Page 6 of My First Mistake
Brax rolls his eyes. “You sound like Addie.”
Ah, Addison. My eternal tormentor. “Speaking of Addie, I assume she was okay with the whole cabin-share situation?”
His mouth drops open and he slaps his forehead. “Fuck!”
Well, this can’t be good. “What do you mean, fuck, Brax?”
He screws his eyes closed and mutters the word fuck at least another half a dozen times.
“Please tell me that you’ve told her I’m going to be her roomie for the next week,” I plead with him, but already I can tell byhis face that he hasn’t. And that, of course, would explain the lack of any hostility from her regarding the situation. Stupid of me to assume she might have forgiven me after all these years. Even though, if I’m honest, I don’t want her forgiveness unless I’ve fucking earned it, because that will mean she’s moved on. And maybe that’s the real reason I’ve never tried to apologize, because as much as it might make me an asshole, it would fucking kill me if she moved on.
“I…fuck! It totally slipped my mind.”
Eva nudges him in his ribs. “You never told me either. I could have let her know this morning when I was at the store.”
He slides his arm around her waist and kisses her cheek. “Sorry, babe, with all the wedding prep, I completely forgot about it.”
She flutters her eyelashes. “It’s okay, I forgive you.”
I don’t though. Addison doesn’t know we’re sharing a cabin this week. Fuck! “Slipped your mind? You know she’s going to go apeshit when she finds out, don’t you?”
He scoffs. “She’ll be fine. You’re practically family. Like her big brother.”
I am definitelynotlike her big brother. She really never told him a single thing about me and her, did she? “She is Addison, buddy. She’s gonna be pissed that you sprung this on her. And yeah, we might have been close when we were younger, but we haven’t been in the same room together for eight years and now we’re sharing a cabin, you do realize that, right?” I scrub a hand over my face.
“Chase is right. You need to call Addie right now and tell her,” Eva chides him. “At least to stop her from braining him with a frying pan if she thinks he’s an intruder.”
She’s more likely to brain me for being me than an intruder. She’d probably have an intruder sit down, offer them some teaand ask them what went so wrong in their life that they had to turn to crime.
Brax fishes his cell phone out of his pocket and then he dials Addison’s number. The signal is so poor here it takes him a few tries to connect, and all the while the heavy feeling of dread is growing in the pit of my stomach. Eventually he gets through. “Addie. Addie!” he yells into the phone.
“Can she hear you?” Eva asks.
He nods. Then he loudly tells her that she’ll be sharing a cabin with me for the next four days.
With a triumphant smile, he tells her he’ll see her later and ends the call.
I stare at him. “So, what did she say?”
“She was fine,” he assures me.
“What did she say, Brax?” I repeat, because there is not a chance on God’s green earth she just took that news well.
“She said she’ll see us all later.” He smiles again, but it’s unnerving.
“She couldn’t hear you, could she?”
His grin turns distinctly sheepish. “There’s a small chance she didn’t hear a single fucking word I said, but I have every confidence that she did,” he declares.
I am seriously rethinking my decision to agree to his ridiculous request. “Maybe I should just stay at the main lodge like I originally planned.”
He shakes his head. “Can’t now, buddy. Eva’s mom moved some people around and there are no other rooms available.”
“Then I’ll sleep on a sofa in the lobby.”
He slaps me on the back and lets out a throaty chuckle. “I know Addie used to be a pint-sized tyrant, but she’s cool now, buddy. You guys will have tons of fun catching up.”
“Brax, I…” I swallow the words. Now is definitely not the time to confess how I broke his baby sister’s heart by being the biggest jackass on the face of the earth.
