Page 4 of Collateral Damage
She laughs. “Tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.”
The server takes our plates, and while we’re waiting for the check to arrive, I lean across the table, giving my cousin my best conspiratorial grin.
“About this elopement… you’re not getting out of here without telling me everything.”
Her eyes sparkle, but she holds her excitement in. “It’s not too weird?”
“What would be weird about you marrying the guy I was engaged to?” I deadpan, then we both laugh. “Of course, it’s weird, but I don’t care. I want to know how this happened, and don’t you dare leave out any details.”
She spends the rest of our brunch gushing about how it unfolded, from the way he proposed spontaneously as they were about to fall asleep, to how they woke up the next morning and he asked again, to her saying yes and the ring shopping they did that very same day, to the local priest who agreed to marry them on the beach with little more than a photographer as their witness.
By the time she’s done, we’re both a blubbering mess.
“So yeah, I’m a married woman,” she gushes.
“Gah, I’m so happy for you.” I clutch my heart with genuine happiness for my sweet cousin, and her lips curve in a smile she couldn’t fight even if she wanted to.
The entire affair sounds ridiculously romantic.
And… I’m a little jealous. Not jealous because she ended up with Ethan, but that she has something I don’t believe I’ll ever experience—unconditional love and trust, and unwavering faith that her relationship will last.
I don’t think that’s possible for me. Not that I’m cynical enough to think it’s impossible for everyone, but I’m smart enough to recognize its improbability. I’ve been through too much,seentoo much. I’ve trusted the wrong people. I’ve loved and lost and lost again.
I’ve got the kind of issues that make a girl recoil from anything beyond casual sex, and that’s never going to change.
Just like my history won’t change either.
Two
Cooper
Past - Age 18
They’re kissing, and I think I might die.
Any possibility of ever being with Sybil Laurence is officially gone. It’s over. She’s my dream girl, and now that dream will stay locked away in my imagination.
While I can’t say I’m surprised—I even feel a sense of vindication at being right—I’m fuckingshattered. A knife lodges into my pathetic heart and twists, but I can’t even be mad about it. They’re Ethan and Sybil…
And I love them both.
I should’ve talked to my brother about my feelings. He wouldn’t be kissing her if I had. Or not. Maybe he would’ve anyway, and things between my brother and me would’ve become awkward.
But the fact remains, nobody saw her first or called dibs. Maybe that’s where the trouble started. If you like a girl, you tell your brother, so he doesn’t make a move. It’s a simple rule, but an important one. My twin and I are competitive as fuck, exceptfor when it comes to this. Contrary to the rumor mill, we don’t share. Dating the same woman is a line we’ve never crossed and never will—one we drew in middle school when girls started getting hot and we started noticing.
But Sybil Laurence? She’s different.
She’s not a sister, but she’s family. She’s been around since the beginning. Hell, our birthdays are only a month apart. Ethan and I were born in January, and she came along in February, just in time to be her parents’ Valentine’s Day present. They even used to call her Valentine when we were little—a nickname Ethan and I adopted and Sybil never corrected. I think she secretly likes it, though she’ll never admit it.
I saw that girl go through the awkward braces stage, a year of bad acne, and a gangly growth spurt. She looked like a giraffe, and when Ethan told her as much during fourth-grade summer, she stomped around the beach house for a week. I’ll never forget when she had her first puppy-love heartbreak at twelve over some idiot she “dated” for two days. Ethan and I laughed about that one behind her back. We knew better than to do it to her face and risk pissing our moms off.
All this is to say that Sybil Laurence is not a romantic option. Not even now that she’s grown into a gorgeous and sophisticated woman. Not even now that she’s the kind of person I’d be expected to date and someone my parents already love. And not even now that she’s got a maturity about her that makes her seem so much older than eighteen, like everyone else our age is trying to catch up to things she figured out long ago.
Bottom line: Sybil Laurence is off limits.
Ethan knows all of this, and I thought he agreed. It was understood. An unspoken rule. Don’t date Sybil.
But did Ethan and I ever have this conversation? No. We fucking didn’t. And that was a big mistake on my part.
