Page 167 of The Casualty of Us
“You have a delivery.”
I suck down a breath to stop the final spurt of laughter, finally getting out, “What?”
“This came with it.” A smile plays on her lips as she passes a note over to me. “We’ll discuss your liberation of the wine cabinet in the morning.”
“Fair.” I nod, taking the note as the smell of Chinese fills the air and reading it quickly.
Since the ice cream places aren’t open on Thanksgiving.
Miss you too, Freckles. Feel better.
“Goddammit,” I sigh as a silly smile grows over my face.
Stealing my twin’s favorite curse in place of the feeling I stopped myself from naming earlier even as he snorts, “Such a suck up.”
Stupid fucking rock star baby.
I’m totally in love with him.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
HAYES - DECEMBER 2013
Something’s off.
I watch as Ollie scribbles some answers down on his tablet, and O sighs deeply, turning a page in her philosophy book with a tiny scowl pulling at her brow. Holden is sitting next to me at the library table today and completely ignorant of my internal musings. But my gaze moves between the twins as I try to find the source of my unrest since we’ve been back from Thanksgiving. It can be hard to tell sometimes with the way they seem to maintain some kind of vibe between them, I guess. Like there’s this note only they can hear, and they’re both using it as a loop between each other.
Holden was right at the start. Twins are fucking weird.
But that advice doesn’t help me figure out my current dilemma.
I watch as Ollie seems to steal her sigh while working on his next problem with an unhappy face, and O purses her lips, eyes narrowing just a bit. Something about her gaze slightly off, just like the twist that keeps happening in my gut because of it. I glance back at Ollie to find a frustrated look on his face, something deeper there making me pause too, but it’s not tensing up my shoulders like the autopilot O seems to befalling into at moments. Like everything she says and does is completely normal, but part of her is absent. Stuck up there in her head working something out, and normally Ollie would pick up on this shit as well, but he seems to be distracted too.
Leaving me staring at them trying to figure out when I became the stable one here.
“Hey, O,” Holden mumbles absently. “Can I look at your Brave New World commentary for the seminar?” He pauses. “I think I’m getting the chemical cocktails for the caste system mixed up.”
“Hmm,” she hums back just as absently, blinking down at the page and seeming to come back to herself. “Yeah, hold on, I’ll send it to you.” Her eyes lift to him as she pulls her tablet out from under the book. “Aren’t you partnered with Aaron on that?”
“What?” His head snaps up suddenly, and I shoot him a questioning look as he turns between us a few times before muttering, “He’s been sick, I think.”
“Oh.” O nods quickly. “That sucks.”
“Sure. Yeah.”
What the fuck?
I glare at them both as they look back down studiously, neither one addressing the seemingly hidden conversation behind whatever the fuck that just was. The frustration in me surges at the eggshells everyone seems to be stepping around and I stare at them for another beat that tells me nothing. It has my gut giving a sharper twist that just pisses me off more because I can’t figure out the cause, and when I look back at Ollie, he’s still completely checked out and missing this shit.
Which really has me doubting his update upon our return that there was no stalker activity and that O acted completely normal over break.
“Hey.” I narrow my eyes at him, clarifying when everyone looks at me. “Oliver.”
His brows fall. “What?”
“You still messing around with Bethany?”
A full-blown scowl immediately pops up on O’s face, and she turns to her brother as he shoots me a panicked look.
