Page 13 of Claimed By My Ex’s Brother

Don’t feel bad about the glue. Everybody has a weakness. Yours is cooking. Also parallel parking.

Then, a moment later, one more.

Milo

You stayed out ALL night. You met somebody. I’m putting this together like a real detective.

I’m glad, honestly. It beats you moping about the Human Volcano, the emotionally constipated prick.

I nearly laugh out loud in the back seat. Human Volcano is Milo’s private name for Maksim, born from months of the two of them bickering over the remote, the thermostat, and every other tiny territory in our apartment, two stubborn little bastards at war. Milo used to whisper about keeping a fire extinguisher near the couch.

When my brother says I met somebody, my mind goes straight to Lev, and my ears go hot and my stupid pulse kicks between my legs.

He carries a quiet, heavy, filthy sort of restraint that Maksim never owned. He never once raised his voice last night to prove a single point. One look from those steel-gray eyes and my common sense simply resigns on the spot. One look, and I’m wet and furious about it in the same breath.

Stop detective-ing your sister, you brat.

Milo

Fine, but I hope this one treats you better than the Human Volcano did. Your record is not amazing.

Can we do taquitos tonight? Please please please.

Since our parents died there has only ever been the two of us, and I have never once managed to tell that face no.

Taquitos it is.

He fires back a whole row of party emojis that warms me stupidly.

The driver slides up to Sablo House, the gold letters over the door gone dull in the plain morning light. I slip through the staff entrance with three whole minutes to spare, my lungs on fire. The pharmacy stays parked on my mental list for later, and later, it turns out, never comes at all.

I have barely traded last night’s dress for the spare uniform in my locker before the swarm forms.

“She’s here!” someone stage-whispers, and half the floor rotates toward me, starving for a scrap of filth to chew on.

“Delaney, oh my God, what happened last night?” “We heard there was a whole scene.”

“Someone said your tits were on full display, top soaked right through. Was there a fight?”

I scramble behind my calm face for any lie that is not the truth. For one wild second I consider telling them that aliens landed and wiped everyone’s memory clean.

“Wow, news travels fast around here,” I manage. I cannot hand them the real story, which has Maksim and Vanessa stamped all over it.

None of them know I ever dated Maksim. I never volunteered it, not once, despite his face and his money. I didn’t want to turn interesting to a room full of strangers because of Maksim.

The single exception is Margo, and I catch her eye and mouth a desperate rescue me.

Margo pushes straight through the others, every bit as hungry as the rest of them. Her hazel eyes are lit up like it is her birthday morning. “Never mind the scene. Who was the man? The one who wrapped you up in his own jacket?”

“He was hotter than a movie star, from what people are saying,” another coworker jumps in. “A man built like that doesn’t just show up and wrap his jacket around nobody.”

“He was a gentleman,” I say, flat as day-old, gone-flat soda. “That is the whole story, start to finish. Now, some of us have actual work to do, so kindly fuck off back to your stations.”

The dull answer does its job, and the crowd melts back toward their stations.

Dana strolls in exactly at start time, and her gaze locks onto me the way it always does. She started here two months ahead of me and has never let me forget the seniority.

“Let me guess,” she says, loud enough to carry across the floor. “You spread your legs for someone to earn all that attention. Girls like you don’t get noticed for nothing.”