Page 2 of Hidden

I close my fingers around it, the metal cool against my palm, the earlier excitement has worn off now. I sit in my sweats in a hospital waiting room on both the best and worst night of my life. I wait for someone to come and tell me my brother’s going to be okay.

He will be, because I’m going to do everything I can to make sure there’s no next time.

I don't know yet what that promise is going to cost me, but I don’t care.

One

Miles

The thing about living with your brothers is that nothing is ever yours.

Not the last beer in the fridge. Not the television remote. Not the quiet I need when I'm trying to run a trace on an encrypted server at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night while three other people exist loudly around me. I love my brothers, I’d kill for them, and hack anything for them. But God, sometimes I wish I could have a space of my own, to think.

I mean, it’s not so much me having a girl over here, hell they’ve seen me leave a girl in the middle of the night because Cain calls me to do something, and then I have to explain where I’ve been. I can't tell them the truth, so I have to lie, and that ends up with a slap, which my brothers have seen one too many times. Mason is the biggest manwhore I know. I don’t think there’s anything new I can do compared to that freak. Being twins sometimes doesn’t help me when a girl thinks I’m him and I get the fucking slap he deserves. I learned then that I needed something to differentiate us from each other. I don’t need to wear glasses, but it’s enough to make us look slightly different and it means I don’t get slapped for something he did or didn’t do.

"You're doing that thing with your face again," I hear Mason say.

I don't look up from my laptop. "I have a face, Mason. It does things. That's how faces work."

"The ‘delete-all-of-you’ thing." That’s another thing about having a twin: the man knows everything about me. He practically knows what I’m thinking before I even say it, or if I’m thinking about a girl who looks interesting, the fucker always knows. I mean, I know it about him too, but it gets annoying.

"That's just my face,” I snap at him.

"So, you're always thinking about deleting us?" Mason jokes.

"Baseline setting, yeah."

Declan snorts from the armchair. Trixie doesn't look up from her sketchbook, but the corner of her mouth twitches, which from Trixie is essentially a standing ovation. One day she’s going to have a full conversation with us; I just have no idea when that day will happen.

Hayden’s on the floor with his back against the sofa, Olivia's legs draped across his lap, and he's been doing that thing for the last forty minutes where he watches the front door every time a shadow passes the window. He has no idea he's doing it. Olivia definitely does. She keeps glancing sideways. I have no idea why he’s doing it; we aren’t in any danger, so I have no idea what he’s watching out for.

I look back at my screen and get back to doing anything fun to pass the time. Until Cain wants to stop being so fucking stubborn and let us back into the family business, I can get back to what I do best.

"Last night of freedom, gentlemen." Mason raises his bottle at the ceiling like he's making a toast at a state dinner. "And lady," he adds, because Trixie is already looking at him with one eyebrow up. "Tomorrow it all begins. A brand new college year. New campus energy. New…"

"New lectures I'm going to sleep through," I say.

"New opportunities to humiliate ourselves," Declan offers.

Trixie holds up her sketchbook. She's written speak for yourselves in black marker across the top of a half-finished drawing. Declan kisses the side of her head without looking away from the television.

Mason points his bottle at me with his full jury summons energy. "I want it on record," he starts. "That I’m predicting, formally predicting that Miles Crawford goes the entire first semester without speaking to a single girl who is not already in this room."

"I speak to girls." I look at him. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

"You speak near girls, never to them. Technically, while looking at a screen." Hayden chimes in with his thoughts. Since when has this turned into a gang-up on me night?

"I’m multitasking,” I tell them both.

"Avoidance." Mason can be a dick when he wants to be.

"Those aren't mutually exclusive." I don’t plan on settling down anytime soon. Declan got pinned down with Trixie senior year of high school, and Hayden finally got his girl. I’m not planning on anything just yet. I just want to have some fun first.

"Name one girl," Mason says. "One, from last year, who you actually spoke to on purpose."

I open my mouth.

"On purpose, Miles. Not because she asked you for directions or you needed to borrow a pen."