by V. Darling
Scout
A week after Lev tore my heart out and left, I ride the elevator at Lenox Hill to the luxury suites armed with flowers, candy, and bright “get well soon” balloons which appear far too cheery for the occasion. They were all out of “Sorry, I fucked your brother” paraphernalia at the giftshop.
I knock and enter the room when I hear him and King laughing. That laughter quickly dies when Navrin locks eyes with me.
“Oh shit,” King says, arching his brows. He scratches his chin and ducks his head as if Navrin were about to fire missiles at me.
“Would you look at that, King,” Nav says, smiling, but there is no humor in his tone. It pours over me like iced water. “It’s my girlfriend. Or should I say, ex-girlfriend, since you fucked my brother and fucked my life?”
Ouch. I deserve that. I deserve so much more than that.
“Can we talk?” I venture.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“I get that, I really do, but I hope you’ll listen to what I have to say.”
“Why? So you can alleviate your guilt?”
“So I can apologize.”
“How can you possibly make up for everything you’ve done?”
Hell hath no fury like a Fox scorned.
“Alright, brother,” King says. “I’m gonna go, let you two talk it out.”
“Don’t bother. Scout isn’t staying.”
“Nav, please?”
“Don’t,” he roars. “You do not get to use my nickname. We are not friends. We’re not anything anymore. You saw to that when you opened your legs for him—how many times was it? I counted at least three on the video, but if I know my girlfriend like I thought I did, your greedy little cunt just needs to keep coming and—”
“Hey,” King says, standing to his full height. “I love you, man, but hurting or not, I’ll still kick your ass for disrespecting her like that.”
“It’s okay. It’s not like I don’t deserve it.” I swallow back my tears and set the candy and flowers on a nearby table. The balloons droop between us. I glance at Kingston’s face, his deep green eyes, perfect coffee-colored skin—anything to keep from meeting Navrin’s angry gaze. “You need a ride back to Scarsdale?”
“Nah, I like the subway.”
I frown. “King, no one likes the subway.”
“I do.” He gives me a wistful smile. “Be seeing you, brother.”
Navrin nods and watches King go, but he won’t meet my eyes once we’re alone. “How are you feeling?”
He laughs. “I don’t know, Scout. How should I be feeling after finding out the asshole I shared a womb with has been sticking it to my girlfriend?”
“Don’t hate him for this. He’s your brother and—”
“Yes, and you fucked him,” he snaps.
“And you let him take beating after beating from your dad for all those years. For you.”
His eyes grow wide and I can see I’ve stumped him. His voice is cold and biting as venom when he says, “He told you?”
“He didn’t have to. I was there when your dad attacked you, remember? I saw the black eyes, the bruises on his body—just a byproduct of all of the fights he got into, right? He protected you, but who protected him?”
“You, apparently.”
“Look, I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t even expect you to talk to me. Years from now, you’ll probably only think of me as the first girl who broke your heart, but he’s your blood—"
“Yeah, and he fucked my girl.”
I sigh and close my eyes. I’m not going to get anywhere with him today, but that’s okay, because tenacity is my strong suit, and I’ve never met a challenge I couldn’t overcome.
Well, aside from losing his brother.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Scout
One month later
Since being fired from cheer, I have an awful lot of free time on my hands.
Free time and Scout Taylor do not mix.
I’ve been using the time to be a better friend, a better daughter, and an all-round better human being. Which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. I guess I’ve learned to be human again. I’ve changed, but I think it’s for the better.
I carry the basket of oatmeal cookies into the hospital and ride the glass elevator to the luxury floor, admiring the Thanksgiving decorations a little longer and the deep ochre and orange of fall leaves on the ground outside.
When the elevator doors open, I smile at the nurses behind their station.
“Hi, Miranda.” I nod to the middle-aged woman always manning the desk, and wave at the nurses filing their reports. “Alex, Marnie.”
“Hi Scout, how you doin’?”
“I’m good,” I say with a smile.
Alex—a male nurse in his twenties with a face like a young Paul Walker—says, “Hey, what’d you bring us today?”
“Oatmeal.”
“Choc chip or raisin?” Marnie asks with a raise brow.
“Choc chip. Is there any other kind?”
I offer the basket and Alex reaches over Miranda to snatch them up. He shoves one in his mouth and his eyes roll back, “Damn ... this girl.” He bites off more cookie. “I’m telling ya, if he doesn’t end up marrying you, I will.”
I laugh and hold my hand out for the basket. I don’t bother telling him it isn’t like that between us ... anymore. I don’t tell them anything about Navrin and I, because it isn’t their business. We’re friends—or I’m hoping one day we’ll get back to that. For now, we’re just two people attempting to heal what was broken.
“Leave the girl alone. She’s not even eighteen yet,” Miranda says.
“Two months and counting. How’s the patient today?”
“He’s a little bit of a grump, actually,” Miranda whispers conspiratorially.
“Let’s see if I can’t shake him out of his mood before it’s time for his sponge bath.” I grin and whisk myself off to the room at the end of the hall.
