Page 26 of I Hate You More

“Ugh.” Caleb frowned as realization sank in. “Are you really going to make me pick up your dry cleaning?Now?”

Spencer felt his jaw grow tight. Trust Caleb to turn the tables so thatSpencerwas the one who looked like the bad guy. The truth—that Caleb was late for his weekly court-mandated gambling addiction meeting—was unpalatable and therefore covered up.

“You know me,” Spencer said. “Always a stickler for the rules.”

“You can go one week without your dry cleaning. It won’t be the end of the world.”

Spencer hunched his shoulder in a half shrug. “Suit yourself. You’re capable of making your own decisions.”

Understandably, this exchange caught the interest of the rest of the adults gathered around. Eva and Maury had witnessed enough hostility between the brothers to treat it as an everyday occurrence, so they set about carrying dishes inside and gathering up their brood. Ruby, however, watched them both with narrow-eyed interest.

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to pick up your dry cleaning on the way home from work?” she asked Spencer.

Caleb answered for him. “He needs a special shirt. It wasn’t ready until now.”

“Then can’t he pick it up on the waytowork tomorrow?”

“He wants to wear it tonight. It’s a special shirt.” Caleb was physically restricted by the line in the yard, but he managed to sidle as close to Ruby as he could while still falling within the boundary. “I didn’t want to say anything while Eva and Maury were listening, but it’s made of skintight black leather.”

Ruby laughed. “There’s no way that’s true. Now Iknowyou’re hiding something.”

Caleb was no more immune to the sound of Ruby’s laughter than Spencer was. Since Caleb couldn’t swoop her into his arms without stepping over the line, he grabbed her hand and held it to his chest with mock reverence instead. “You’re right. I can’t hold it in anymore. You, Ruby Taylor, are a goddess among women. A paragon of femininity. A vision of loveliness—”

“Not aboutthat,” she said, cutting him short. She snatched her hand back in a way that made Spencer feel warm all over. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a woman less interested in his brother. “You two give the appearance of being upstanding citizens who love well-behaved dogs and obedience more than is good for you, but there’s something else going on here. I can feel it.”

“Weareupstanding citizens who love well-behaved dogs,” Spencer said. He would have been more than happy to let the subject drop there, but Caleb had never been good at knowing when to stop. He eyed Spencer as though seeing him for the first time.

“You know, the people at the laundry service would never be able to tell ifyoupicked up the dry cleaning instead of me,” he said.

Spencer couldn’t pretend to misunderstand him. What his brother was hinting at—and what he was asking—was for Spencer to take his place at the meeting. It would be an easy enough thing to do. Although Caleb couldn’t emulate Spencer’s voice well enough to trick a dog, Spencer was more than capable of pretending to be his brother.

“I’ll do no such thing.”

“They don’t really care who comes to get it, just so long as they get a signature. And you’ve been able to forge my handwriting for years.”

“Caleb, I’m not doing that. You need to get the dry cleaning for yourself. You know it as well as I do.”

Even though Spencer was vaguely aware of Ruby standing and watching the entire interaction, she’d become only a secondary consideration. Calebdidneed to get the dry cleaning for himself, and hedidknow it. Not because a judge had told him to, but because Caleb’s gambling addiction was a very real and destructive thing. All you had to do was look at their current living situation to realize it.

They both had a competitive streak, it was true. What hadn’t been implanted at birth had been forged by a boyhood spent in a constant game of one-upmanship. It wasn’t just the push-ups and quarters, either. They’d constantly tried to see who could jump farther, climb higher, push harder—a good-natured rivalry that had given their parents many a visit to the emergency room.

By the time they reached puberty, Spencer had started to apply that drive to his education. The same resolution that had made it possible for him to hold his breath underwater one more second had helped him rise to the top of the class and stay there. Caleb, however, had found less productive ways of channeling his talents.

Spencer couldn’t understand it. His brother was smart. He was good with animals and even better at people. When he applied himself—reallyapplied himself—there was very little he couldn’t accomplish. In fact, until his gambling website had been flagged by the federal government for breaking about twelve laws, it had been an undeniable success.

“It’s just a few shirts, Spencer,” Caleb said. “Let it go.”

“It’s never just a few shirts,” Spencer returned. “I can’t.”

He had no idea how long the pair of them might have stood there, trapped in a stalemate that neither one of them was willing to give up, but it was probably hours. That was the problem with sharing your DNA with another human being. His brother was part of his blood, the other half of his soul. Whatever it was that drove Caleb to recklessly push his luck was the same thing that drove Spencer to rescue him at the first sign of trouble.

“Well, I give up,” Ruby said, unlocking their horns without even being aware of it. “I don’t know what you two are talking about or why you’re getting all hot and bothered over laundry, but I have to get up early for work tomorrow. Thank you, Caleb, for letting me set up the stage on your half of the backyard. And thank you, Spencer, for dinner. I’d offer to stay and help with the dishes, but I refuse to go anywhere near that sink.”

“Oh, we don’t put the dishes in the sink,” Eva said as she came up to bid them farewell. Maury was in the middle of packing his kids into their minivan, so all he could offer was a harassed wave. “There’s a plastic tub in the front where Spencer puts everything. He washes them with the sprinkler.”

“It’s not a sprinkler,” he said, but his protest was a feeble one. He might not use a sprinkler, but he did use the hose. Living in only half a house was a lot more difficult than most people realized. “It’s a custom open-air sanitation process.”

Ruby laughed. “How fancy. Next, you’ll be telling me that your living arrangement is a unique lifestyle modification instead of some weird brother rivalry.”