of this ruin my brother’s friendship with his best friends.

“You know how Dylan is,” I continue desperately. “He has it out for me. He’s holding on to a grudge over my leaving him because he has a bruised ego. He’s just trying to drag me through the mud and ruin my reputation. The triplets and I were just trying to get him to back off from giving me a hard time, and things got a bit carried away. There’s… there’s nothing else going on.”

Silence falls in the wake of my words as the triplets keep staring at me and my brother seems to process what I said.

The door opens a moment later, and the nurse comes in to hook something up to my IV. She glances around the room at the four men who are all standing there silently staring at her. The tension thickening the air is enough to make her leave quickly before I think to ask her what she put in the drip.

The achiness in my head is still there, compounded by the confrontation that I’m trying to defuse. I try to search the faces of the men as I wait to see what Lucas is going to do now.

Nick has a pained look in his eyes, Sebastian looks hurt and confused, and Reid looks almost angry. Something feels wrong in my chest, and the expressions on their faces just make it even harder to breathe.

I feel like I just took a hammer and broke something fragile, and it makes tears burn the backs of my eyes.

But it’s better that I keep things at peace between the four of them, even if it means betraying my own heart, and possibly even risking hurting theirs.

I want to say something else, to fix this and smooth things over between all of us. But the more I try to think of the right words to say, the more my brain starts to feel fuzzy. I listen as Nick starts to say something to my brother, but I can’t quite make out the words. His tone sounds tightly civil, like he’s trying to call a truce.

My head starts to feel heavy, and I lay it back against my pillow.

“Hailey, are you okay?”

“F…ine.”

I hear my brother’s question, but when I try to answer him, my words sound slower than they should.

I watch Nick walk around to where the nurse had been messing with the drip. His motion leaves a blur in my field of vision as my eyelids droop.

“They gave her some pain meds,” he informs the others. “Probably to combat the headache of her concussion.”

The wooziness from earlier gets more intense, and I’m struck by the sudden overwhelming urge to just tell all the people in this room that I love them—Lucas, the triplets, all of them. I blame it on the drugs kicking in, and the sleepy haze that makes me want to be more honest than I probably should.

Fortunately, sleep wins out before I can form any more words, and I feel myself sinking against the pillow as my eyes close and the sound of their voices accompanies me as I drift off.

I wish I could hold on to my lucid thoughts for just a bit longer—but maybe it’s for the best that I can’t.

40

HAILEY

When I come fullyawake again, I can tell that it’s the next day by the bright, early morning sunlight coming through the window blinds in long golden streaks.

I look around me and blink in surprise as I realize that all three of the Cooper brothers are still here.

Did they stay with me all night?

There’s only one chair in the room, which Reid is sprawled out on, sound asleep and breathing deeply. Both Sebastian and Nick are on the floor, leaning up against the wall. Sebastian has his head tilted back, his dark brown hair messy and tousled, and Nick’s bearded chin is tucked against his chest as if he’s a hibernating bear.

None of them look particularly comfortable, but they all stayed. They stayed forme.

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