“Do you remember this?” Jacob asked, diving in a box and holding up a picture of the two of us after a football match when I’d been about seven. It was the only time we’d both been on the same team, and we’d been our own team within the team. It had been the best feeling, being side by side with my big brother, having him pass me the ball and then pass it back for him to score. It was like all the other players on the team had been invisible.
“You’re both so cute,” Madison said, peering at the picture. She cleared her throat. “I mean, clearly exceptionally athletic.” And then she laughed at herself trying to spare our feelings, and I couldn’t help but grin at the way she was not only funny, but tuned into the push and pull between us all.
“I still play a lot of sport,” Jacob said. “Football every Tuesday night. When’s the last time you played, Nathan?”
“I’m too busy to play football,” I said, dismissing him. Madison wasn’t going to be impressed with a weekly football practice. And then it hit me. Was Jacob trying to impress Madison? Invisible hackles raised along my spine.
“Is Mum really going to get rid of this stuff?” Jacob said, pulling out an old lava lamp that I didn’t ever remember seeing before.
“I guess,” Dax said from the doorway. “You know she said she has all the downside of us being at home—the mess and the chaos—with none of the upside of our sparkling personalities.”
“You don’t have a sparkling personality,” Jacob replied. “All you talk about is the hospital. There’s more to life.”
“All I do is work,” Dax replied. “It’s alright for you—you can swan around being a consultant while the rest of us work until we drop.”
I stepped back. They loved to fight about who was the cleverest, who had the better position, who was the most hard done by. The four of them lived their lives in competition with each other—their own team within our brotherhood. Despite having more money than them, having more people working for me, and probably working more hours, I was the outsider. My job would simply never warrant one-upmanship.
“You okay?” Madison said, her voice lowered so the rest of them couldn’t hear us over their bickering.
“Absolutely,” I said. I turned and flipped open one of the boxes behind me. “Graduation pictures,” I announced.
“Did all your brothers go to Oxford?” she asked as we picked through the box under the window. Behind us, my brothers bickered gamely.
I nodded. “It’s where my mum and dad met.”
“Wow,” was all she said in response.
“Oh, here’s all the Star Wars stuff,” I said. “No light saber though.”
This was a perfect time for Madison to question and push. We were all together and clearly at least one of my brothers was trying to impress her. It would have been easy for her to dig up a lot of information. But it was as if she knew some things were off limits—some pieces of me that I needed to keep to myself. As we worked together in companionable silence, it felt as if maybe for once, I had someone on my team too.
Eighteen
Nathan
It was one of those perfect summer evenings that only happened a couple of times a year. Madison had a blanket over her legs and had been sitting talking to whoever was next to her—first Dax, then Jacob. Barring the last few days, we’d spent so much time together over the last weeks that it was strange having to share her with people. But that was the nature of the Cove household. There wasn’t much chance of time to ourselves, but I kinda missed her.
I took a sip of my wine as I watched Jacob and Madison talk and laugh like they were old friends swapping bad jokes. They were quiet enough for me to catch only the odd word, the crackle of the fire interrupting my eavesdropping. One by one family members had peeled off and gone to bed, leaving just four of us around the fire pit. Madison and Jacob on one side and me and Zach on the other. Madison had slotted right in to our family dynamic. No one had stood on ceremony and everyone had treated her like she was one of the family. And I hadn’t seen any evidence that she’d been in work mode, pestering people with questions about me. It was as if I’d brought a friend home for the weekend. A friend who seemed to fit in with my family as if she’d known them for years. A friend who seemed completely unselfconscious and at ease with the people most important to me. A friend who just happened to be gorgeous—even more so now, with her face lit up in the warm glow of the firelight.