My Brother’s Best Friend Is My Nemesis

Chapter eight

Ace

I make the pancakes.

Not because I feel guilty. Not because Mason texted me at midnight demanding them like I owe him a debt. But because it is eight in the morning and I've been awake since five and doing something with my hands is better than standing in my own kitchen thinking about the fact that everything changed last night and I don't know yet if that's good or catastrophic.

I'm on the second batch when Mason comes out.

He doesn't say anything. He pours himself coffee, sits at the counter, and watches me cook with the expression he uses at film sessions when he's clocking an opponent's weakness. Patient. Precise. Like he's got all the time in the world and he knows the answer is going to come to him if he just keeps watching.

I plate the pancakes and slide them across to him.

He eats one.

"Good," he says.

"I know."

He eats another. "She's not up yet."

"She doesn't get up before nine on Saturdays."

Mason looks at me. "You know her Saturday schedule."

"I know everyone's schedule. I'm a morning person."

"You know her schedule," he repeats, "specifically."

I lean back against the counter with my coffee and look at my best friend and decide that ten years of friendship means we're doing this straight. No angles. No plays. "Yeah," I say. "I do."

Mason puts his fork down.

"How long has it actually been building," he says. "And don't tell me nine days. I watched you two in that hallway two months ago, Ace. After the report. I watched the way you looked at her."

"The way I looked at her was pissed off."

"No." He shakes his head slowly. "I know what you look like when you're pissed off. That wasn't it." He picks up his coffee. "I didn't want to see it then. So I didn't."

I don't say anything to that.

"How long," he says again.

I think about being honest. Then I decide that honest is the only currency I have left in this conversation. "Longer than I knew what to do with. I didn't touch her. I didn't say anything. I didn't plan any of it."

"But."

"But she moved in and it stopped being something I could ignore."

Mason is quiet for a long moment. He's looking at his plate but he's not seeing it. He's somewhere else, running something through his head, and I wait because that's what you do with Mason — you give him the space to land on it himself.

"She had a bad year," he says finally. "Before the apartment. Before all of this. She had a really bad year and she didn't tell me most of it and I found out pieces of it from other people and I — " He stops. His jaw tightens. "I wasn't there. I kept telling myself she was fine because she said she was fine and it was easier to believe that."

"Mason—"

"I'm not looking for you to tell me it's okay. I know it's not." He looks at me. "She's the toughest person I know. Tougher than me. Tougher than you, probably. But she's not — she acts like nothing gets to her and everything gets to her, and she will not say so, and that means the people around her have to pay attention because she won't ask for anything."

"I know," I say.

"Do you."

"I've been paying attention." I hold his gaze. "I see her, Mason. Not the version she shows everyone else. Her."

He looks at me for a long time.

"If you hurt her," he says.

"I know."

"I'm not making a general statement. I'm telling you specifically — if you do to her what you've done to every girl on this campus in the last three years — I will not be someone who has your back anymore. And you know what that means for me to say."

I do know. Ten years. Two-a-days at fourteen years old, his couch when my father was being my father, every bad decision I've ever made that he covered for, every good one he pushed me toward. I know exactly what it means for Mason Cole to say he will not have my back.

"I know," I say again.

"Then say it like you mean it."

"I mean it," I say. "This is different. She's different. I know you need more than that and I don't have more than that right now except that I mean it and I will show you that I mean it. That's all I've got."

Mason picks up his fork. He eats another pancake.

Thirty seconds pass.

"Don't be weird in front of me," he says. "Whatever you do, don't be weird in front of me."

I almost smile. "Define weird."

"You know what weird is."

"I know what weird is."

"Good." He points his fork at me. "And if she cries one single time because of you I will end your entire career."

"Understood."

"These pancakes are actually really good."

"I know."

He eats. I drink my coffee. The apartment settles back into something that feels, cautiously and provisionally and with a lot of conditions attached, like it might be okay.

That's when Wren comes out.

She's in a hoodie and sleep shorts and her hair is everywhere, and she stops in the kitchen doorway and looks between us with the expression of someone trying to calculate how much damage she's walking into.

"Are you two—"

"Pancakes," Mason says, pointing at the plate. "Sit down."

She looks at me.

I give her nothing because I don't know yet what to give her while Mason is watching.

She sits down.

I plate her pancakes. I put them in front of her. My hand lands on her shoulder for exactly one second as I pass — one second, nothing, barely anything — and I feel her go still under it and I feel Mason watching the whole thing like he's filing it away.

I go back to my coffee.

Nobody says anything for a full minute.

Then Mason looks at Wren and says: "I'm not mad at you."

She looks up.

"I was processing last night. I'm allowed to process. But I'm not mad at you and I need you to know that." He pauses. "I'm not thrilled. There's a difference."

"I know the difference," she says quietly.

"I also need you to know—" He stops. He clears his throat. He does the thing where he looks at the counter because Mason Cole can say hard things but he can't always say them to your face. "I know I wasn't — I know I let things happen around you that I should've stopped. When we were younger. I'm not doing a whole speech about it. I just need you to know I know."

Wren is staring at him.

"Mason—"

"Don't make it a whole thing. I hate making things a whole thing."

"I'm not making it—" She stops. Her jaw is tight in a way that means she's holding something back. She picks up her fork instead. "Okay."

"Okay," he says.

They eat.

