The Fight In Us: A Brother's Best Friend College Romance (The Four Book 4) Read online

  Cassius said something that I didn’t hear as I stood rooted to the spot, staring at her, trying to work out what the fuck I was feeling when I looked at this girl. I needed another drink. Lucky for my dart game, but unlucky for me, I’d only had one beer back at the beginning of the night.

  “—He can’t take me home since he’s had a drink. Mum and Dad left ages ago, and I just tried to get an Uber, but they can’t come for another forty-five minutes,” Lena was saying when my brain finally decided to tune back into the conversation.

  I was already moving towards her. “I’ll take you.”

  “No, I’ll take her.” Zayde appeared next to me, his tone threaded with ice.

  I gritted my teeth. “I already offered.”

  He turned the full force of his icy gaze on me. “I’m taking her.”

  I glared right back at him, refusing to be the one to break our stand-off.

  The stand-off ended with Lena’s words. “Sorry, West, but Z has a bike.” She stared at me with an unreadable expression on her face, before she twisted the knife by adding, “And I need to feel the power between my legs, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Then they were gone. Unreasonable jealousy and anger raged inside of me, and I didn’t even know why.

  “What was all that about, West?” My brother gave me a curious look.

  “Nothing.” Stalking back over to the dartboard, I grabbed a handful of darts, launching them at the board.

  I couldn’t shake the haze of anger. “I’m out of here.” I threw the final dart, uncaring, and it clattered to the floor.

  I needed a drink. Now.

  THREE

  PRESENT DAY

  I glanced up at my brother, Cassius, as we headed into the bowling alley with our friends Winter and Caiden. “Where’s West?” My voice was casual. “I thought he was coming bowling.”

  “He is.” Cassius scanned the large open space. Colourful lights played over the lanes, and music pumped from the speakers, accompanied by the sounds of falling pins. “There.”

  I followed his line of sight to see Weston propped up against the bar, openly flirting with a gorgeous girl with short, jet-black hair who was waiting to be served. She laughed at something he said, placing her hand on his arm, and I pushed down the unwanted spike of jealousy at her actions.

  Weston wasn’t mine.

  And I had to remember that.

  I’d perfected the art of pretending over the years. Pretending I only saw Weston as a friend. Pretending that he didn’t affect me. Pretending it didn’t cut me up inside every time another new conquest ended up in his bed. Pretending I hadn’t been in love with him ever since I was eight years old. Pretending that he’d ever look at me as anything more than his best friend’s sister.

  Always pretending.

  I’d pretended for so long that the pretence had become real.

  Almost.

  With an effort I turned my back on the bar and faced the bowling lanes. “Ready to be beaten?”

  Cassius laughed next to me, then reached over and ruffled my hair. “You wish. I’m unbeatable.”

  I threw him a warning look, smoothing my hair back down. “We’ll see about that.”

  An hour later, we were about to start a new game, and Cassius and Zayde were tied for first place. Even though Zayde had arrived late, he’d somehow managed to catch up and move into the lead.

  Everyone was in a great mood, happy to just be having fun without anything hanging over their heads. Winter and Caiden, especially. Winter had spent months investigating her dad’s sudden, suspicious death, and it had led her to Alstone, where it had turned out that her own mother was the one behind it. Add in betrayal from Allan, a guy that had been really close to the entire Cavendish family, and involvement with a Belarusian gang…let’s just say, we could all breathe more easily these days now that it was all behind us.

  And another bonus? I had a new friend, Winter, and Caiden had finally stopped acting like an angry, moody bastard now that he was all loved-up with her.

  “I’ll be back.” I waved my hand in the direction of the toilets. “Anyone want more drinks while I’m up?”

  “I’ll get them.” Winter smiled at me. “Meet you at the bar in a few.”

  Exiting the loos, I headed back down the corridor, taking the chance to check my phone in case there was anything that needed my attention. Clearly, I wasn’t paying attention, because I ran straight into someone, my phone falling from my grip and clattering to the floor.

  Not someone.

  Weston.

  His arm shot out, his hand gripping my elbow to steady me. “Fuck, sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.” Dipping down, he swiped my phone from the floor before straightening up.

  “Doesn’t look broken.” He turned it over in his grip, smoothing his thumb over the screen, then handed it back to me.

  His sudden presence had flustered me, and I stood there mutely like an idiot, just staring at him. As the silence stretched, his lips curved upwards in amusement. “Everything okay?”

  “Um.” I licked my lips, and his eyes darted down, following my movements. “Yeah. I’m fine,” I managed to say, my voice coming out all hoarse for some stupid reason.

  Now it was his turn for silence. He continued to stare at my mouth through lowered lashes, and my skin grew hot as I realised that he was still holding on to my arm.

  The sound of footsteps coming down the corridor broke the spell, and he blinked, dropping his grip on me. He turned away without another word, leaving me staring after him.

  What was that?

  Back in the bowling alley, I joined Winter at the bar, where she was ordering large jugs of beer to share, plus Coke for the drivers. “Should we get snacks?” she mused as I came to stand next to her.

  I shook off the weird moment I’d just had with West and attempted to act normal. “Yeah. Everyone always wants snacks.”

