‘How about we pretend that’s not an option?’ It wasn’t. Not in this household.
‘All right.’ Adrian reached for her textbook and started flipping through it as if he actually knew what he was looking for. Long wrists. Big hands like paddles. Thick, strong fingers with callouses that came of hours spent kite surfing. Lena had the insane urge to put her palm against his and take measure, note down exactly how warm and big and rough those hands of his were...
And then the textbook thunked down on the table beside her, and Adrian’s chest brushed her shoulder as he pointed to a particular section of text, and...damn but it was getting hot in here.
‘You want a chair?’ she asked, the better to put some breathing distance between them.
‘Been sitting all day. ’M good.’
Lena shifted restlessly and got a nose full of Adrian’s body-scent for her trouble. He smelled spicy clean, tantalisingly fine—and this after an afternoon of school sport. As if he’d taken the time to shower before heading over here, which made no sense at all given his tendency to end up in the ocean regardless.
‘So...’ he prompted, his voice gruffer than usual. ‘Question six.’
Right. Question six. Lena dragged her attention back to the matter at hand. No! Not the hands! Question six. ‘So I tried to find a—’
‘What’s going on?’ said a voice from the patio doorway, and she knew every nuance of that voice too, no need to look up to know that Jared was standing in the doorway or that he’d be wearing a scowl.
She looked up anyway and met her brother’s narrowed gaze with curiosity. He had unruly black hair—a trait they shared, although hers was considerably longer and considerably more unruly. He had bluer eyes than she did because hers often tended towards grey in the right kind of light. They both had athletic builds. Lena had a yearning for curves, but it wasn’t going to happen. She had a scowl just like the one Jared was wearing. The family resemblance was strong.
‘What’s wrong with you? Not enough Jared West groupies on the beach?’ Jared was a wanted man as far as the girls around here were concerned. Most of those girls made friends with Lena in order to get closer to him, which wasn’t a problem except that Jared changed girlfriends with dazzling speed and not many of them stayed friends with Lena afterwards.
‘Their loss,’ Jared had told her when she’d complained about the defection of her friends, and, while his curt words had soothed her ego, the fact remained that Lena was still appallingly low on company because of him. Jared had been more inclined to let her tag around with him after that, probably out of pity.
Lena could have done without the pity, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
‘I said, what are you doing?’ repeated Jared, heavy on the ice.
‘Trig,’ said Lena, figuring a straight answer might appease him.
Jared’s gaze shifted to Adrian. ‘That what she’s calling you these days?’
Adrian held Jared’s bleak gaze with an enigmatic one of his own. ‘If something’s bothering you, J, spit it out.’
Jared’s gaze shifted between her and Adrian once more. Adrian straightened slowly and some message flashed between him and her brother that Lena didn’t have the cipher for.
‘You know the rules,’ said Jared curtly.
‘Do I know the rules?’ she asked. ‘What rules?’
‘He thought I was hitting on you,’ said Adrian, after another long and loaded silence. ‘It’s not encouraged.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Lena. There were two issues buried in that simple little statement, and while her mind shied away from the implication that Adrian might actually like her enough to hit on her, it had no trouble whatsoever grappling with the second. ‘Jared West, are you scaring away my potential boyfriends? Because if you are...and I find out you are...’ Lena narrowed her gaze. ‘Is this why Ty Chester didn’t ask me to the year eleven dance? Because he was going to—I know he was. And then he didn’t.’
‘Nah, that one was all you,’ said Jared. ‘He probably thought you were going to ask him hang-gliding in return. I hear he’s scared of heights.’
‘And kittens,’ added Adrian. ‘Possibly his own shadow.’
‘Maybe I was after a refreshing change,’ she grumbled. ‘Maybe I wanted to see how the quiet, handsome half lived.’ Facts were facts. Ty Chester was uncommonly handsome. Nor would it have killed her to spend some time with people she hadn’t hero-worshipped since birth.
‘You’d have eaten him alive,’ said Jared.
‘Yes, that was the plan. Jared, I swear, if I ever catch you interfering in my love life I will make your love life a living hell. Yours too,’ she told Adrian for good measure.
‘Mine’s already a living hell,’ murmured Adrian and Jared snorted. More silent communication passed between them, effectively cutting her out of the loop. They did it all the time and mostly it didn’t bother her. Today, it did.
‘Lord, you two, get a room.’
‘Yeah, Trig,’ said Jared, darkly gleeful. ‘Let’s get a room.’
‘If we go surfing this afternoon, I’m going to drown you,’ said Trig, formerly known as Adrian.
Jared flipped him a friendly finger.
‘Is this foreplay?’ asked Lena. ‘Because if it is, can it happen elsewhere? I’m trying to concentrate on my homework here.’ A valid point as far as she was concerned. Unfortunately, it focused Jared’s attention back on her books.
‘Since when do you need help with maths homework?’ he asked.
‘Since it got hard. What kind of idiot question is that?’
‘Seriously? You really can’t do basic trigonometry?’
‘This is why I don’t think I’m fully related to any of them,’ Lena told Adrian. ‘I’m the milkman’s baby.’
‘Yeah, baby, but you’ve got a lot of grit,’ offered Adrian. ‘Who cares if it takes you a fraction longer than the rest of them to figure out a trigonometry proof? You’ll still get there.’
‘Yeah, but not fast enough. And then they’ll disown me. That’s what happens to people who can’t keep up.’
‘Since when have you ever not kept up?’ This from Jared who’d never had to work to keep up with anything. He was always out front; always the leader. And Lena had always worked her butt off to make sure that she wasn’t that far behind.
It was costing her, though. More and more, she could feel the gap between what her siblings could do and what she could do widening. It was the curse of being an ordinary person in an extraordinary family.
‘Would you disown me if I did fall behind?’ she asked.
And shocked Jared speechless.
Adrian was looking at her funny—as if he’d known all along that her insecurities were there but he couldn’t quite figure out why she was voicing them now. Lena didn’t know why she was voicing them now either. It was just a maths question.
‘Never mind,’ she said awkwardly.
‘You won’t fall behind.’ Jared had finally found his voice. ‘I won’t let you.’
He just didn’t get it. ‘But what if that’s where I’m meant to be? Water finding its own level, and all that?’
‘No,’ said Jared grimly. ‘The hell with that. That’s just defeatist.’
‘No one’s leaving anyone behind,’ said Adrian soothingly. ‘No one here’s defeated. Jared’s never going to disown