Mr. Nice Guy (Pierce Brothers Book 1)

by Belinda Williams

  ‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right,’ he agreed.

  ‘So you won’t talk about it?’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Gemma.’

  ‘No, I’m not ready to. Which I guess means I’m not ready for a relationship. I’m sorry.’

  Was that why he didn’t pursue any of the women his friends introduced him to? Was that why he avoided dating apps like the plague? But he hadn’t been able to avoid Chelsea. She’d landed in his world and made herself so much a part of it that, in the process, she’d become completely irresistible to him. Now the only practical way forward was for her to move out.

  Chelsea’s expression changed to one of pity, and that was even worse. ‘How long has it been?’

  ‘Three years.’

  Chelsea released a breath and turned away to stand by the railing. ‘At one time I might have suggested that I’d be here when you’re ready to talk about it.’

  When he started to speak, she held up a hand.

  ‘Save your breath, because I’m not going to be here anymore now, am I? I’ll pack a bag and head to Nadia’s tonight. Then I’ll be back on the weekend to collect the rest of my things.’

  ‘You don’t have to—’

  ‘Yes. I do,’ she said firmly.

  Leave so quickly, he’d been about to say. But by the time he’d finished that thought, she was already gone.

  The text messages from Nadia started the following day.

  You dickhead.

  He took that to mean that Chelsea had arrived safely at Nadia’s and stayed the night.

  Another one arrived mid-morning.

  She snores. You’re an arsehole.

  By that point, Tom couldn’t avoid the fact that Chelsea had most likely told her friend everything.

  Late afternoon, the messages became more practical.

  You better not be home when we come to get her things on the weekend, you pathetic loser. We’ll be there at 10am.

  Tom didn’t reply to any of the messages. He doubted Nadia was expecting him to, and if he had, she’d take it as a challenge to throw more insults his way.

  Tom was walking to his car at the end of his shift that night when his phone rang. He was careful to check the screen for the caller ID before answering it. He wouldn’t put it past Nadia to berate him verbally, too. When he saw that it was Ben, he hit the accept button.

  ‘What’s this I hear about Chelsea moving out?’

  No “Hi, Tom. How are you?” like usual. Ben was the king of small talk thanks to his job in sales, so Tom knew not to brush his friend off or try to change the subject.

  ‘Yeah, this weekend,’ Tom replied.

  ‘But she’s already staying at Nadia’s?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Or didn’t do. ‘Nothing. We discussed it and both agreed it was for the best.’

  ‘By discuss, you mean you kicked her out.’

  Tom resisted a sigh and threw his backpack into the back seat of his car, then slammed the door.

  ‘I didn’t kick her out, Ben. I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘But you asked her to go?’

  ‘Only because I thought it made sense.’

  The line went silent. Tom could hear the hum of an engine, so he assumed Ben must be driving home from work.

  Tom wondered how much Chelsea had told her brother. She wasn’t in the habit of sharing too many details of her life with her family. She claimed her siblings all seemed to have their lives together, unlike her. Which probably meant Chelsea had been supremely pissed at Tom in order to say anything at all to Ben.

  ‘What else did she tell you?’ Tom asked, hoping he wouldn’t regret prolonging the discussion.

  ‘That you got hot and bothered about the latest dickhead she’s been seeing. That she’s keen on you and you’re keen on her, but you won’t own it. And now you’re avoiding her and asking her to move out. Mature, mate, real mature.’

  Tom eased himself into the driver’s seat, wishing he could hug Chelsea. The crux of the story was true, but she’d been kind enough to leave out the more painful, gory details.

  ‘Well, I don’t think it’s fair for me to share an apartment with her the way things are,’ Tom pointed out.

  ‘So change things! Grow some balls, own up to your feelings, and treat my little sister right.’

  Tom thought that’s what he had been doing—or at least the treating her right part. The owning up to his feelings part, not so much.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt her,’ Tom said.

  ‘Newsflash, Pierce. You already are.’

  Tom rested his head against the seat.

