CHAPTER FOUR

Theodore

Nobody moved for about three seconds.

Then everyone moved at once.

"You know each other?" my mother said, looking between us with a confused expression while hoping for a reasonable explanation.

"Know each other?" I laughed and it came out wrong. "Mom, this is Elijah Voss. As in — Voss. As in the person I have spent three years wanting to—"

"Careful," Elijah said gently.

"Don't tell me to be careful in my mother's house." I snapped.

"Technically it's your mother's house," he said. "Which makes it none of yours."

"Elijah." Douglas's voice carried a quiet warning.

"Dad." He said it back with the same intonation, perfectly mirrored, and I wanted to put my fist through the wall.

Who he fuck—

"Okay." My mother stepped forward with her hands up, peacemaker face on, the one she'd been perfecting since I was seven. "Let's just — everyone take a breath—"

"I'm breathing fine," I said.

"You look like you're about to pop a vein," Elijah said.

"I will actually end you—"

"Theodore." My mother's voice sharpened.

"Mom." I turned to her in anger and then paused to take a deep breath before I told her something I regret. "This man — his son — we are not—" I stopped. Started again. "This isn't going to work. Whatever this is." I gestured between Douglas and her and the whole catastrophic situation. "Douglas—" I turned to him and he looked at me calmly. "I mean this respectfully. You seem like a genuinely good man. I could see that tonight, I could see how you look at her and I mean it when I say that matters to me." I reached out and took my mother's hand. "But she cannot marry into this. I will not allow it."

Silence. I started pulling her up the stairs when Elijah took four large steps towards me and took my mother's other hand then pulled her gently toward him.

"With all due respect," he said, looking directly at me, "you selfish prick—"

"Elijah!" Douglas, louder this time.

"—your mother is a grown woman who has been happy for the first time in God knows how long and you want to blow that up because you have a problem with me?" He looked at my mother with an expression that was, infuriatingly, genuinely kind. "I apologize for him."

"Do not apologize for me—" I wanted him gone and I didn't care how I could never become brothers with him.

"Someone has to."

"You have some nerve—"

"Both of you." Douglas stepped forward, voice firm and calm. "That is enough."

"He started—"

"I don't care who started it!” Douglas snapped then looked between us like we were kids throwing a tantrum rather than adults. "You are both adults. You will behave like it."

"With respect, Douglas, this is between me and—"

"It is not between anyone right now," my mother said, and her voice had gone quiet and I could tell that she was done with everything. I knew that voice because I had been afraid of that voice since childhood. "You will both sit down."

Neither of us sat down.

"Theo," she said.

I sat down.

A pause. Then Elijah sat.

My mother looked between us then sat too and Douglas took a seat next to her.

"We know this is a surprise," Douglas said finally.

"That's one way to put it and the least suitable way to describe this." I muttered.

Elijah made a sound beside me that was almost a laugh.

"We had planned to introduce you both differently," my mother said. "We didn't anticipate—" she paused, "—whatever history you two have."

"History," Elijah repeated, and I shot him a look that said very clearly ‘do not.”

Heloked at me with mischief in his eyes which told me he was thinking about the peck in the locker room but thankfully he didn't say anything.

"We've decided," my mother continued, sitting up slightly, "that we don't want a long engagement. We want something small and soon. Just with the people who matter to us."

Douglas nodded. "We'd like a month with both of you, here, under the same roof. To help prepare." He looked between us. "And to become something that resembles a family before the day itself."

The silence that followed was deafening and suffocating.

I couldn't believe it. “You can't be serious.”

My mom had a leading look on her face. “We are. Theo, please.”

She really wanted this. She was finally happy but that happiness came from my enemy’s father. I had to share a home with the one person I couldn't stand.

I looked at my mother's face. The hope in it that she was trying not to show.

I looked at Douglas's hand over hers.

I thought about everything I couldn't say in this room.

"Fine," I said.

Everyone looked at Elijah.

He was already looking at me. Something moved in his expression that I didn't like.

"Of course," he said pleasantly. "I wouldn't do anything to ruin this for you guys."

Of course he had to seem like an angel. Fucking prick.

****

Ten minutes later, I walked to one of the hallways on the far side of the house, stood in it and started kicking the wall until I could feel the pain all through my leg.

"Unbelievable." I pressed my forearm against the wall and dropped my head against it. "Un-believable."

I had to spend a month here. Thirty whole days under one roof with him.

I kicked the wall again for good measure.

"I wouldn't do that too many times." His voice came from behind me, easy and relaxed. "It's not your house."

I turned around.

Elijah was leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed and his jacket finally fully off and the most infuriating expression on his face — calm, unbothered, the corners of his mouth doing that thing where they weren't quite smiling but were strongly implying it.

I wanted to commit a crime. One that could give me a lifetime behind bars but it'd be worth it.

"You think this is funny," I said.

"I think it's nice," he said.

"Stay away from me." I pointed at him. "For the next month you stay on your side of it. You don't talk to me, you don't look at me, you don't—"

"We're going to be living in the same house, Callahan."

"I'm aware of that—"

"Sharing meals." He tilted his head. "Probably sharing a bathroom. Maybe a wall."

"I will sleep in the car." I meant it. It'd be uncomfortable but I didn't care.

"Your mother would love that."

I pushed off the wall, walked across the hallway and grabbed the front of his shirt pulling him towards me. He didn't flinch or step back, just looked down at my hands and then up at my face.

"Listen to me very carefully," I said, low. "Whatever you're thinking. Whatever you think this situation is giving you access to — it's not. You pull any stunts in this house, around my mother, around Douglas, and I swear to God I will make the last three years look like a warm-up. Do you understand me?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he looked down at my hands gripping his shirt and closed his fingers around my wrists and pulled them slowly down until our chests touched and the air changed. The tension from the locker room was back.

"You still owe me a debt," he said quietly. "We're still in the middle of a bet." His eyes held mine. "And now we're going to be living together for a month. Ain't the universe just great?"

He glanced around the hallway. Then back at me.

"I guess we're stepbrothers now." His mouth curved. "This should be fun.”