I bit back my frustration. When the fuck was soon? Before or after I lost her completely to whatever was bothering her and stealing her from me?
“Let’s go.” Danielle squeezed my hand in reassurance. “I just want to forget for a while.”
“Okay.” I conceded for the moment, but I knew we’d have the conversation again. She’d been doing a lot of trying to forget, but when the distraction ended, she’d slip back into her head.
We met Maggie and Miles in the bubble tea shop where I’d given Danielle her engagement ring. They were already there with drinks on the table and a card game partially spread between them.
“Dani!” Miles jumped up to kiss Danielle’s cheek, most likely for the sole purpose of antagonizing me.
“Hey,” she said with a smile that looked more genuine than earlier. “What are we playing?”
“Nothing yet. Maggie’s still coming up with the new rules she’s going to make us play by.”
“Go get your drinks,” Maggie said, waving us off without looking up from the cards in front of her.
I placed a hand on Danielle’s lower back and led her away from my asshole brother and his shit-eating grin. I knew he didn’t see her that way, but that didn’t mean I had to like their touchy-feely friendship.
We got our own cups of bubble tea and then joined my siblings at the table where Maggie explained how to play her new version of Sleeping Queens.
Three rounds in, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “What’s going on?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The looks you keep giving Danielle, like you’re afraid she’s going to get hurt or something.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me. You know it doesn’t work.”
“I’m worried about her. But there’s nothing I can do because she won’t talk to me about what’s bothering her.”
Maggie glanced to where Danielle and Miles were trying to cheat by stealing extra cards—could you even call it cheating when we weren’t playing by the rules in the first place?
“Do you want me to talk to her?”
I shook my head.
“Hayden, my cat queen is declaring war on your poodle queen,” Miles announced.
“It’s a dog queen.”
Miles leaned over and squinted at the card of a woman with a fire-hydrant crown, holding a tiny dog inher palm. “That’s definitely a poodle. Not only is it poofy, it’s literally pink.”
I rolled my eyes. “The card saysdog.”
“Whatever. I’m still going to call it a poodle.”
Danielle laughed and swatted at his chest. “Stop deliberately annoying him.”
“That’s my job as the youngest sibling. It’s written in the rule book we’re given when we’re born.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
He grinned at her like she’d offered him a compliment, and I felt my jaw clench as I resisted the urge to pull Danielle closer and away from him.
“So Hayden, are you going to war with me or surrendering?”
I lowered my eyes to the cards in my hand, taking stock of my armies and kingdoms. There was almost a zero percent chance that I could win a war against Miles, but he didn’t need to know that. “War,” I said with ayou’re going downsmile at my brother.
