Page 15 of The Very Naughty List

REID

The punch catchesme off guard, sending my head snapping to the side, and Hailey lets out a startled yelp.

I grunt, ducking Lucas’s second punch and backing out of the way. I’m not gonna hit him back, especially since he’s got every right to be mad. We all promised him years ago that we’d never fuck with Hailey, and he has no idea that this thing with us and his sister is pretend.

“Hey! Whoa, whoa.” Nick and Sebastian appear between us, and Sebastian holds his hands out. “Hold up, dude. Stop!”

“The fuck I will.” Lucas glares at me over my brother’s shoulder.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Hailey huffs out a breath, grabbing her brother by the arm and pulling him back. “Stop, Lucas. It’s fine, really. It’s?—”

He doesn’t stop glowering. “No, it’s not. He?—”

She yanks on his arm, bringing his head down low enough for her to whisper some quiet, urgent words into his ear. I can’t make out what she’s saying, but I can guess the gist of it, because Lucas’s eyebrows draw together as he listens. Some of the tension drains from his shoulders, and Hailey pulls on his arm again, urging him toward the door.

“Come on,” she says. “We’ll talk about this outside.”

He nods, still looking a bit wary, and the five of us step outside the bar so that no one will hear us talking. We’ve already stirred up quite a bit of attention, not only with our very public fight over Hailey, but now with this scuffle with her brother.

Once we get outside and are around the corner of the building so we won’t be overheard by anyone coming or going, Lucas looks between the four of us.

“What do you mean, it’s fake?” he asks, confirming my suspicion that Hailey told him what’s really going on.

“Dylan Montgomery was being a dick to your sister,” I explain. “I ran into the two of them earlier today, and he was being a complete fuckwad, as usual. Trying to make her feel like shit for still being single.”

“So Reid stepped in to help me by pretending to be dating me,” Hailey pitches in.

I nod and then let her carry on with the explanation as I rub away the soreness in my jaw, working it open and closed a few times. He did manage to get in a decent hit, especially since Lucas’s right hook has always needed a bit of work.

“They’re actually…” She clears her throat. “Uh, they’re actuallyallpretending to be dating me.”

“What?” Lucas narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Well, Nick saw some women talking to me at the bar about Dylan leaving me and what a disaster our wedding was, and I guess he felt sorry for me too, because he stepped up and—” She glances over at Nick, and I swear I see a flush creep up her cheeks. “He told them we were dating too.”

“We couldn’t exactly admit that one of them had been lying,” Sebastian points out, spreading his hands. “So we decided to go for the trifecta. We’ll tell everyone in Chestnut Hill that all three of us are dating her separately, doing our best to win her over. With the three of us supposedly fighting over her, people won’tkeep hounding her about the wedding, and Dylan won’t have shit to say either.”

“Oh.” Lucas stares at the exterior wall of the bar, his brows pinching together as he works through all of that. Then he shakes his head, glancing over at me. “Shit, I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have hauled off and punched you without knowing the full story.”

I lift one shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Fucking Dylan.” Lucas’s hands curl into fists as if he’s itching to land a punch on Hailey’s ex instead. “God, I hate that guy. I can’t believe he’s getting married to Brielle, although I guess they deserve each other.”

Hailey grimaces at her brother’s comment, and I wonder if she knew that already. If she didn’t, I wish she hadn’t found out like this. I’m sure it stings to hear that the ‘friend’ of hers whom Dylan cheated on her with is now the guy’s fiancée. Maybe the slightly nauseated look on her face isn’t because she didn’t know but just because it’s so shitty. I hope that’s the case. I hope she doesn’t have any leftover feelings for that fucker. He isn’t worthy to breathe her air.

Now that Lucas is on board with the lie and not trying to take a swing at me, we all go back inside the bar and dig back into the massive amount of food Nick ordered. It’s nice to have us all sitting around the table together, and we easily all fall back into talking again.

When Hailey gets up from the table, I watch as she walks first to the bathroom and then to the end of the bar. It looks like she’s getting a glass of water or something.

Lucas is telling us about how football practices have been going, and about a kid who’s been giving him a bit of trouble.

“I swear to god, coaching high school football is gonna make me go gray before my time,” he grouses, and we all chuckle. Heloves coaching too much to ever quit, and everyone at the table knows it.

He tells us a bit more about the player who’s been struggling, and my brothers and I toss in bits of advice here and there. I have my head turned toward the conversation when Hailey returns to the table, and I stiffen as I feel something cold touch the side of my jaw.

I turn toward her and realize that she’s holding a little pile of ice that she’s wrapped up in a bar napkin.

“Hold still.” She lifts it back up to my face and presses it against the spot where I got punched.

---