“Uh-huh.” I level him with a scathing look as I drop back down on my seat. “So, what’s the score?” I ask, my gaze bouncing between them.
“We’re friends who like to fuck occasionally,” he says, spooning a ton of diabetic-inducing sugar into his mug. “It’s no big deal, right, Ash?” He winks at her and I want to punch him in his annoying face.
“Right.” Her tight grin is borderline a grimace.
Awkward tension bleeds into the air, and I regret asking my question. Maybe I should have waited until he left and asked Ash on her own. Discreetly, I squeeze her hand in silent apology under the table.
Jamie’s phone pings, and he snatches it up, reading his message. “I’ve got to go.” He takes his plate, glass, and mug over to the sink. I watch Ash’s crestfallen face out of the corner of my eye while he rinses and stacks his plate in the dishwasher. At least the boy has some manners. He grabs his leather jacket from the arm of the couch before coming back to the table. “Thanks for breakfast, Grace.” Shoving his hands in the back pockets of his dark jeans, he fixes me with a cocky look. “I guess I should apologize too.”
“You guess?” I arch a brow. “What kind of way is that to apologize?”
A sheepish grin creeps over his face. “I apologize for being a dick to you. Sometimes I let my inner Dillon take too much control.”
I snort out a laugh. “I’ll say.”
Placing his hands on Ash’s shoulders, he leans down, whispering in her ear before he kisses her goodbye.
I wait until I hear the front door snick shut before I question her. “What’s the story with you two?”
“You heard him,” she says, vigorously swirling her spoon in her lukewarm coffee. “We’re just friends with benefits—except we’re more like enemies most of the time.” Her head thuds off the table. “Ugh. I’m such an idiot. I swore I wasn’t going to sleep with him again.”
“We had a lot to drink last night. And we were smoking.”
“That’s no excuse,” she grumbles, lifting her head.
“How long has it been going on?” I ask, getting up to make a fresh pot of coffee. If it wasn’t eleven a.m., and I wasn’t already hungover as fuck, I’d suggest we need alcohol for this conversation.
“A while.” Air huffs out of her mouth. “Jamie’s always been flirty with me, but I never thought anything of it. A, he’s a big slut. Almost as bad as my brother. And B, he was one of Cillian’s friends too.”
“So all the guys hung around together?” I surmise, propping my elbows on the table.
“Cillian and Dillon were best friends growing up, and then they met Conor, Jamie, and Aaron—the old drummer—at secondary school, and they all started hanging out.”
“Is Jamie still friends with Cillian?” I know Dillon isn’t because he’s loyal to his sister.
She shakes her head, and tears glisten in her eyes. “The guys were all disgusted with him. They took my side. None of them talk to him anymore.”
I’m glad they supported her. I can’t imagine how much harder her situation would be if Cillian was still friends with the band. “So, the Cillian connection isn’t an issue.”
“Except it is.” She climbs to her feet. “I’m not feeling so great. Let’s lie down on the sofa.”
I grab coffees and waters and join her on the large leather sectional, kicking off my sneakers and stretching my legs out.
“I think I’ve got a brother’s-best-friend addiction. Is there a support group for that?” she jokes.
“There’s certainly a lot of romance books where women fall for their brother’s friend. I’m not so sure about support groups though.” I tuck my hair behind my ears, stifling a yawn. “You can’t help who you fall for, and so what if he’s Dillon’s friend?”
“Dillon made all his friends swear not to touch me after everything that happened with Cillian. I’m strictly off-limits. It didn’t bother me at the time because I didn’t have feelings for any of Dillon’s friends until last summer when something shifted between Jamie and me. There were a lot of heated looks and sneaky touches, and then one night at a party, we had sex. After that, we couldn’t keep our hands off one another. We knew Dillon wouldn’t approve, so we snuck around for a month until Ronan caught us in the act and he went nuts. He said Dillon would go crazy and it could hurt the band. Jamie told me he couldn’t see me anymore the next day.”
“I know Dillon’s a dick, but do you really think he’d care if you two like one another?”
She rolls over onto her stomach, facing me. “That’s the thing, Viv. I don’t think Jamie cares about anything but sex. I’m just another warm body to him.” Her chest heaves, and pain shimmers in her eyes.
“But you care.”
Slowly, she nods. “I don’t want to. I’ve tried hard not to, but I do.”
“You deserve someone who will fight for you,” I say, sitting up and crossing my legs. I grab a large pillow, pressing it to my chest.
“I know I do.” She worries her lower lip between her teeth. “And right now, that’s not Jamie, but it could be. He’s got a lot of issues he’s dealing with.”
“Yeah. Who doesn’t?” I sip from my water wondering if that’s just life.
“His older sister died suddenly of a brain aneurysm sixteen months ago. She was his only sibling, and he took it hard. Now, his parents are getting divorced, and he’s a bit lost. He’s resorted to Dillon’s PAW method of coping.”
“Do I even want to know?” I ask, tilting my head to one side.
A wry grin appears on her lips. “Pussy. Alcohol. Weed.”
“What demons is your brother fighting?”
Ash rests her head on the side of the couch, sighing. “Dillon is battling a lot of inner demons. It’s not my place to tell you his story, but he’s always had an issue accepting love. It’s fucked up, because our parents are amazing. Our house was chaotic growing up, but love was never in short supply. Yet Dillon feels unworthy. He’s never had a girlfriend, and I think it’s because he’s too afraid to get close to someone in case they prove he isn’t worthy of being loved.”
“That’s actually really sad,” I admit.
“I know.” She sits up, mirroring my position. “I know he’s been a dick to you, and I think maybe it’s because he feels something for you and he doesn’t know how to handle it.”
“I—”
“Don’t try to deny it, Viv. I’ve seen the way you look at one another. It’s the way Jamie and I used to look at one another before he started pretending I don’t exist. I’m not excusing my brother’s behavior, and I’ll be having words with him, but I think he’s floundering a little again, like when he was seventeen. I’m worried about him.”
“What happened when he was seventeen?” I blurt, intrigued more than I should be.
“He really went off the rails and it was a bad time for our family.” Tears fill her eyes. “All that shit happened with me around the same time.”
“You think whatever was going on with him was connected to you?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. Cillian was his friend, and he shit all over me. I think Dillon felt responsible, which is ridiculous because the only person at fault was Cillian. I can’t even blame that bitch because she was single.”
“I’d still blame her. She knew he was with you, and she targeted him. She’s not blameless.” Like Saffron Roberts isn’t blameless. She knew Reeve was in a committed relationship with me, and she still went after him.
“It doesn’t matter anymore except for what it did to Dillon. It’s like he woke up one morning the spawn of Damien from The Omen. He started acting out in a serious way, and he didn’t care to hide it. He almost got expelled from school. He was constantly drunk or stoned. He lashed out at everyone. It culminated in him drastically changing his appearance.” A grin breaks through her concerned veneer. “When he came home with the piercings, I thought my parents were going to die on the spot. But then he got all the tattoos.” She chuckles. “Mum hates them, but she eventually got over it. She just wants to see him happy. I do too, but he’s not. The only time he lets go of his demons is when he’s on stage. That’s the only time I truly see him happy.”