Page 30 of Getting It Twisted

“Not everyone wants to be a good little schoolboy like you.”

Oh great, here we go. I take another sip of my beer and try to let their words fly over my head.

“So, Nathan,” George says. “How are you financing your lifestyle out there in that hut? If you’re staying for a while, are you gonna get a job or something?”

Nathan shrugs. “Don’t need to. I’ve got some savings.”

“Of course. ’Cause you wouldn’t work a day in your life if you didn’t absolutely have to.”

“Doesn’t that apply to most people?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

George turns his glare on me. “I guess you and him are two sides of the same coin.”

“What’s that’s supposed to mean?” Just because George has more ambition than most people doesn’t mean I’m without. I’ve got . . . plans. Can’t really remember which ones at the moment, but that’s just because Nathan has his hand on my knee, drawing little circles with his fingertips. Every little touch sends sparks of heat down my spine.

One time at a party like this, Nathan plopped himself into my lap and shotgunned smoke into my mouth. The memory is so intense, and so unbearably sexy, that I have to close my eyes and take a deep, calming breath. My mind might have tried to forget, but my body remembers.

“Yeah, Georgie, what’d you mean by that?” Nathan asks.

George waves a hand. “Just look at the situations you two used to get into.”

“What kind of situations?” April asks.

“There’s the time he slipped you LSD at a party.”

I roll my eyes. “He didn’tslipme LSD; he offered it to me, and I took it.”

“Then there’s the time he almost got you shot.”

“Oh, please, that was an accident.”

Nathan turns to me, eyebrow quirked. “You’ve really been spilling the beans, Daniel.”

“You were gone,” I mutter. “I didn’t know you’d be coming back. And I . . .”I needed to vent to someone. I needed some way of handling you being gone.

“Yeah.” George slurps up the last of his beer and crushes the can. “I’ve been there for him. Unlike you.”

“Well, you’re a shitty replacement,” Nathan says.

“What?” George growls.

I groan. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“You heard me,” Nathan says. “You’re stressing Daniel out with all your stuck-up bullshit.”

“I’mstressing him out? He was doing fine before you got here.”

“Fine? He was miserable without me.”

George shoots up from his seat, and Nathan follows. They glare at each other, fists clenched at their sides. George must be at least four inches taller and forty pounds heavier, yet Nathan meets his furious gaze without fear, a smirk at the corner of his mouth, as if he’s just looking for an excuse, as if hewantsto be hit . . .

Nope. Not on my watch.

I push myself between them and get Nathan behind my back.

“Don’t,” I say, shaking my head at George, who looks like he would have gladly beaten Nathan to hell and back if I hadn’t intervened. He scowls at me as ifI’mthe one who insulted him, as ifI’mthe one who goaded him into this.

“You wanted to say something, Georgie?” Nathan pipes up behind my shoulder, voice sugar sweet yet dripping with vitriol.

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