  ‘Seriously,’ Ben continued, ‘I’ve never heard her so worked up about a guy before. To think all it’s taken is a decent guy rather than a dickhead to make all the difference, but now you’re chickening out.’

  ‘I’m not chickening out,’ Tom shot back.

  ‘Well, what do you call it?’ Ben demanded.

  Instead of answering, Tom tried to remember the last time he and Ben had fought. It had been when they were kids. Much younger kids. In primary school. And it was usually sport-related. Never in their life had they argued over girls, but then the girl had never been Ben’s sister.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Tom asked. ‘I’m not ready for a relationship. I can’t change that. It’s not fair to Chelsea to lead her on or continue to share an apartment with her.’

  ‘It’s been three years.’

  That was the funny thing about grief. It didn’t follow a linear timeline.

  Tom sighed. ‘I know. I can’t change the way I feel, though.’

  ‘Have you discussed why with Chelsea? She asked me what I knew about you and Gemma, but out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to you, I told her that’s something you need to tell her.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘That’s the entire point, isn’t it? As far as I know, you’ve never discussed it with anyone, period. You just ran away with your tail between your legs.’

  ‘I didn’t run away.’ Tom’s voice sounded hard even to his own ears.

  ‘You know, when Chelsea first moved to Newcastle and moved in with you, Mum and Dad were excited.’

  Tom blinked at the sudden change of topic. He knew Ben well enough to know that he was going somewhere with it, as well as possibly diffusing the already tense discussion.

  ‘I’m sure they were. It was her first time living out of home and they were finally empty nesters,’ Tom joked, doing his bit to lighten the conversation.

  ‘No, that wasn’t the reason. They loved the fact that she was moving in with you.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ That hadn’t been the direction he’d expected the discussion to take.

  ‘Mum and Dad think of you like their second son.’

  Tom smiled self-consciously even though Ben couldn’t see him. Ben and Chelsea’s folks were topnotch people and had always been there for him when his mum was sick.

  ‘That’s because their first son could do with improvement,’ Tom quipped.

  ‘Hard to improve perfection,’ Ben retorted without missing a beat. ‘They’ve always liked the idea of you and Chelsea ending up together.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Oh, come on. Like you never noticed? My parents were always commenting on “Tom this” and “Tom that” whenever you and Chelsea were around when we were younger.’

  ‘Shit. No. I never did.’

  ‘I don’t think Chelsea did either, if it’s any consolation. You’re both as clueless as each other.’

  ‘Thanks. I think. But she’s your younger sister.’

  ‘So?’ Tom could imagine Ben shrugging. ‘Don’t tell me you never noticed her.’

  ‘I noticed her,’ Tom admitted.

  That’s all Tom had ever done for the longest time. Notice her. Even when they were teenagers, he couldn’t help but notice Chelsea. But you didn’t go after a friend’s sister, and then Gemma had come along . . .<
br />
  And then Chelsea had moved in with him and he’d noticed her some more. Until he’d finally had the courage to do something about it, and now he wished he could take it back.

  What a fucking mess.

  ‘I guess the question you’ve got to ask yourself is whether she’s worth getting over yourself for,’ Ben said.

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Tom objected.

  ‘I know it’s not. Which is why no one has pushed you to for three years. But come on. Are you going to risk missing out on the right girl because you’re still not over the wrong girl?’

  ‘How do you know Gemma wasn’t the right girl?’ Tom protested. ‘And didn’t you say that you didn’t see Chelsea settling down anytime soon?’ Tom answered his question with a question because he didn’t want to admit the truth about Gemma.

  ‘Yeah, with those guys she keeps insisting on dating. You’re different.’

  ‘While I appreciate your faith in me, like I said, I’m not ready.’

  He heard Ben exhale. ‘Fine. At least I can tell Mum and Dad I tried.’

  ‘Wait. They know about this?’

  Shit. How had this gone from “The other night, when you asked me to kiss you. Did you mean it?” to letting Chelsea down, pissing Ben off, upsetting their parents, and pissing Nadia off more than usual?

  ‘Sure do. And it looks like you’re going to be added to the list of Chelsea’s loser boyfriends. Shame.’

