“Yeah, me too,” Jack agreed hastily. “It’s our last night before we start the season tomorrow and we’ll be on the road all the time, so we want to enjoy this free time with you.”
Anna’s expression darkened. “Nonsense. You want to make sure I take a break from studying!”
Yes, that too.
“Breaks are important,” Dax stated.
“Oh yeah? Tell that to your ridiculous abs,” she remarked sourly. “And Jack even worked over the holidays and missed Christmas Eve with us!”
“That was different,” he replied, looking away. He had the feeling she might be able to read the lie on his face. Truthfully, he hadn’t been in New York because his former team had to sort something out with him.
“It’s the same!” she complained. “Only my job saves lives, whereas yours is giving away black eyes and selling cereal boxes with your stupid faces on them!”
“I wouldn’t say we give them away,” Dax objected thoughtfully.
“Nah,” Jack agreed. “It’s hard work. And I’m in Sports Illustrated. How stupid can my face be?”
“I have a hot girlfriend who says she loves me and my face, so I don’t understand this attack on our beauty either,” Dax remarked.
Anna let out a deep sigh that she had only uttered as a child when he and Dax had left her an empty Nutella jar. “You know, I liked you better when you weren’t talking to each other.”
Jack grinned and reached his arms over his head to stretch his back, which couldn’t get used to Anna’s hard chairs. But she wouldn’t accept money from them for new furniture.
“You shouldn’t lie, Anna,” Dax said, emphatically disappointed. “Haven’t we taught you anything? So, what are we playing next?” He glanced at his watch. “I have about two hours. Then it’ll be eleven and Anna has to go to bed.”
Sighing, she started throwing the game pieces back into the box. “Guys, I appreciate that you want to smother me with your love... but you do know that you don’t have to look after me anymore, right?”
Hmm. She apparently didn’t understand how being a big brother worked.
“If you went shopping and stuff and took breaks like a normal person, we might believe you, but since you don’t, we’ll always end up right back here,” Dax said apologetically.
“I have to study!”
“You need to breathe,” Jack objected. “You spent twenty hours a day last week with your nose buried in a book or slaving away in the hospital.”
“It was only nineteen a day. I set the alarm.”
Dax snorted and glanced at Jack. “And she thinks she’s the smartest of us.”
“I have my own mechanisms for dealing with stress, okay?” she said, annoyed. “I’ve already prepared myself for the fact that the next few months are going to be tough, right up through the second state exam. So, can we stop talking about me and ask Jack why he has a hickey on his neck?” Her jaw dropped. “Oh my God, how did I miss that until now?”
“What?” Dax whirled around as Jack felt his neck, a little taken aback.
“That’s not a hickey,” he said quickly. “That’s…a bruise.”
Anna raised her eyebrows, amused. “Someone wasn’t paying attention in sex ed class if he believes we can’t tell the two apart. I’m a doctor, you idiot. I know bruises and this one was caused by a pair of lips sucking on you.”
Oh, shit.
“I agree with Anna’s professional opinion,” Dax said, shaking his head. “What the hell? I thought you didn’t fuck during the season! Is that the real reason you stood us up for Christmas? You were with a woman instead of us?” His voice grew menacingly louder with each word. Since his brother, unlike him, was not so keen on controlling his emotions – and was also a bit sensitive – it was time to de-escalate the situation.
“No! I was in New York. On business,” he lied. “Really. I couldn’t postpone the stupid thing. I told you. I would have preferred to be with you. The woman came after that. By chance.”
“A random woman, I see,” Anna piped up, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Tell us more.”
“There’s nothing to tell! I met her on the plane and then a little more intimately, and we won’t be seeing each other again.” At least not in the biblical sense. “It was a meaningless one-night stand.”
Dax narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Meaningless? Yet you broke your stupid rule that earned you the nicknameSaint?”