I don’t bother knocking, because I come every Saturday at this time. Sometimes I visit Wednesday and Friday nights too. It’s hard standing on the sidelines, watching Nova, Blythe, and Violet cheer without me. Their new flyer sucks, for one, but the worst part is looking out on that field at Saint, King, and River, and not seeing Lev and Navrin.
For the most part, school has moved on without the Fox twins, but I can’t.
Friday nights are difficult for Navrin too, so I try to stretch myself between Scarsdale High and the hospital as much as possible. In the beginning, he just grunted and glared at the TV, but a month on and I’m sometimes lucky enough to count more than two syllables in his responses.
“You’re late,” he says, flicking off the television.
“Well, Alex—that cute male nurse—proposed, so I ...” I peter off as his expression falls and morphs into a scowl. “Sorry. Too soon, huh?”
Navrin glares at me.
“I baked cookies.” I sit the basket on the bedside table.
He bites his lip and then lifts his head. “What kind?”
“Oatmeal.”
“And choc chip?”
“Duh.”
“You know when you first started bringing me baked goods, I thought you were trying to poison me.” He smiles, and my stomach leaps because it’s a lot. To many, it’s as innocuous as a wave, or a hello, but I haven’t seen Navrin smile since before I broke his heart. So while it may be insignificant to someone else, to me, it’s progress.
“My baking has never been that terrible.”
He laughs. “Do you remember that time you had to make cookies for the Bears bake sale and you used salt in place of sugar?”
I cringe. “I was kind of hoping you’d forget about that, but to be fair, Ebba never clearly marked her containers.”
Silence settles over us and Nav wets his lips. “It’s never not going to be weird, is it?”
I give a wistful smile, but inside my heart is tearing in two again. “I think that’s why t
hey call it an adjustment period.”
He shakes his head. “I wanna hate you, so much.”
I swallow back the lump in my throat and blink away the harsh sting of tears. “I know.”
“But I don’t. I can’t.” He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “I wish I could hate you, Scout Taylor, but I don’t feel anything but love and sadness when I see your face. It hurts when I look at you.”
My tears fall, and they don’t stop. I nod, and take a tissue from my bag. “I’m sorry.”
His smile is sad as he says, “Sorry you slept with my brother, or sorry it ended in heartbreak for all of us?”
“I’m sorry for everything.”
He exhales and his head flops back against the pillow. He holds his hand out to me, and I take it. “I wish I could say this pain is worth it, but I’m not sure that’s true yet. I don’t know how to not love you.”
I shrug and say through my tears, “I don’t know either.”
We stay like that for a long time until Nav tugs on my arm and pulls me toward the bed. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Will you climb up here? Let me hold my girl right now before she becomes Alex, the hot male nurse’s, betrothed?”
I laugh and wipe my tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Carefully, so as not to disturb his leg sling, I ease onto the bed and cuddle up beside him. Nav wraps his arm around me and presses his lips to my hair the way he used to, the way Lev used to. It’s nice, familiar, but it doesn’t fill the void inside me. It doesn’t make me whole again. I’m beginning to wonder if anything ever will.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Scout
One month on
The week before Christmas, I head to the hospital to see Navrin. His final surgery is due to be scheduled any day now. Then he’ll be coming home. Not without a twenty-four-hour caregiver and physiotherapist, of course, because God forbid Senator Fox should put his career on hold for his injured son. Nav still has a long road ahead of him, but he’ll finally be home.
I’m not foolish enough to think that things will ever return to normal with The Royals. We’re all a little broken in the absence of the Fox brothers, but Nav’s return is a start. My heart still aches when I see their house in darkness, when I slip into their yard and the memories haunt me like ghosts. But distraction is the best solution for heartbreak, and these days I seek out even the most menial of tasks to prevent myself from thinking about Lev Fucking Fox.
Once I make it past the nurses’ station, and Alex’s grabby hands seeking out my baked goods, I enter Nav’s room and my basket falls from my grasp. Several blueberry muffins tumble out onto the floor. A sound so strange and alien escapes my throat, as if what’s left of my heart is trying to work its way out of my chest just to get to him.
Lev. Lev, here. Lev, safe, alive, and asleep in the chair at his twin’s side ... and me, about to ruin everything all over again. Looking at the two of them, seeing the twins asleep and peaceful, together and not tearing out one another’s throats, for the first time I realize what I forced them to give up by coming between them.
If someone had driven a wedge between Saint and I, there’d be no limit to the ways I would destroy them, and yet I did just that. I’ve done just that from the day I gave Navrin that stupid letter asking him to be my first kiss. I’ve slept with them both. I’ve ruined both of their lives. I’ve ruined their relationship.
All of this was on me.
Lev stirs and opens his eyes. I’m frozen in the doorway, probably white as a sheet and looking for all the world as if I’ve seen a ghost.
His Adam’s apple bobs and he sits up, glancing at his brother and then back at me. Silence stretches between us as we stare at one another. “Looks like you dropped some muffins there, Betty.”
“Betty?”
“Crocker. Nav tells me you’re the one bringing all of those delicious treats. How come you never baked for me?”
