Page 15 of All Autumn
“I called your brother to bail you out. You want to wait for him before I bring you up to speed? He should be here any minute.”
“Where’s that hooligan who claims he’s my brother?” Adam leaned in the doorway, a smirk on his face.
“That would be me. Come in. Pretty sure Dylan’s about to lay some heavy shit on me.”
Adam and I were identical twins, and the only way most people who knew us could tell us apart was by the color of the small earrings we each wore in one ear. I suppose we could wear our hair differently, but we both liked the same style, longer than a military cut, but not over our ears or touching our collars.
“I filled Adam in on why you were arrested when I called him, so we’ll just get to the meat of the problem. I didn’t include Autumn in this conversation because of some of the things Brian said that I don’t think she needs to hear right now.” Dylan leaned back in his chair. “Brian’s being a real dick. He’s insisting on charging you both with breaking and entering unless Autumn takes him back. If she refuses, she’ll still be charged, but he’ll drop them on you if you sign a statement that you’ll never talk to her or go near her again.”
“That’s bullshit,” Adam and I said together. Autumn had been my friend years before Brian had ever come on the scene, and I wasn’t giving her up for a man who was turning out to be a real prick.
“Figured that’s what you’d say. Apparently he sees you as a threat. Even if you signed a ridiculous statement like that, I don’t see how he can enforce it. But he’s going to cause you as much trouble as he can if you don’t step out of the picture, so take that as a warning.”
“Whatever. I’m not signing anything of the sort, so he can bring it on. He obviously didn’t care enough about Autumn to keep his pants zipped. Why’s he so determined to keep her?”
“I guess in his mind he loves her, but he doesn’t see why what he did was such a big deal.” Dylan’s lips curled in disgust. “He said, bumping shoulders with me as if we were best buds, ‘It’s different for men, right? A little pussy on the side doesn’t mean anything.’ I wanted to knock him into next week.”
“What a shithead,” Adam and I said together. It was a good thing Brian hadn’t said that to me. Forget next week. I would have knocked him into the next millennium.
“You two do know it’s spooky when you do that,” Dylan said. “Say the same thing at the same time.”
“It’s a twin thing,” Adam and I said as one, getting a laugh from our new police chief. Adam glanced at me. “What’s the plan, baby brother?”
From the time we’d learned Adam was older by two minutes, he’d loved rubbing that little fact in by calling mebaby brother.
“Well,oldman, the plan is that Brian can go fuck himself. At the moment that’s all I got.” It wasn’t, but that was my business. Hearing Dylan confirm what an ass I’d already begun to think Brian was, I decided I’d glue myself to Autumn’s side for a while and do what I could to see her happy again. I did love seeing her smile.
“What didn’tyou tell Dylan?” Adam asked after we got back to my place.
I handed him a beer, then stretched out on my distressed brown leather couch. One problem with having a twin who could read your mind was that, well, he could read your mind. Not always a good thing.
“What time is it?”
“Two in the morning,” he said without looking at his watch.
“I should be dead on my feet, but I want to go build a cabin or something.”
Adam raised a black brow identical to mine. “I’m the builder. You just sell them. Stop ignoring my question. What’s going on between you and Autumn?”
I rested my elbows on my knees, staring down at the floor. “I don’t know. I saw her pretty pink girlie parts this morning, and I haven’t been able to think straight since.”Shut your mouth, Connor.
“Whoa, back up. All Dylan said was that you rescued her when she wrecked her car. He didn’t say a damn word about you seeing things you shouldn’t have.”
“Because he doesn’t know that part and neither should you. My mouth got ahead of my brain.”
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Adam and I didn’t have secrets from each other. Never had. But for the first time that I could remember, I didn’t want to share what was going on in my mind.
Not that I knew exactly what was going on in that gray matter. There was a jumble of things up there. Of seeing something I shouldn’t have, of Autumn being a friend, of me in the blink of an eye wanting that friend under me—or over me—and of me being a douchebag for even thinking of her that way when she was both my friend and hurting.
“I’m not going to talk to you about anything I saw.” I stood, then walked away from my brother’s concerned face.
“Connor?”
At the hallway of my log home, I paused. “Yeah?” I said, not looking back.
“You need to think real hard before you cross a line with Autumn that you can’t uncross.”
Like I didn’t know that. I went to my bedroom, closing the door behind me. Adam didn’t need me to show him the way out.
