Page 61 of Trouble

“No, I’m f—” Her protest was interrupted when Liam forced her back down on the sleeping bag she’d been restingon

“Don’t be daft, you’re not getting up just because my brother’s being atwat.”

I snarled.“I’mbeing a twat? You fuckingwanker.”

It felt good. I didn’t even care what I was shouting about, but finally giving air to all the pent-up anxiety, guilt and—yes—anger that’d been gnawing at my gut for so long was fucking blissful. “Why don’t you take some fucking responsibility foronce?”

“Me?”Liam hissed. He got to his feet, and from the look on his face, he too was more than ready to lay into me. Fine. I was happy to accommodate. “You’re the bloody idiot who’s pretending like he did nothing wrong, when you’re the fucking reason we’re out here in the first place!” he shouted, tossing the fish back atme.

“I’mthe reason? If you’d fucking kept it in your pants, none of this would have happened! Dad would never have known abouther!”

“That’s fucking rich, coming from the idiot who brought her right into the middle of a fucking mafia event,” Liam snarled back at me. “Perkinson wouldn’t have known where to look if you hadn’t, you massivetit.”

“Stop it! Both of you, just stop it!” The shout came from the floor, and we both stopped mid-shouting match at the absolute pain in Audrey’s voice. She was still sitting down, but she was looking at us with tears in her eyes, her fists knotted in the sleeping bag. It absolutely broke my heart to see her that upset, especially when the numbing realization that I’d caused this setin.

“Why are you fighting?” she sobbed. “I’ll cook the stupidfish!”

“It’s not about the fish,” Liam said, his voice much softer now. He knelt down next to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t blame him—I had the same urge. I sank down next to her, too, and put my arms around her midriff, hugging her to me as gently as my twin did tohim.

“I know it’s not about the fucking fish,” she hiccupped, rubbing at her eyes, but the tears were still coming. “Is it because of me? Is it because you had to throw away everything to get me out ofLondon?”

She was so far off, it made me snort. She really had no idea how much we loved her—and it tore at my heart. I wanted to tell her so badly that I loved her, that I was so fucking sorry… but I knew I couldn’t. Not now. She wouldn’t hear it, and Liam… As angry as I was with him at the mere thought she might prefer him over me… he was still mybrother.

“No, love. It’s nothing like that,” I said, softening my voice in an attempt to make her stop crying. It only halfway seemed to work. “We’re both juststressed.”

“We didn’t have to leave London because of you,” Liam continued. “If Perkinson could flip on us the second he saw we had a weakness in you, he would have flipped on us regardless. At least we knew to keep an eye on him thisway.”

I caught his eye for a moment—I hadn’t thought that through before now, but he was right. If we hadn’t set a spy on Perkinson after the incident at Audrey’s flat, we wouldn’t have known to leave London before it’d been too late. In some fucked up way, this whole mess between us and her had quite possibly saved ourlives.

“Could you both please just stop it, then?” she sniffled from her cocoon between us. “This sucks hard enough as it is. Having you two fight—it’s toomuch.”

“Yeah, we can do that, love,” Liamsaid.

“Don’t worry about it,” I added, giving her a small smile when she turned her tear-streaked face toward me. “We’ll begood.”

Keeping an uneasy truce with my twin wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t care—and from the looks of him, neither did Liam. When our eyes locked again, I knew he was thinking the same as me—if she cared enough about us to ask us not to fight, that had to mean there’d be a way to win herback.

And I was going find it before hedid.

31

Audrey

If I’d been more usedto being on birth control, I’d have remembered to pack a sachet of pills along with my toothbrush when Liam and Louis brought me to their flat back in London. Unfortunately, I’d only started them after Liam—at least I thought it’d been Liam—and I’d almost forgotten a condom for the second time. A good choice, as it turned out, since I only remembered about such things as protection well after my time with his twin atop St. Paul’sCathedral.

But sadly for me—and Louis and the sleeping bag we’d shared—I hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring my pills with me on our impromptu camping trip, which had led to probably the most mortifying experience of my lifeyet.

If the twins hadn’t been so completely cool about it, once they’d made sure I wasn’t hemorrhaging to death, I probably would have never come back out of that river. But they were, and even went out of their way to try and make me comfortable—going so far to comfort my emotional outburst when they started shouting at eachother.

I cringed and glanced at the nearest twin at the reminder of how my hormonal insanity had gotten the best of me and I’d startedsobbinglike achild.

They’d obviously both done what they could to make me stop crying again, and there’d been peace in our little camp since then. They’d even cooked the fish together, most likely in an attempt at proving things were fine and I didn’t have to start blubberingagain.

My face heated from the shame of having broken down like that—but dammit, I couldn’t help it! My hormones were all out of whack, thanks to the unauthorized birth control break, and I had zero control over myemotions.

All I cared about right now was to try and make my cramps settle down, and ideally not burst into tears again for the next four to five days. Earlier, Liam had sat down on the tarp where I’d been curled up with a massive case of cramps, put my head in his lap without asking, and started telling me stories like I’d been a little kid. A part of me had known I should be furious, that I needed to keep my distance, but… most of me had just enjoyed being cared for. So I’d let him stroke my hair and pretended like all the messed up things between us were just a bad dream. Despite the cramps, it’d beenamazing.

“You ready for sleep?” one of the twins—I thought it might be Liam—asked me when I started nodding off in front of the fire some hours after the sun hadset.

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