"I haven't slept all night! Sorry if I'm too sleepy to distinguish sugar from salt," Alice exclaimed.
"Or yours was just a ploy to poison me or make me feel bad ... After everything you've told me, I don't trust you anymore," Jake replied, bursting out laughing.
Seeing my brother with Alice hit me like a punch in the stomach.
I was upset and hearing them laugh and joke made me feel worse.
"Jake, what are you doing here?" I murmured, drawing their attention.
"You’re up, little brother, Merry Christmas!" Jake greeted me, without answering my question.
"Lower your voice. I have a headache. When did you arrive?"
"Last evening. What do you want for breakfast? A brioche stuffed with aspirin or just coffee?” he joked.
"I see you've already met," I hissed, sitting at the table with them and having a coffee.
The two exchanged a knowing look and immediately burst out laughing together.
What the hell is going on?
Alice was radiant and cheerful. Her smile flickered only when she looked at me, but she didn't say a word.
Jake was not usually the type who instils a lot of confidence, but at the moment they seemed like peanut butter and jelly. They were sitting next to each other, touching each other without embarrassment, talking and joking like two old friends.
"You didn't tell us we had such an adorable new sister," Jake provoked.
Adorable?! Jake had just used that term to describe a girl!
I looked at him wondering if my brother was the one before me.
"I would say unbearable," I murmured, feeling my head explode as jealousy wound its slippery progress inside me every time those two looked at each other and smiled.
"Alice, you wouldn't hurt a fly, would you?" he teased her, and she burst out laughing again, followed closely.
"Merry Christmas! Guys, didn't you laugh enough last night yet?” our father said to my brother, entering the dining room and sitting between me and Jake.
"Last night?!" I tried to understand.
"Yep. Helena and I returned from the reception around one in the morning and these two were in the room laughing like crazy. They continued like that for hours. At four I woke up and found them still together, on the bed, talking. What did you say that was so funny to keep you up all night? Did you at least go to sleep?” my father asked me, making me go slurp more coffee.
“ Actually, we didn't sleep until an hour ago, but we woke up almost immediately and went down to breakfast. I don't even know how I can stand up,” Alice replied with a broad smile.
"Did you just talk?" I asked in a sarcastic voice. I knew my brother perfectly well. He wasn't the night chat type. He, with women, just fucked them.
"I don't remember," Jake teased me with his usual arrogant smile.
“ Hey, hey, Easton, calm down. You should be glad that your brother gets along with Alice. It's very nice for me and Helena,” my father stirred, noticing the murderous look I was giving Jake.
"We just talked," Alice interposed, looking at me with a pleading expression as if she were begging me not to make a scene and to enjoy the family moment.
"You laughed more than spoke," my father contradicted her. "I swear to you, Easton, I don't know how you managed to sleep all the time without waking up."
"Me?" I asked confused.
“ Yes, little brother. We were chatting in your room, but you were too tired to listen to us and you fell asleep on Alice's lap. Do you remember?” Jake replied, looking at me with a frown. "Or do you want me to remind you of everything that happened in front of Dad?"
"I remember everything," I lied, grasping his threat to tell our father everything.
***
ALICE
I had fallen in love with the wrong brother!
Meeting Jake had opened up a world for me!
He was the more mature and adult version of Easton. He too had a dark side, but has kept it on a leash, unlike his brother.
I had talked to Jake all night, telling him everything that had happened between me and Easton in those months.
I had laughed and cried.
"How did you go from being a bold, indomitable and spiteful girl who drives Easton mad to someone who melts into tears and doesn't know how to get close to him?" he asked.
“ Because now I'm in love. Deeply. Too much not to be afraid of being hurt,” I replied. I told him how I still suffered from my mother's betrayal, so much as to condition me.
"You have experienced similar trauma, so it's normal for you to have the same barriers. But if you want to be together, one of you will have to grow up and face your fear."
"Who do you think has the bigger chance of defeating their demons of the past?"
“ You, because you know what it means to be loved thanks to your father, while Easton has only had an absent father figure and a villainous brother like me. I love Easton and I know he is a good person, but he has weaknesses that prevent him from letting go. He has become so accustomed to having his armor to protect him from love that he can no longer do without it. I feel sorry for him and I feel guilty because today I realize that I didn't help him as I should have when I was his age. But you ... You are stronger than him and you can do it. "
"It's not easy."
"I didn't say it is, but sometimes to get what you want, you have to fight against what prevents you from having it."
"What if I find out that he doesn't want me and will never love me?"
“ I don't think that will happen, but you never know. You can control your present and your choices today, but you will never be able to command or change your future. You can only decide which direction to take. Whatever it is, be sure it will bring you both happiness and pain. You just have to understand what the lesser evil will be for you. "
"I want him, and I want to be able to love him with the hope that he will love me too."