  “True.” With a laugh, she glanced over at me, then frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” My voice came out more defensive than I’d planned, and she raised a brow.

  “Just asking. You look a bit…flushed. Are you feeling okay?”

  I forced a laugh and repeated the words I’d just spoken to Weston, not meaning them this time, either. “Yeah, I’m fine.” As Winter eyed me, unconvinced, I added, “Just a bit hot. I could do with a cold drink.”

  She seemed to accept that as an explanation, indicating her head towards the beer that the bartender had just placed in front of us. “I’ve got you covered there. I’ll just order some snacks, then you can help me carry the drinks back over.”

  “Curly fries. And Cajun wedges?”

  “Yep.” She nodded, then placed the additional order. “Come on. Let’s try and beat the boys. I’m pretty sure we can throw them off their game.”

  “How?” I stared at her, intrigued.

  “Distract them?”

  “How?” I repeated.

  “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

  We didn’t manage to throw them off their game. Winter’s “distraction” techniques, which involved getting Cassius to tell jokes and flirting like mad with Cade, were an epic fail. After three games, Caiden ended up as the overall winner, and Cassius had moved into second place, with Zayde in third.

  I was normally fairly good at bowling, as was Weston, but there seemed to be a bit of awkwardness in both of us after our moment in the corridor. I could’ve been projecting, in fact, I was 90 percent sure I was, but we were both distracted and playing badly.

  The tiniest spark of hope sprang to life inside me.

  It remained until we were leaving the bowling alley. The girl who West had been flirting with earlier was standing close to the exit, and as we made our way outside, she curled her finger at him with a sultry smile on her face.

  When he broke away from our group, heading in her direction, I didn’t wait to see anything else. I rushed outside as quickly as I could, swallowing the
feelings that I knew I couldn’t afford to have for him.

  Weston Cavendish would never be mine.

  FOUR

  My computer pinged with a message alert, then another. Mercury and Xenon.

  Navigating to Xenon’s first, I rubbed my brow. Bloody headache.

  Xenon: Yes I’m a genius. All done

  Yes. The job had been a tricky one, but between me and Xenon, we’d done it. The assignment had come from Xenon’s boss, and the weird thing was, the client was none other than my dad, Arlo. Did he know I was the one dealing with it? I wasn’t sure, but I knew not to underestimate him. Whether my dad knew it was me or not, fuck it. I’d do what I needed to do. In this instance, the assignment involved looking into the background of the head finance guy at Alstone Holdings, Mr. Martin Smith.

  Alstone Holdings was the company that was founded by three families—mine, the Drummond family, and the Lowry family. Primarily in construction and land acquisition, they owned most of the land and property in Alstone and the surrounding area and had far-reaching business connections that stretched across the country and even internationally.

  Something about this particular employee had thrown up red flags—my dad had suspicions around discrepancies in the accounts, numbers that hadn’t been adding up—and although this guy had an explanation for everything, my dad wasn’t convinced. He wanted to pin something on him legally but wasn’t above illegal methods to do so, which was where I came in. I was supposed to be looking out for anything that would stand out as suspicious. That didn’t give me much to go on, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

  How did I get involved in all this shit to begin with? It had happened when I was playing with my newfound set of skills and had managed to break into Kryptos, a legendary hidden system deep within the dark web. About half a second after I’d been greeted with a flashing K symbol, my entire network had been taken over by an unknown controller. Nothing worked, and I’d fucking panicked, watching helplessly as my system destroyed itself before my eyes. Me, a cocky sixteen-year-old, thinking I was this invincible genius hacker, until I wasn’t.

  Half an hour after it had happened, my system was back online as if nothing had happened, complete with a message on my screen and a link to a hidden portal on the dark web. Within the portal, I’d been given various tests, and afterwards, my formal offer of employment. Hacking into Kryptos had been a test of skills, and apparently, I’d passed.

  All of us were anonymous, assigned code names when we began working for Promethium. Hence my nickname, Nitro. Over the years I’d been doing it, I’d come to know my colleague-slash-fellow hacker Mercury…not know, exactly, but we’d built a kind of online friendship, and we trusted one another and helped each other out. Then there was Xenon, higher in ranking than us, and above him was Promethium. There was a huge network of us out there, all working for Promethium and collectively known as Kryptos, but I only really interacted with Mercury and Xenon.

  Back to my current task. My dad had asked us to look into this guy’s background and go through his correspondence to see if there was anything that would connect him to the discrepancies in the company finances. Problem was, the fucker had a level of encryption on his phone that I couldn’t manage to get through, so I’d asked Xenon to help. Not that he’d do anything for free—no, he wanted an undisclosed future favour in return. Something I’d probably end up regretting, knowing him.

  Leaving my computer to filter through the data from the guy’s phone, I headed for the kitchen to grab a drink. My housemate and best friend, Cassius, was already there, thumbing through his phone, and he looked up with a grin as I entered.

  “Alright, mate? You done with your computer shit already?”

