Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 164705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 824(@200wpm)___ 659(@250wpm)___ 549(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 824(@200wpm)___ 659(@250wpm)___ 549(@300wpm)
I shook my head. I knew he wouldn’t forget. He never did. Without fail, Oliver started every summer by gifting me a rose to remind me of who I was. A pact we’d shared since I tried to run away from home at seven to meet my grandparents. Mom and Dad never let me. They called them bad influences, gold-diggers, and “white trash.”
Oliver pried open the sliding barn door with his shoulder. Dusty concrete and a row of open stalls welcomed us. The second we stepped inside, aged wood and dried urine clung to my nostrils.
“Seb?” Ollie’s voice echoed through the walls.
“Right here.” The playful lilt came from the last stall.
We found Seb slouched against a wooden wall, nursing an open bottle of wine. A blazer draped across a moldy bale of hay, discarded without a care for its price tag. He’d left his crisp dress shirt completely unbuttoned, revealing a golden chest, lean and tan from years of rigorous rowing. While Oliver could be mistaken for a Greek god, Sebastian resembled a renaissance painting.
Ollie’s mom once explained that the name had beckoned her during her babymoon to Tuscany. They’d made an emergency landing in Great Britain and decided to make a pitstop in London. Fate had brought her to the famous Martyrdom of St. Sebastian painting, where she stared into the tortured saint’s eyes, tormented and steadfast, and decided to name her son after him.
Without the muscles and hulking frame, Sebastian would almost be girlishly pretty. He treated his long lashes, playful flaxen curls, and big eyes the color of a clear summer sky like tired accessories. That was the thing about Seb. There was always something tragic about him. Just like the saint. An arrogant stubbornness that made me worry for him.
“Hi, BR.” Seb aimed his flashlight on my face. “I see you got rid of those awful braces.”
I winced at the brightness, noticing a crate full of books next to him.
“If you want to keep your teeth intact, you better watch how you talk to her,” Ollie warned.
“Come, come.” Seb ignored him, patting the dirt next to him with his Berluti Oxfords. “Might I interest you with a …” He turned the wine bottle by its neck, squinting at the label. “Domaine Leflaive Montrachet Grand Cru?” He hiccuped. “Or whatever’s left of it, anyway.”
I loosened my hand from Oliver’s. “Umm … sure.”
“You started drinking without us?” Ollie stormed the stall and snatched the flashlight, pointing it in his brother’s face. “What is your problem?”
Seb squinted. “A healthy mix of debilitating anxiety, self-doubt, and delusions of grandiosity.” The bottle swallowed his yawn. “What’s yours?” He always managed to sound like a thirty-year-old divorcee on the brink of an early midlife crisis.
Oliver shook his head. “Jesus, you are trashed.”
Seb shrugged, taking another pull of his wine. He plopped down onto a mat of crunchy leaves, laughing. “I prefer the term comfortably numb.”
“Let’s see about your comfort levels when your face spends the night inside a toilet bowl, and you throw up through your mouth, nostrils, and ears.” Oliver righted his brother up. “You reek of wine. Mom and Dad are going to shit a brick when they see you.”
His words hit me right in the chest, piercing it with vicious, cloying jealousy. First – because Ollie and Seb had parents who actually cared about them enough to make a stink about private underage drinking. There would be punishments, and talks, and consequences. Maybe even tears. Second – because I knew it would never get to that. Ollie would never let his parents find out. He’d hide Seb and nurse him back to health himself. Take the blame, if need be. Oliver and Sebastian were fiercely loyal to one another.
“Are you even listening?” Ollie kicked Seb with the tip of his pointed shoe.
The latter responded with a loud, audible snore that confirmed he’d fallen asleep. Oliver sniffed, unfurling Seb’s fingers from the wine bottle.
He turned to me with a shrug. “Shall we?”
Chapter Three
Oliver
One makeshift bed and one idiotic brother later, I slipped into the stall Briar Rose occupied. Sometime in our two minutes apart, she’d slumped against the wooden wall, a hand flung over the crate of books Seb had stolen on a whim.
Something about her belonged in a fairytale – the early chapters, where life hits the princess like a pile of bricks and she’s on the precipice of discovering what a bad ass she is.
Briar Rose had gotten real pretty in the last couple years. Impossible not to stare at, though I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly made her so different than the rest. Sure, she had a pert nose, and delicate brows, and heart-shaped lips, and eyelashes longer than a Dostoevsky novel. But I knew lots of beautiful girls, and none of them made my knees weak and my neck hot.