"If you want to know if he cares about you, that's not a problem."
"Ah no?"
“ With certain things I have the ability to transform myself into his kryptonite. Just tease him for a while and he'll come to tell me if he loves you or not. "
"You scare me."
“ Never as much as your feelings frighten him. Easton wants what you feel for him, but he's terrified of it."
" I really wish I'd known you before."
"Me too. I would have avoided seeing my brother end up in this condition!” he replied with a smile, but with a sad and worried expression.
I had spent all Christmas day with my mother and her new family.
Thanks to Jake, for the first time I felt welcome and moved when Easton asked for a separate vegetarian menu for me.
I also received a beautiful gift from Jake.
Although he still didn't know me well, he had asked me about my father and, when I told him about his dismissal, he had offered to follow him as a lawyer and bring the company to trial.
"It will be my first pro bono cause in the new year," he replied when I told him I had no money to pay for it.
I had embraced him with affection and gratitude.
Jake was a wonderful person!
Unfortunately, I could not say the same about Easton, who had spent all his time hanging out with friends or wandering around the house, sending poisonous arrows to my brother or me about our relationship that was "too strange to be true."
25
ALICE
"Promise me that whatever I say or do, you'll be on my side and play along," Jake whispered in my ear as we sat at the dinner table.
I nodded, but from the light I saw in his gaze I understood that a sea of trouble was coming.
"Dad, Helena, would it be a problem for you if Alice and I got together?" Jake asked our parents.
The fork slipped out of my hand from the shock and Easton also remained with his cutlery in midair.
"What, sorry?" replied Mitchell stunned.
"You understand perfectly well, Dad. I want
you to bless the relationship between me and Alice and promise me that there will be no problem that you are with her mother. "
"You just met."
"It was love at first sight. Alice struck me from the first moment I saw her, and she confessed she wanted to be with me."
I said I was fine with you, not that I wanted to be with you!
"Alice, did you really fall in love with Jake?" my mother asked me.
"Of course, she did," Jake said. "Also, we'll be leaving for Seattle shortly to meet her father."
"Really?" said Easton, staring straight at me.
I nodded, but when I was about to explain that the trip was going to be business for Jake, because of my father's civil lawsuit against his former employer, Jake spoke up.
“ Alice and I will be together anyway. I just want to know if you agree or not," Jake said to his father who seemed extremely upset.
"I don't think that's the case. I'd like you to learn to think before making such decisions and breaking the balance of this family," Mitchell was angry.
“ Alice don't worry. Our hidden love will survive this too,” Jake said, putting an arm around my shoulders and kissing my temple.
"Jake, can we talk in private for a moment?"
"No, baby. Finish eating your dessert. Then we'll talk. We have all night to be together," he replied, silencing me by filling my mouth with a slice of cake.
I realized that Jake was as dangerous and crazy as his brother!
When I finished eating, I shut myself in my room and called the only person who could help me: Felicity.
She was the only one who had known Easton before college and, being local, had to know something about Jake too.
"Jake? He is like Easton but to the nth degree. Or maybe the opposite. I do not know. The Carson brothers have always had a reputation for being crazy. I still remember when Jake graduated, and Easton arrived the following year. A professor cried when she found out that another Carson was in her class. In fact, Easton inherited his brother's mess, producing others. The only difference was that Jake had always been a lone wolf, but Easton joined his old friends Logan, Ant and Ryo. "
"But Jake will be different now, won't he? Four years have passed since his graduation,” I hoped.
“ May be, but better not approach him. That boy is as much trouble as his brother. "
"So, I got into a mess, huh?"
“ I'm just telling you to stay away from those two. They are capable of sending you to a mental hospital on their own, they are lethal together. "
"I trust Jake," I sighed, thinking back to everything we had confided in last night about our respective past.
"Why don't you forget those two and go to the movies with me? Maybe you just need to unplug for a moment. "
"Thank you, but I can't."
"Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me. I am sending you the time and place in a text. "
Felicity had filled me with doubts and anxieties, but inside I felt that Jake really loved his brother and would do anything for him.
When I first came into their family, he would probably have torn me to pieces, but now Easton was in the way and I felt he wanted to do the right thing.
He told me he wanted to help me understand his brother's real feelings and to trust him, but after his words at dinner, it was as if I was sitting on a powder keg.
In the end I decided to tell the truth.
I didn't want to lie to Easton and blow up the family peace.
Besides, I hadn't missed how Jake enjoyed seeing his father angry.
Just like Easton!
***
EASTON
It was as if the world had capsized and tumbled down a black hole.
The earth had collapsed beneath my feet and I felt lost, confused, destroyed.
Jake!
Why had he returned?
I hadn't seen him for years.