  “Nope.” Swiping a bottle of water from the fridge, I thought about it for a minute. Fuck it. It could take hours for the software to analyse all the data on the phone, depending on how many emails and messages he had. And my headache was getting worse. “Actually, yeah, I am. You wanna head out?”

  “Always ready.” He bounded up from his stool, grabbing his keys from the island, and headed around to meet me.

  “Where’s everyone else?” The house seemed quieter than usual.

  “Cade and Z are working out in the basement. Winter’s at uni, said she’d meet us when we were ready.”

  “Okay. Just gonna check a message from Mercury before we go.” I stopped in front of the door to the computer room, but Cass grabbed my arm to pull me away.

  “Leave it. It’ll still be there when we get back.”

  True. He hadn’t sent me an alert, which would’ve indicated it was urgent. Whatever it was could wait.

  “You’re right.”

  “Always am.”

  Rolling my eyes at his words, I followed him out of the door.

  “Best of three?” Cassius didn’t even wait for my reply before racking up the pool balls again.

  Placing my beer down on the high table next to me, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand before replying. “Yeah.” We were in the Student Union bar, after the world’s quickest trip to the campus library to pick up some books. My workload was heavier this semester, and I was juggling it with my part-time job doing IT support right here at Alstone College. The job was easy, and it was additional experience for the future. But it was an added time suck, especially now I had this additional assignment for Kryptos.

  Still, there wasn’t really any need to worry. My classes were easy…all other than economics, but I had Winter to help me. Now she was living with us, we’d fallen into the habit of going through my economics coursework in the evenings in front of the TV.

  Speaking of Winter…

  “Doubles?”

  I looked up from my pool cue to see her grinning at me. I returned her smile as she swung her bag from her shoulder, dropping it to the floor.

  My smile dropped as I saw Winter’s friend Kinslee next to her, shuffling her feet. Fuck. Things had become a bit strained between the two of us, and I knew it was my fault. We’d slept together once when we were both drunk, and I knew she wanted a repeat. The problem was my dick wasn’t interested. My gaze swept over her, taking in her tumbling curls, curvy body, and huge eyes. Nope. Not even a flicker of interest.

  “My two favourite girls.” Cassius came around the table, pulling them both into a hug, and just like that, the tension was broken. Maybe it was all in my head. It had been months since everything had gone down between us, anyway.

  As Cassius finally released her, her eyes met mine, and now I could clearly see there was only friendliness in her warm gaze.

  Fuck. I didn’t understand women. Despite the fact that I had my fair share of female interest, it seemed like I was still no better at reading the signs. Not to sound arrogant, but I’d never really had to. Women came to me—one of the perks of being one of the Four. The Four being me, Caiden, Cassius, and Zayde. Fuck knows who had even started calling us that, but it had stuck, and that was what we were collectively known as. We even had tattoos of the number 4 in Roman numerals. Winter did too, now that she was officially one of us.

  Whatever the reason was, I hadn’t had to work for female attention.

  I smirked to myself, which Winter caught. “Something funny?” She studied me as she chalked her pool cue, then blew on it.

  “Not really. Just thinking that I’ll never understand women.”

  Cassius slung his arm over my shoulder. “Mate, don’t even try.” With that sage advice, he removed his arm, leaning over the table and angling his pool cue. “Boys versus girls. Loser makes dinner.”

  “Why is it always about food with you?” Winter took her turn at the table, sending a striped ball flying into the corner pocket.

  “I’m a growing boy.”

  My phone buzzed with a message alert, and I took it out while I waited for my turn at the table.

  “Yes!”

  Everyone turned to me at my shout.

  “Didn’t mean to shout. My car’s ready. I can pick it
up tomorrow morning.”

  “Want me to drop you at the garage? I can miss my Economics class.” Cass had a huge grin on his face. He knew, better than anyone, just how much I’d been looking forward to this day. My own car at last. Not just any car, either. An Aston Martin DBS Superleggera, thanks to my dad’s newfound friendship with his new business associate, Lars De Witt. I’d been on the ridiculously long waiting list for another Aston Martin model, but when my dad offered me this car via Lars, there was no way I was going to turn it down. It was a year old, but it had spent most of its life so far sitting in a garage, and that was a crime I couldn’t ignore. I’d just been waiting on the custom matte-black paint job, and now, it was finally ready.

  “Nah, I’ll get an Uber. Thanks, though.”

  “You know what this means. We need to celebrate your new wheels. Friday night.” My best mate was already tapping on his phone. “I heard that whatshername’s single now. Laura? I think?”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, invite her, and her friend. The one with the dark hair.”

  “Would you say you prefer girls with dark hair?” Winter was suddenly in my face, studying me intently.

  “What? Why?” I raised a brow. “I don’t have a type.”

  She nodded, then abruptly turned away, dismissing me. Shaking my head, I lined my cue up, ready to sink the ball into the middle pocket before tapping the white ball lightly. Perfect shot.

  “Hey, Cass? You’re inviting Lena,” I heard Winter say, as I sank another ball. He said something in reply that was too low for me to hear over the noise of the bar.

  Lena Drummond.

  The girl I never allowed myself to think about.

  The one single girl who was completely off limits.

  My best friend’s sister.

  FIVE