Page 45 of Van Cort
“We were just messing around,” she murmured. “It didn’t mean anything.” West’s face pitched at her.It didn’t mean anything?It meant everything to him, and she was calling it nothing? He didn’t like that at all.
Rhett glared at her and then at West. “Go home, Lara.”
“Why?” she snapped.
“Because I said so.”
“No. You’re being stupid. It was just a kiss. I can kiss who I want.”
Rhett started getting closer to her, like he might touch her. West didn’t know how, or where, or even if he should stop his brother, but he stepped in between them to create a barrier.
“You should go,” West said.
She frowned at him and looked at Rhett again. “I don’t have to do what you say, Rhett.” West thought, in the briefest of moments, that maybe she did. Maybe she had to do what both of them said, but especially Rhett. Maybe that was the answer to making this less tense. Rhett liked rules, and maybe if she followed them rather than antagonised him, they’d all get what they wanted.
“Go home,” Rhett said again. “If you want to come back here, go home now. I mean it, Lara. Do as you’re fucking told.” West’s eyes widened. He’d never heard his brother curse around Lara before.
She didn’t reply. She stared at them both, narrowed her eyes, and finally picked up her rucksack, huffed, and walked away.
West watched her go, as did Rhett, until she eventually turned into the forest and wasn’t in sight anymore. He looked at his brother, shook his head, and went back for the towel and the drinks Rhett had brought down with him. He popped the cap off the soda and sat on his rock again, gazing out at the lake.
It was time fortheconversation.
“You had no fucking right,” Rhett snarled.
West sneered to himself. “I had every right. You took too long. I was bored waiting.”
“Screw you.”
“Stop getting pissy because I kissed her first,” West said, before taking a long gulp. “You could have done it, but you overthought it.” Rhett didn’t say, or do, anything. He just stood back there quietly, maybe waiting for more conversation on the matter or trying to calm down. “I wanted to kiss her. I did. Get over it.” Not that she seemed to care about what they’d done. It didn’t mean anything to her, apparently. “Or kiss her, too. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
There was a rustle of gravel behind him, like the last bit made Rhett think. It made West think, too. It made him think of all the times Rhett got in the way of their father to make sure he took the hits, not West. It didn’t always work, but most times it did. It was the reason Rhett had a T-shirt on today for swimming with Lara, to hide the bruises. He felt guilty about that, but moreover, he felt a desperate sense of loyalty to the one person he knew he could rely on. Rhett would never let him down, never hurt him.
He frowned, though. “Pretty sure we both want more than a kiss, don’t we?” West continued. “If your head’s anything like mine, we both want to have sex with her. We both could. You should have her first.”
A few minutes of silence, of West looking out at clear, blue water and clear, blue skies and an expanse of nothing other than them and sun, and Rhett came over and sat next to him.
West reached for another bottle of soda and took the cap off it, handing it over.
“She knows the difference between us,” Rhett said. “We can’t play with her like that.”
“Why not? It’s not like she means anything to us. We can do whatever we want, and usually get whatever we want, too, don’t we? We can share. Doesn’t bother me.”
Rhett looked at him, and a smile started breaking on his face. “Both of us. We both get to have her, and she knows?”
“Yeah.”
“I doubt she’d do that. I’m not sure she even likes me.”
“She does.” West knew she did, even if Rhett didn’t. He knew because he watched her look at Rhett and saw her twirl her hair and suck the end of her finger sometimes while she did. Sometimes it pissed him off. Other times, it made him imagine that bad stuff. “She wants you more than me, brother. I just kissed her first.”
They both sat and stared, thinking.
In the end, they didn’t need to talk it through any more than that. Sharing was the easiest answer for two young men who liked the same girl, and they both knew it. It wouldn’t result in them fighting, and although both of them knew it wasn’t normal out there in the world to do that with a girl, they weren’t normal. They were twins, practically the same person, but for a few moralistic and characteristic differences. And West was sure those differences were only there because of their father’s behaviour and the beatings Rhett took. They were in a world of their own. Why shouldn’t they change the rules to suit themselves? She just had to agree and everything would be perfect.
“I’ll go kiss her then,” Rhett said.
West nodded and drank some more. He’d kiss her again, too. Maybe they’d both kiss her at the same time. Maybe they’d makeher do all kinds of things for them. Rhett definitely would once he stopped overthinking. He was harsher than West, more stern, and West thought, as he continued staring, that maybe with some fun thrown in he could help heal Rhett somehow. Maybe that would cool him down. Make him laugh again.