  Tom rested his elbow on the car door and put his head in his hand.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to mull it over,’ Ben said. ‘It’s my turn to feed the overtired child. Night.’

  Tom didn’t say goodbye. The phone buzzed just after Ben hung up and Tom checked his messages. It was Nadia.

  What’s your Netflix password, shit for brains? Chelsea needs to be distracted from the fact you’re useless.

  Tom texted her the password, then drove home to his empty apartment.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tom didn’t call. He didn’t text. He wasn’t at the apartment when Chelsea went to move her things on Saturday either, although she suspected Nadia may have had something to do with that.

  Living with Nadia was . . . awkward. It was obvious her friend preferred to live alone, but she was also fiercely protective of her friends and wouldn’t hear anything about Chelsea looking for a share apartment. Chelsea was relieved. While she fully intended to find a new place to live, the fact that Nadia wasn’t in any hurry to kick her out meant that she could take her time. She didn’t want to rush into something that was less than ideal and find herself committed to living with people she didn’t like.

  Chelsea concentrated hard on her work. Several weeks later, her first semester of classes began making her even busier. The distraction should have helped, but it didn’t. Chelsea still found herself missing Tom at the weirdest times. Like when one of the kids at Kinder Kids did something particularly funny, and she thought she’d tell Tom about it when she got home, except she didn’t live with him anymore.

  Nadia suggested Chelsea try dating again, but her heart just wasn’t in it. She’d meant what she said about not dating bad boys anymore. And as they’d previously established, finding nice guys to date wasn’t exactly easy.

  Was Tom still a nice guy? When Chelsea had first left the apartment, she wasn’t sure. She’d been too angry to think clearly. Now it was almost a month on, and she knew that, deep down, Tom was one of the good guys. In his mind, he was trying to do the right thing by not leading Chelsea on, but it didn’t make the reality of it hurt any less.

  She hurt for him, too. She tried to imagine what it would be like to be hurt by someone so much that you couldn’t move on. Chelsea had certainly been hurt before by men, but not the deep sort of hurt that took real time to heal. Chelsea had been offended, cheated on, ignored, and mistreated in various ways, but now she realised that she’d never let herself be truly hurt.

  ‘Do you think I go out with bad boys because they’re safer?’ Chelsea asked Nadia one night when they were cooking dinner.

  ‘Hmm. Isn’t that a contradiction?’ mused Nadia, stirring the rice.

  ‘I mean safer because it never ends up being serious,’ corrected Chelsea.

  ‘There’s a first. Bad boys are safer, everyone. Line up, line up! Bag yourself a bad boy. We’ve got tall ones, short ones, angry ones, egotistical ones. There’s one for every appetite, but it’s a limited time offer and they’ll be gone before you wake up.’

  Chelsea grinned. Nadia had been working hard to make Chelsea laugh since she’d moved in, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  Nadia grinned back. ‘Who knows? Why do we go out with anyone? We tell ourselves that it’s something about them. How they look. The way they act. But we all know it’s far more complex than that. I date bad boys because they’re easy, not safe.’

  ‘You don’t want a relationship though,’ Chelsea pointed out.

  ‘That’s true. But do you?’

  ‘Yes, I guess I do.’

  Chelsea stopped cutting up the carrot she’d been slicing to reflect on her answer. Why else would she continually keep dating? Nadia only ever hooked up with guys when the mood struck her, but in Chelsea’s case, each new guy she dated was always in the hope that he might be halfway decent.

  Nadia levelled Chelsea with a stern look. ‘Stop dating bad boys then.’

  Chelsea burst out laughing. ‘Good point. Know any decent guys then?’

  ‘Yeah, Tom.’

  Nadia winked and turned back to stir the rice.

  ‘You think I should be with Tom?’ Chelsea asked incredulously.

  Nadia shrugged, still concentrating on the rice. ‘I wouldn’t have suggested the nice guy arrangement otherwise.’

  ‘What?’

