Falling for My Brother's Best Friend

Liam

The door shuts behind Savannah, and I slam the fridge door out of pure frustration.

“Whoa, what did the ketchup do to you?” Denver walks into the kitchen wearing only his boxers, his hair poking out in a million different directions.

This is the first I’ve seen him since the wedding. I have to assume he was holed up in bed with someone all day and night after the wedding.

My friend is awesome, but he needs to get his shit together.

“Coffee?” I change the subject, noticing Savannah’s to-go coffee mug sitting by the pot. “Don’t make me throw this at you” is inscribed in a girly script on the side.

Juno never lets an opportunity to razz her sister pass, and Sav’s past birthday was no exception.

“Definitely.” His head hits the table.

I fill our coffee mugs and sit next to him with the paper. “First you go missing at the wedding, then you don’t return until late last night?”

He picks up his head to give me his classic I-got-some smirk.

“Who was it?” I ask.

“A repeat.”

I run the guest list through my mind, but it’s still hard to narrow the options down because it was the first Bailey wedding and practically the entire town was in attendance.

Then a tiny brunette pops to mind. “Mindy?”

His smile grows and he sips his coffee. “She still loves it when I—”

I hold my hand in the air. “We’re not sixteen, desperate, and horny anymore.”

“You’re not horny?”

I cock an eyebrow.

“Don’t shoot me that look. I get that you respect that Savannah is living here, but your dry spell has been going on since before she moved in.” He sips his coffee.

How do I tell him my dry spell is by choice, not necessity, and that it’s only been thirty-six hours since a woman was in my bed? And that woman was his sister.

Savannah is like an itch on my back I can’t reach. I’m not exactly happy with myself for still being pissed off that she ran out of my bedroom on Saturday night when we were making out.

We were seconds away from quenching the thirst we both have for one another. Savannah may be in denial, but I know that whatever is brewing between us isn’t going away.

“The tattoo shop is busy, and I don’t have time.” I stand to dump out the rest of my coffee. Might as well shower and head to the shop to do the books since we don’t open until later.

“It’s funny.” He meets me at the sink. “I was thinking, when I was at Mindy’s house—”

“You slept with her at her parents’ house?” Last I heard, Mindy had moved to Vancouver.

“She stays above the garage.” He shrugs and leaves his mug in the sink while I put mine in the dishwasher.

“Did you sit down with her parents for breakfast?”

“No,” he scoffs. “We stayed in bed. Stop trying to make me forget my original thought.”

“It’s so easy though.” I pluck his cup from the sink and add it to the dishwasher because we both know he won’t.

“Har-har. So you and Savannah…? Buzz Wheel reported about you two.”

Of course Buzz Wheel had something on Savannah and me leaving Austin’s wedding together. I hate that online gossip blog. “I drove her home.”

“Good. Not that I’m a dick of a best friend who’d say you can’t date my sister, but I was hoping this whole dry spell wasn’t because you had the hots for her.”

“You’re delusional. I gotta shower.” I head for the stairs.

“Are you dodging me?” he calls.

“I answered the question,” I say before I shut my door.

Once I’m secluded, I push his words out of my head but my bed being front and center only reminds me of her. The way her body slid against mine. The softness of her skin.

The flowery smell of her hair. Her swollen lips and lust-drunk eyes. Somehow or another, I gotta shake her out of my system.

After stripping down, I head to my bathroom and brush my teeth while I wait for the shower to warm up.

Denver might think he’d be okay with me messing around with his sister, but he’s a classic after-the-fact-opinion guy.

And this is one area where he’d definitely have an opinion about it after the fact. Especially since his sister thinks I’m not good enough for her.

***

Wanna know what sucks? When you’ve got woman issues and you can’t go to your two best friends because they’re the twin brothers of the girl you can’t get out of your head.

I enter Smokin’ Guns and lock the doors, keeping the blinds shut so no one bothers me. I’m still pissed off after my confrontation with Savannah this morning and could use some alone time.

In my office in the back, I’m only alone with my music for a few minutes before the door chime rings.

“Liam!” Rhys calls. He rounds the corner of the office before I can tell him where I am. Being my right-hand man, he knows what I do every Monday. “What’s up?”

He leans his shoulder on the doorframe, crossing his arms. Rhys is unique for a tattoo artist because the man doesn’t have a drop of ink on him.

He looks like a skateboarder, with his beat-up Vans and endless supply of worn-out jeans and T-shirts.

“Not much.” I drop my pen on my desk and slide out my chair. “How was your weekend back home?”

“Good. Seattle is changing. Not sure it’s a good thing.”

Rhys is a transplant. No one knows much about him other than that he showed up at my shop one day, asking if I was looking for any artists. He keeps a quiet life with his dog on the outskirts of town.

