Page 60 of Twins For My Bestie's Brother

Before I can say anything, Jackson pushes past me and lays his hands on Will. They struggle until Jackson gets Will where he wants him and knees him right in the groin. And chaos ensues. People run to break them apart and shout about calling the cops or taking things outside.

I stay back just as Jackson told me to, trying to mobilize people to break them up.

They might be fighting over me, but there’s a key difference. Will is fighting togetme. Like an object.

And Jackson . . . he’s fighting to protect me. And after years of being made to feel like nothing, it’s nice to know that someone believes I’m something worth protecting. More than nice.

It’s everything.

Chapter 18

Jackson

My head is throbbing. My body feels like it’s been crumpled like a sheet of paper.

But I don’t regret anything. Not a single second.

However, I can’t see myself moving from this spot for a very long time. Drowning in a sea of throw pillows and quilts on Lily’s bed.

I’m not totally sure how I got here. Not because Will jostled my brain that hard, but because the anger pulsing through my veins back at the bar made me lose time. I’ve never been angry quite like that before. Even when it comes to business deals gone awry, I generally try to stay away from the emotion for this very reason. I’ve always known it could eat me alive.

But after learning what happened between Lily and Will . . . well, I wasn’t just going to sit there and watch him speak to her like that.Touchher like that. After everything he’s put her through.

I glance around the room, lit only by a warm lamp on the desk in the corner. It’s a time capsule of Lily in high school, whichisn’t far off from Lily now. This isn’t to say that Lily never grew up, no, not at all. Lily just took the things she loved and ran with them until she could make a life for herself. That’s admirable. Especially as someone who has worked with facts and figures and dollar signs. No one is passionate about dollar signs, not the way an artist is passionate about the pen.

Above the desk, the wall is cluttered with pencil sketches, charcoal drawings, and small watercolors. The paper is faded and worn from years of being up on the walls. I can’t make out most of the details, but there are several portraits. I recognize one as Kayla because she had a phase of always wearing her hair in two braids tied with different ribbons.

I smile to myself.

The door to Lily’s room cracks open and more light pours into the room. Lily starts to step inside but turns at the sound of someone’s voice. There is some quiet whispering, words I can’t quite make out. I think she’s talking to her mom. It might be Kayla though. She was here at the house when we showed up, totally out of sorts at the sight of me.

The conversation finishes up, and Lily steps into the room, closing the door behind her as lightly as possible, like the click of the latch might somehow cause me pain. Her hair is now piled on top of her head, the way she keeps it when we go for walks some mornings, revealing a tattoo of a straight line that starts in her hairline and ends with a spider unthreading their web.

I’ve never understood why so many people have decided tattoos are somehow inappropriate or unattractive. It’s vulnerable to wear the art you choose on your skin.

“Why do you get tattoos where you can’t see them?” I ask softly.

Lily whips around, her eyes wide. “I thought you may have fallen asleep.”

I don’t say anything; I just try to keep my breath steady. It’s hard when she’s so utterly intoxicating in every moment in so many ways.

“I . . . have more ice,” she says as she comes over to the bed. She sits at the edge beside me, fluffs a few of the pillows keeping me leaned upright, then goes to place the pack of ice over my eye socket. “It’s cold.”

“That’s generally true about ice,” I mutter.

She smiles, her lipstick worn away, leaving a darkened outline at the edges of her lips. “Still have your sense of humor, that’s good.”

“Told you I didn’t have to go to the hospit—aah!” The ice is, as she says, cold. But it’s a shock to the system you can’t really prepare for.

Lily pauses before putting more of the compress onto my eye and the side of my face, letting me adjust to the temperature.

“You didn’t answer my question. About the tattoos.”

She smiles sadly. “I guess you don’t always have to see beautiful things to know they’re there.”

Does she know that’s how I’ve felt all these years away from her? Knowing her beauty exists in the world even when I’m not there to witness it wholly?

Lily pushes a lock of my hair off my forehead. “You shouldn’t have done that, Jackson.”

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