Brett

 

Mum tried to call me ten times over that next morning. I didn’t pick up.

I had nothing to say. Not then and likely not for a long while to come, having more than enough shit to sift through on my own without her adding a fresh pile on top.

My wife and I were picking at a late breakfast with my new blonde brother just about as merrily as possible when the courier stepped through the reception doorway and pinged the bell.

My heart dropped through the floor as I signed for the package, knowing full well what the fuck was likely to be waiting inside.

I wasn’t prepared for my dad’s handwriting on the letter when it dropped free of the document wallet. I was also unprepared for the way Heath’s eyes widened as he clocked the scene.

“Mum said it was left for you,” I explained as I handed it to him with uncharacteristically shaky fingers. “In the will, I mean. They couldn’t find you, with the name change.”

“I doubt they tried particularly hard,” he said, and I’m sure that was the truth of it.

All three of us stared at the envelope in his hands as he turned it over and over.

The writing was a familiar scrawl, close enough to home that it choked my breath.

Tom.

Not even Thomas. Just Tom.

“I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for this,” he said, and I offered up my hands.

“It’s your gig,” I told him. “Between you and him, whenever you’re ready.”

I felt a godawful mix of sadness and relief as he slipped the unopened letter into his inside pocket.

“I’m going to head out for a walk,” he said. “I must at least attempt to clear my head a little. Care to join me?”

Grace slipped her hand over mine before I could consider my answer. “Elaine’s here for the laundry,” she told me. “We could go for a few hours. Catch some sea air.”

I shrugged, resigning myself to continue bobbing along on these crazy waves we were riding.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

We did do it. Wrapped up tight against the morning chill with Grace’s hand in mine as we made our way slowly down the beachfront and around the craggy outcrop. Thomas was surprisingly relaxed given everything he must be feeling with that envelope burning through his pocket. He kept his eyes high on the cliffs and his smile as easy as I’m sure he could muster.

I choked everything back in my bid to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and eventually, after what felt like miles of steady rhythm on sand, I finally began to feel it.

Calm.

The permanence of the sea, crashing on a constant loop against the shore. Grace’s fingers warm in mine, her steps falling into sync with every move I made, on instinct from years at my side.

And now there was him too. Right by us. His steps in tune with ours along the coast. Here with us, from nowhere, a stranger with enough money to tempt us into the craziest decision of our goddamn lives. A stranger who wasn’t a stranger.

He was my brother.

My fucking brother.

I couldn’t stop looking at Grace looking at him. Her eyes were on him as often as they were on me, her expression muted but optimistic, eyes bright with the prospect of what lay ahead – of what could lay ahead – even though it made my gut lurch.

We’d developed a vague measure of boyish respect, him and me. Like a rival turned good on the sports field, only it wasn’t a sports field, it was my wife’s pretty pussy and he’d been scoring along with me.

And it was different now.

It should be different now.

No more. Not ever again. A line so red in the fucking sand it should blow away his dickish sensor and everything it stood for a million times over. This one was firmer, deeper. Red from blood and pain, and a relationship that should never cross that sordid line ever a fucking gain.

So, why did I still want it so fucking bad?

He pointed up to a little white pub on the clifftop and I gave a nod. The walk up was brisk enough that it pumped my blood hard through my veins, and through my dick with it. Realising I was thinking about him on her as we stepped over the threshold of the place was enough to turn my stomach. It wobbled and lurched, bacon and eggs mashing into a vile soupy mess in my gut.

I retreated to the gents with a clipped smile on my face, barging into the cubicle before retching my breakfast straight up into the bowl.

My balls were aching, wanting to share my beautiful wife’s holes with him all over again, my face burning as I retched up so hard there was nothing left to spew. This was fucked. We were fucked.

I flushed the cistern when I heard the creak of a door beyond the flimsy little box partition I was in, praying he wouldn’t hear my discomfort, if it was indeed Heath coming calling.

“That walk upset your stomach?” he called out as the stream of his piss sounded out in the cubicle next to mine.

“Something like that,” I grunted, and he sighed before he flushed.

I met him at the basins, both of us staring at the mirrored wall tiles and not each other.

“Your wife still makes me hard,” he told me, and I visibly fucking flinched.

“I can’t deal with that,” I blurted. “Not today, Heath, not today.”

“She does,” he said. “And that isn’t going to change, not today, not tomorrow, nor the day after.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I insisted, but his smirk spoke volumes.

“I should go. For definite, before this shit really does rear its head,” he said, but I shook mine.

“Don’t start that same old shit up,” I told him. “You’re not going anywhere until we know where we’re fucking at.”

“Where we’re at, is a pub a few miles from your place, with your pretty wife walking between us and thinking about taking us both in her wet little cunt. Where we’re at, is you vomiting your breakfast up because your balls are tense for another round and you’re picturing me as your brother. Your brother fucking your wife.”

“Where we’re at, is a brand new fucking page,” I insisted. “And we’ll figure out what’s fucking written on it, alright?”

I slapped his arm and he groaned as he shook his hands in the basin. “If you insist.”

I did insist, not least because I didn’t know what else to do.

Grace was waiting by the open fire in the main seating area when we headed back through, a large glass of white in front of her and a smile on her face. Two pints were waiting on the bar top for us, the place deserted aside from the three of us in our high-buttoned jackets and the barman reading the morning paper on the counter.

I placed my hand on Grace’s knee as I joined her on her comfy bench, and Thomas sat down the other side from her, his own knee so close to hers they were virtually touching as he leaned forward. He drank half of his beer down with a sigh of relief, and I did the same, thanking my blessings for alcohol and the distraction it offered in this space.

We could do the same at our place, hang out in the bar over a mountain of whisky, but it wouldn’t last forever. Wouldn’t even last the full week out before Grace was flashing the eye and wanting more all over again, even if she didn’t realise she was doing it.

“Tom,” she said out loud. “Can we call you that?”

He tipped his head. “I guess you can call me whatever seems fitting, given that the goalposts have moved.”

The goalposts weren’t even on the same fucking field.

“Tom,” I said. “Cheers.”

He raised his glass to mine, as did Grace.

It was the most awkward toast of my life, my gut unsettled for a second round before I’d even downed the rest of it.

But this time I couldn’t call another bathroom retreat, not with two pairs of eyes right on mine. I was forced to deal with it, brush it off with a smile I didn’t feel and get to my feet at the earliest opportunity.

“Let’s go,” I said, and the new dynamic was set, so much fucking different from the old one.

Both of them sprang into action, following my lead. Heath without so much as an empty sneer in opposition to my leadership.

That’s when I knew it, for sure. I really was the older brother. The one who would take the lead in decision making. In us. In her. In governing every fucking mess we’d likely land ourselves up in while trying to make it out of this sorry state.

It was the most natural thing on earth to sling my arm around my wife’s shoulder as we dropped back down to the beach. And the most natural thing on earth for her to reach out for the man she’d grown accustomed to taking along with me.

I fought the urge to retch all over again as she took his hand. And he saw it. He must have fucking seen it.

His smile was bright but false as he dropped her grip and held back his footsteps to lag behind.

Digging the envelope from his pocket was the perfect illusion. Pretending he needed space was the only way we’d have walked on by without protest.

“Give me a few minutes,” he told me, and I nodded, tugging Grace along right after me.

“Take all the time you need,” I said.