We’ve gone camping and fishing a few times. Compared to Denver and Rome, he’s mellow as hell.

“How?”

He shrugs. “Just different, I guess. Lots of new condos going up. People being pushed out to the ‘burbs because they can’t afford rent in the city anymore. But tat places are lighting up every block.

“Maybe you should do a branch?” He smiles because anyone who really knows me knows Lake Starlight is my home and I have no plans to make Smokin’ Guns some kind of franchise.

“Maybe you should open a shop?” I raise an eyebrow.

He guffaws. He’s gun shy, which I get. Especially not having any tats himself. Some people would say he’s not a true artist because he doesn’t understand what it’s like to get one.

Lucky for him, I’m not one of those people. He’s a skilled artist and that’s all that really matters as far as I’m concerned.

“I like you branching out better.”

I chuckle. “Why are you here so early?”

“I was gonna sketch out some ideas I have.”

“And your place?”

He shrugs again. He’s a man of few words. “How was the wedding?”

Okay, I can take a hint. He’s not up for talking about himself. “It was great.”

“Great not good, huh? Did you finally get laid?” He laughs.

“None of your damn business.”

He nods and pushes off the doorframe.

But Rhys is someone I can trust, and I need to talk to someone before I go apeshit crazy. “Hey, Rhys?”

He turns around, his smirk saying everything I need to know. Rumors are already spreading, even with how careful we were when we left the wedding together.

“What’s the word?” I ask.

“Nothing. I just know you and Savannah Bailey in a room together can be either hot or cold. You forget I was here for the blackbird tattoo.”

I had tunnel vision the night she came in, asking me for something to remember her parents by. It still surprises me when I look back on it—that she trusted me to permanently mark her skin. “Truth?”

He walks back to the doorframe and leans against it in the same position he was in previously. “Always.”

“I took her home and we messed around and now I can’t get her out of my head, and since we live together, I spend most of my time out of my own house or in my barn.” I sound too vulnerable and way too much like a chick.

Rhys loses his smirk. “You need to decide right now if you’re going to pursue her. Either you go after her with everything you got, or you walk away.”

“You make it sound so easy.” I run a hand through my dark hair then pull on my neck, wishing the knots in my muscles would vanish.

“Believe me, I get that it’s not. But you can’t be in limbo like you have been. It’s not healthy, man.

“If it’s not gonna ever happen, you need to move on with your life.” He crosses his arms, and I wonder what brought him here. He sure sounds as if he’s speaking from experience.

“She’s my best friends’ sister.”

“Exactly.”

“Meaning I can’t very well separate myself from her forever.”

“You won’t, not can’t.” He pins me with a stare as if to say, “tell me I’m wrong.”

“What do you want me to do? Kick her out of my house and date other women?”

He touches his nose as though I got the answer right.

“I can’t kick her out. Her grandma would hunt me down and strip me of my balls. Have you ever met Grandma Dori?”

He chuckles. “Then do the one thing you can. Date around. Work her out of your system.

“I get the situation isn’t ideal, what with you two living together, but if she’s the one putting out the Heisman arm, you can’t be expected to play priest in your own house.”

I debate his words. Maybe he’s right. I’ve been so hellbent on not disrespecting Savannah, maybe I went about this wrong.

“The only other thing you could do is convince her to sleep with you. I mean, you don’t do serious relationships, right?”

His question throws me into a tailspin at first. I’ve never had a serious girlfriend, but I’m not against having one. I’ve just never found someone I could imagine infiltrating my life.

I’ve lived on my own since I was eighteen, so she’d have to be amazing for that to happen.

I can’t say the thought of just sleeping with Savannah hasn’t occurred to me before though.

“I’m not sure her brothers would be okay with me doing a fuck-and-chuck with their sister.” I raise an eyebrow.

“Do they have to know?”

“I guess not. Maybe you’re right.”

He pushes off the wall again, cocky smirk in place. “I usually am.”

“Is that why you ran all the way up here to Alaska? To prove you were right about something?”

“Nah. I just got tired of the view.” He goes to the front desk everyone gravitates toward to draw for some reason.

I press play on my phone and “Call You Mine” by the Chainsmokers comes on through the Bluetooth speaker.

Rhys comes back and grabs my phone. “Listen to this a few hundred times and you’ll start to believe it.”

“Get Lucky” by Daft Punk plays. He pats my shoulder and leaves the room.

Maybe he was a therapist before he came to Lake Starlight. Either way, I’m going to do what he says.

Either I try to sleep with her, or I date random women until Savannah Bailey is so far out of my mind, I can barely remember what she looks like half-clothed.