“In order for that to happen, you’d have had to stick around.”
He winces. “Ouch, still lethal as a viper, I see.”
My brow creases. “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you.”
“Right.” I nod. Of course he would be here. He left me to make life easier, but I never thought for one second that perhaps he’d done it for Nav too. “Have you ... have you been in the city the entire time?”
“Yeah, got an apartment with my trust fund on Fifth that overlooks the park. You’d love it.”
I close my eyes and fight back the tears. “Why didn’t you tell us? We’ve all been worried sick.”
“Just figured it’d be easier this way.”
“Easier for whom?”
He inhales sharply and rises from the chair. “I’ll give you a minute to visit. He may not say much though. He just had surgery; he’s out of it. He’ll likely be out for a few more hours.”
“He never told me that you’d been coming to see him.”
“I asked him not to.”
He walks past. It kills me not to touch him, to grab his hand and bring it to my cheek, to feel his lips on my lips, but then the door closes quietly behind him and I stand in silence, willing the tears from my eyes, pushing them down until they choke me and my whole body tenses. I bend and pick up the muffins from the floor. I don’t know how long I stay there, but eventually I wipe my tears and tentatively step closer to Navrin’s sleeping form. My heart tells me to go after Lev, to run, I can still catch him, but Nav’s eyes open and his gaze settles on me.
His brow furrows, and a sleepy smile forms on his face.
“Hey,” I say, because apparently, I’m lame now.
“Hey.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I just had all the pins removed from my leg. Don’t drink and drive, kids.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears spill over my lashes. It’s too much, seeing Lev, knowing Nav is enduring all of this because of me. Sometimes I wonder how the guilt hasn’t eaten me alive completely.
“You saw him, didn’t you?” Nav shakes his head, but he winces from the movement. “I told that asshole not to fall asleep.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he’d been coming to see you? Why didn’t you tell me you knew where he was?”
“Because we both thought it was the best thing for you, but it wasn’t, was it?”
“No,” I say between sniffles. “No, it really wasn’t.”
“I guess, selfishly, I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you coming here in the hopes you might see him.” Nav’s gaze drifts from mine to the cast around his leg. His face is ashen, beautiful, and his eyes are filled with sadness. “That night, the night of the accident, I was going to kill him. And then when I found out what Justin did to you ... it was one thing for my brother to be fucking you, but this was different. What Justin tried to do—”
“But he didn’t. I ran, and Lev stopped him before he could get ... Lev stopped him.”
We’ve never talked about this. I guess I’ve never been brave enough to broach the subject with him because I still feel so guilty.
“I wish it’d been me.” He sighs. “Who’d stopped him. I wish I’d been there instead of on the field. I keep thinking if only I hadn’t focused so much on football then I might not have lost you.”
“Nav ...”
“That’s kind of pathetic though, huh? I knew Lev loved you. I knew it from the time we were eight years old. It’s why I ticked ‘no’ on that stupid letter you gave me. I didn’t care about girls; I just wanted to play football.”
“You broke my heart that day.”
“Yeah, but I think you paid me back, don’t you?” His smile is devastatingly sad.
I suck in a ragged breath, fighting back tears. “I’m so sorry for everything. I really did love you.”
“Did? Past tense.” He laughs but humor doesn’t touch his eyes. “Jesus, give a guy a damn break. I just had
major surgery and you’re determined to bury me six feet under.”
“I know my actions say otherwise, but it’s true. I loved you both, for different reasons. For so many reasons.”
“You just loved him more.”
I swallow hard and lower my gaze. I don’t answer because we both know it’s true, and to tell him would just be cruel.
“We can’t help who we fall in love with, right?”
“Right,” I say.
“I’ve spent so long wondering what might have happened if things were different. If I’d never kissed you. It was a dare, you know? King said I didn’t have the balls, that Saint would kill me. I wasn’t supposed to do it. I was just trying to get back at Lev for fucking Charleigh, but then your lips were on mine and my hands were on your waist, and it felt ... right.”
I scoff. “I was a bet to you?”
“That wasn’t really it. I mean, I’d noticed you. I’d thought about you, but you were Saint’s little sister, and my brother was in love with you—is in love with you.”
“Not enough to stay.”
“The night you were attacked, the night I found out, that was the worst night of my life, but when I climbed in your window and I saw how content you were asleep in his arms, I felt like I was the one who’d cheated. I’d cheated the two people I love the most out of their happiness because I wanted you. I thought I deserved you more than he did. I love you, Scout. I probably always will, but I love you enough to let you go.”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks and give him a sad smile. “God, why are you so damn selfless, Navrin? Can’t you just throw things and call me a whore like normal guys?”
He laughs and flops his head back against the pillow. “You know me. I’ve always been a crowd pleaser.”
“I don’t know if I deserve your forgiveness, but I know you deserve a girl who’ll love you so much her heart bursts out of her chest every time she looks at you.”
His responding smile is wistful. “Just so we’re clear, that’s not you, right?”
I shake my head. “I wish it were.”
“Me too.” He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “So, are you gonna go after him?”