  Nadia turned to face Chelsea again, a wooden spoon in one hand and her other on her hip. ‘Oh, come on. You guys are made for each other. Admit it.’

  ‘We. Are. Not,’ Chelsea bit out. ‘And if that’s the case, why have you been encouraging me to date?’

  Nadia sighed dramatically like she’d been asked to solve world hunger. ‘Two reasons. Distraction, and your poor taste. My bet is it would take one more bad boy to make you realise what you’re missing with Tom.’

  Chelsea gaped at her friend. ‘But he won’t even talk to me! Or have sex with me!’

  Nadia rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, because he loves you. You two are just so stupid.’

  ‘Love?’ Chelsea sputtered. ‘What do you know about love?’

  Nadia pointed the spoon at her. ‘I know that every time you walk into a room, he looks at you. I know that he goes out of his way to do, oh, I don’t know, pretty much everything he can for you. That guy adores you, Chelsea, with a capital A. It even makes a heartless bitch like me occasionally jealous. Plus, he says your name differently.’

  That shut Chelsea up. So it wasn’t just her who had noticed the way Tom said her name.

  Nadia’s eyes darkened and flashed mischievously. ‘Chelsea,’ she breathed, then sauntered over to stand in front of her. She trailed a finger down Chelsea’s arm. ‘Oh, Chel-see.’

  Chelsea shoved her away, laughing. ‘Stop! OK? You’ve made your point, but there’s not a single thing I can do about how everything has turned out, alright? I can’t force Tom to open up to me. There’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it!’

  Then she burst into tears.

  Nadia dropped the wooden spoon into the pot, came over, and gave Chelsea a tight hug.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Chelsea sobbed. ‘I know I’m pathetic. I’m trying so hard to get over him, but . . .’ She sobbed some more.

  ‘But you’re in love,’ Nadia finished for her.

  Chelsea eased out of the hug. ‘Wait. I am?’

  ‘You’re such an idiot, Chels.’

  With that, Nadia went to the cabinet and got out two wineglasses. Then she went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine they kept on hand for emergencies—or for whenever they felt like it, which was at
least once a week.

  Nadia poured two glasses and handed one to Chelsea. ‘Drink. You’ve been in love with him since sometime last year is my best guess.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Chelsea said dumbly.

  ‘Drink more. You two are like best friends. An old married couple cohabitating together who haven’t had sex in years—or ever, in your case. You finish each other’s sentences and tell each other jokes. He puts up with your douchebag boyfriend stories and you don’t hassle him about his emotional distance.’

  ‘Emotional distance? When has Tom ever been emotionally distant until recently?’

  ‘Keep drinking. Like, oh, whenever the subject of him dating comes up, he runs about a million miles and then looks at you with puppy dog eyes. I swear my evil plan almost worked, but he ruined it when he insisted on ruling out friends with benefits.’

  Chelsea was feeling less teary now, but way more confused. ‘You wanted us to sleep together?’

  ‘Well, duh. I figured it would loosen him up at the same time as blowing your mind and making you forget about all the bad boys in the process.’

  ‘How do you know he’s good in bed?’ Chelsea asked warily.

  Nadia continued to look at Chelsea like the university shouldn’t have accepted her application. ‘Any guy who is prepared to dress up in full historical costume to get a girl off is going to be good in bed, trust me.’

  Chelsea blushed. She really shouldn’t have told Nadia about that, but she’d blurted out a lot of unnecessary things the night she moved out of Tom’s.

  The memory of it sobered her. ‘Well, I wouldn’t know now, would I? We never slept together.’

  ‘There’s your solution. You sleep with Tom.’

  ‘Um, how? We don’t live together. We don’t even talk anymore.’ She took another sip of wine, because that last part made her feel like bursting into tears again.

  ‘So you go over there one night and seduce him.’

  ‘Um,’ she said again. ‘That’s your answer to everything? Have sex?’

  ‘Sometimes talking doesn’t work, Chels. Particularly when it comes to guys. They need to feel things first. Not discuss them. Ugh.’ With that, Nadia drained the remainder of her glass. ‘Talking is so overrated, I tell you.’