I watch the two of them — this thing between them that I've been adjacent to for ten years without ever fully seeing — and something settles in my chest. Something that feels almost like it belongs there.

My phone buzzes on the counter.

I glance down.

Unknown number. Two words.

*We need to talk.*

I know that number. I deleted it six months ago and I know it anyway because some things you don't get to forget no matter how hard you try.

Dominic Vega. The Reapers.

I turn the phone face down before either of them can see the screen.

Mason is saying something to Wren about her thesis, and she's saying something back about his terrible taste in thesis feedback, and they are doing the specific sibling thing they do where they argue like they're fighting and communicate like they've been speaking the same language their whole lives, and I sit in my own kitchen and watch them and think about what Dominic wanting to talk means.

Because Dominic Vega does not text. Dominic calls. Dominic shows up. The only time Dominic texts is when he's giving you the courtesy of a warning before something arrives.

And I got him involved in the Reid situation. I called in a favor. A specific kind of favor that comes with a specific kind of price tag, and I knew that when I did it, and I did it anyway because I found out what happened to Wren and I stopped caring about the cost.

I'm starting to care about the cost now.

"Ace." Wren's voice.

I look up.

She's watching me. Mason is looking at his phone. She's watching me with those eyes that have always, since she was twelve years old, seen more than I wanted them to.

"You okay?" she says quietly.

"Fine," I say.

She looks at my face down phone. Then at me.

She knows I'm lying. She doesn't push it because Mason is right there, but she knows, and the knowledge sits in the air between us like a third thing in the room.

My phone buzzes again. Face down.

I don't turn it over.

Whatever Dominic wants — whatever the price tag is for what I did for Wren — it does not come into this kitchen. It does not come near this table. It does not touch any of this.

I'll handle it the way I always handle things.

Alone. Before it becomes anyone else's problem.

---

Mason leaves at noon to deal with the apartment insurance situation, and the front door closes behind him, and for the first time since last night it's just me and Wren in the apartment.

She's on the couch with her thesis notes before I can say anything.

I sit on my side. She's on hers. Normal. Except it's not normal anymore and we both know it and neither of us is saying so.

"He was good," she says without looking up. "About it. Better than I expected."

"He loves you."

"I know." A pause. "He was good about you too. Which surprised me more."

"Should it have?"

She looks up. "You two have been best friends for ten years. I'm his little sister. If you'd come to him a year ago and said I want to — whatever — with Wren, he would've lost his mind."

"A year ago I would've said you were out of your mind for suggesting it."

She looks at me. "What changed."

"You moved into my apartment."

"That's the answer every time."

"It's the true answer every time." I lean forward, elbows on knees, and look at her directly. "You were always there, Wren. In the background. In the corner. Making yourself small and keeping your head down and staying out of the way. And then you walked through that door with two bags and your chin up and you stopped making yourself small the second you got here and I—" I stop. "I didn't know what to do with it."

She's very still.

"I've been making myself small my whole life," she says quietly.

"I know."

"You were part of the reason."

"I know that too." I hold her gaze. "I'm not asking you to let me fix it. I'm just telling you what's true."

She looks at me for a long moment. Then she puts her notes down, crosses the cushion between us, and sits close enough that our knees are touching.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay?"

"Don't make it a whole thing." The corner of her mouth moves. "I hate making things a whole thing."

She's quoting Mason at me. I almost laugh.

I reach over and tuck that piece of hair behind her ear again — the same one, the one that always falls — and she turns her face slightly into my hand like she's not fully aware she's doing it.

My phone buzzes from the coffee table.

We both look at it.

Face up this time. Different contact. Not Dominic.

Reeves: *Vega's outside the rink. Been there since this morning. Says he's waiting for you. Thought you should know.*

Wren reads it at the same time I do.

I feel her go still beside me.

"Who's Vega," she says.

I pick up the phone. "Nobody."

"Ace." Her voice is careful. Precise. The voice she uses when she's already figured out the answer and she's asking anyway. "Who is Dominic Vega."

I look at her.

And in her eyes I can see it — the moment she puts it together. The gang. The favor. The text this morning that I turned face down so she wouldn't see.

"What did you do," she says.

Not a question. An arrival.

"Wren—"

"What did you do to make Reid leave."

The apartment is very quiet.

I made it clean. I made sure there was nothing that came back to her. Nothing that came back to Mason. I took the whole thing on myself the way I always take things on myself and I thought that was enough.

"Nothing you need to worry about," I say.

She stands up off the couch and looks down at me and her face is doing something I haven't seen before. Not anger. Not hurt. Something more complicated than both.

"You called in a favor," she says. "From the gang. To handle Reid."

I don't answer.

"Ace." Her voice cracks slightly on my name. "What does that mean? What does calling in that kind of favor mean?"

I look at her.

"It means I owe Dominic Vega something," I say. "And now he's here to collect."

She stares at me.

And I watch her face do the thing I was afraid of — the thing where the warmth that's been building for nine days starts to recalculate against the reality of who I actually am and what my life actually looks like outside this apartment.

"Wren—"

"Don't." She holds up one hand. "Just — give me a second."

She walks to the window. She stands with her back to me, looking at the city below, and I sit on the couch and watch her and wait.

Because this is it. This is the thing I couldn't keep from her forever.

I handled Reid. I'd do it again. But it came with a price.

And the price just showed up at my rink.