Bad Girl Reputation by Elle Kennedy

At a stoplight, he turns to meet my eyes. “Look, you’re my brother and I love you, but you’re an ass when she’s around. These last few months you’ve really gotten your shit together. Don’t throw all that away on a chick who’s never going to stop being a mess.”

Something about it—I don’t know, the contempt in his voice, the condescension—sticks right in my craw. Cooper can be a real self-righteous prick when he wants to be.

“It’s not like I’m dating her again, okay? Don’t be so dramatic.”

We pull up to our house, the two-story, low-country cottage-style on the beach that’s been in our family for three generations. The place was all but falling apart before we started making renovations over the past several months. It’s taken most of our savings and more of our time, but it’s coming along.

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” Cooper shuts off the engine with an exasperated breath. “Same old pattern: takes off whenever she wants, suddenly pops back in, and you’re ready to bake cookies together. Sound like any other woman you know?” With that, he hops out of the truck and slams the door shut.

Well, that was uncalled for.

Of the two of us, Cooper has held the hardest grudge against our mother, to the point he’s resented me for not needing to hate her as much as he does. In her latest episode, though, I backed him up. Told her she wasn’t welcome to hang around anymore, not after what she did to him. Shelley Hartley had finally crossed one line too many.

But I guess taking Cooper’s side wasn’t enough to get him to ease up on me. Everyone’s full of low blows today.

At dinner later, Cooper still hasn’t let the Genevieve thing go. Not in his nature.

It’s damn irritating. I’m trying to eat my damned spaghetti, and this asshole is still laying into me while he tells Mackenzie, who’s been living with us for the past few months, about how I basically screwed my ex on top of the still-warm casket of her dead mother.

“Evan says he’ll just be a minute, then leaves me by myself in that house to give our condolences to her dad and five brothers, who pretty much think it’s Evan’s fault she ran out of town a year ago,” Cooper grumbles, stabbing a meatball with his fork. “They’re asking where he is; meanwhile, he’s got Mr. West’s baby girl bent over the bathtub or whatever.”

“We just kissed,” I say in exasperation.

“Coop, come on,” Mac says, wincing away from her fork, which is coiled with pasta and hanging mid-air. “I’m trying to eat.”

“Yeah, have some tact, jackass,” I chide.

When they’re not looking, I slip a piece of meatball to Daisy, the golden retriever puppy at my feet. Cooper and Mac rescued her off the jetty last year and she’s nearly doubled in size since then. At first I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking care of this creature Cooper’s new girlfriend had dumped on us, but then she spent a night curled up at the end of my bed having puppy dreams, and I broke like a cheap toy. Dog’s had me wrapped around her paw ever since. She’s the only girl I can trust not to take off on me. Luckily, Coop and Mac worked out, so we didn’t have to fight a custody battle.

It’s funny how life works out sometimes. Last year, Cooper and I hatched an admittedly mean-spirited plot to sabotage Mac’s relationship with her boyfriend at the time. In our defense, the guy was a douchebag. Then Cooper had to spoil all the fun and catch feelings for the rich college girl. I couldn’t stand her at first, but it turned out I’d read Mackenzie Cabot all wrong. I was at least man enough to admit I’d misjudged her. Cooper, on the other hand, can’t keep his thoughts to himself so far as Gen’s concerned. Typical.

“So what’s the real story with you two?” Mac asks, curiosity flickering in her dark-green eyes.

The real story? How do I even begin to answer that? Genevieve and I have history. Lots of it. Some of it great. Some, not so good. Things have always been complicated with us.

“We got together freshman year of high school,” I tell Mac. “She was basically my best friend. Always good for a laugh and down for anything.”

My mind is suddenly flooded with images of us messing around on dirt bikes at two in the morning with a fifth of tequila between us. Surfing the swells as a hurricane moved in, then riding out the storm in the back of her brother’s Jeep. Gen and I constantly dared each other’s limits of adventure, getting into a few scrapes with death or mutilation that we had no right escaping unscathed. There was no adult in the relationship, so there was never a point when someone said stop. We were always chasing the rush.

And Gen was a rush. Fearless and undaunted. Unapologetically herself, and to hell what anyone had to say about it. She made me crazy; more than once I broke my hand wrestling some asshole cornering her in a bar. Yeah, maybe I was possessive, but no more than she was. She’d drag a chick out by her hair for looking at me the wrong way. Most of it had something to do with the off-and-on part—getting jealous, fighting, and turning around to make the other one jealous. It was a little messed up, but it was our language. I was hers and she was mine. We were addicted to make-up sex.

The quiet moments were just as addictive. Lying on a beach blanket at our favorite spot in the Bay, her head in the crook of my neck, my arm slung around her as we looked up at the stars. Whispering our darkest secrets to each other and knowing there’d never be any judgment on the other end. Hell, aside from Cooper, she’s the only one to ever see me cry.