I had hated him for his sharp detachment, but the pain that I had caused him had pushed him away from me. That had only made me feel even more wrong and alone, so that I had clung to Logan, Ryo, and Ant. They had become my brothers after Jake had left for Stanford the summer I finished middle school and was getting ready to take his place in high school.
At the time Jake was my myth, my only point of reference, but then ...
Because of the accident I had forgotten what had happened that year, but I still remembered waking up in the hospital, aching all over, with a broken leg, a deep head wound and a sprained wrist.
My whole body was in pain, but when I had opened my eyes and seen my brother, I had felt myself falling into an endless abyss.
Jake was sitting on the bed next to me. He held my hand with his and with the other he wiped the tears that streaked his face.
I felt I missed something because my brother never cried, even after our mother died. He had entrenched himself behind his anger and his pain, denying any emotion and feeling. As far as he was concerned, crying was weak.
And I had admired him for that because he had always seemed strong and invincible to me, but at that moment, seeing him cry so desperately put me in crisis.
I had called him, and he had stooped to hug me, telling me that he was sorry, that it was all his fault, that I would never have jumped from that roof because of a stupid bet, if I hadn't seen him do it the previous week. He felt guilty because I had risked my life because of the bad example I had received, and the fault was only his.
I had tried to tell him that he was wrong, and I had fun, even though I hardly remembered anything about what had happened to me because of amnesia, but he had silenced me.
“ I always understand people right away – what they are saying and what they are feeling, but with you I was wrong. I was so caught up in myself that I didn't realize I had turned you into a danger to yourself. Only today did I realize that I was a terrible brother to you and, precisely because I love you, I have decided that I will leave. I start college in the fall, and I will ask Dad to go to Stanford or anywhere else that is far from here and you. I don't want to be an example for you to follow anymore. You are better than me and I know how much you suffered for Mom ... I should have helped you and been closer to you, but instead I only made the situation worse. I promise you that I will do anything to not harm you further. That's why I'm going to go away and never come home until I know you're going to be okay and that you have found your balance. "
Those were his last words.
When I got out of the hospital he had already left for Stanford and just left me a note of apology, which I had torn with anger and pain for that umpteenth abandonment.
Out of pride and spite I never went to see him in Stanford and he never returned to Eugene.
Why did he come back now?
Seeing Jake walking around the house had left me disoriented and unable to think.
Part of me wanted to run to him, hug him and tell him that I had missed him to death, while another part would have just wanted to punch him and scream all my contempt for him because he had gone.
However, fate had played a bad joke on me, and before I knew it, he was already engaged to Alice!
What the hell had I forgotten about that night?
After Alice’s confession I got so drunk that I couldn't remember anything. Just short clips where I was throwing up and Jake was saying something to me, but I didn't remember what.
I had to know what had happened!
With that thought, I ran to my brother's room, where I heard him talking to Alice.
The door was ajar, and I managed to spy on them.
Alice looked quite angry.
"Jake, you didn't have to say we were together in front of Easton!"
"Calm down," he reassured her, taking her by the shoulders and stroking her along the arms.
"Jake, that's not what I want."
"You have to trust me," he whispered, taking her face gently in his hands. Jake had always been a genius in getting what he wanted; he was able to
hypnotize people with his charm. Seeing Alice so condescending with him made me burn with jealousy. She had never been so meek and docile with me!
"You trust me, don't you?" Jake said in the face of Alice's muteness.
“ Yes, but ...” she sighed and surrendered.
“ But nothing. Alice, everything will be fine. I promise you. Easton will calm down soon and we will leave for Seattle. I can't wait to meet your father ... But if that's not what you want, then ... “
“ Of course, this is what I want. You know how much I care! "
"Well, then I suggest you take a long breath, accept your friend Felicity's invitation to go to the movies together, have fun and start packing your bags for the trip."
"But Easton ..."
“ I'll take care of Easton. I swear I will do anything to make you happy,” Jake promised, embracing her hurriedly and whispering other words in her ear, which I could not hear.
I didn't hear what they said, but when I saw Alice return the hug, I lost my breath.
How had Jake managed to kidnap Alice's heart so quickly, when I hadn't managed it in months of closeness?
I remembered all the girls Jake had an interest in when he was in high school. Not one had been able to oppose or reject him.
I had been convinced that Alice would be the exception and instead ...
I felt I was dying at the thought of having already lost her forever, but I also knew that Jake tended to get tired quickly and that Alice would soon suffer more than she would have with me.
I had to stop it!
If not for me, then I had to do it for her.
"I'll be back in a few hours. Did you tell the parents that I will not have dinner with you?” Alice asked, taking her leave.
"Of course."
"And you promise me you won't do anything rash or provocative towards Easton?"
“ That I cannot promise you. My dear drunk brother needs a lesson and our father has already asked me to talk to him."
Broken Rules (Love Storm series Book 2) Page 17
