He sighed with a nod. “Let’s go.”
“Oh no, it’s okay, we don’t have to go.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “No, I want to. Fuck, five minutes with my brother was more than enough. I'd rather leave before he comes back from wherever he disappeared to.”
“Yes, let's go.” I wanted to leave before Hugo reconsidered his offer and came clean to his brother in the middle of a room full of people.
I started to relax when Ethan’s car was pulled in front of the house. He sat at the wheel, his shoulders slumping a little as he left the curb, making me realize that he had been even tenser than I had.
I took a deep breath. “Ethan, I need to tell you something.”
“Thank you!” he beamed.
“Why are you thanking me?”
“Thank you for showing Hugo he’s not better than me.”
I frowned, twisting in my seat to see him better. “What do you mean?”
“He always had the best of everything, being the firstborn, always perfect—always the one effortlessly meeting my father's expectations.” He shook his head. “But the way he looked at you tonight?” He let out a little bark of laughter. “He wished he was me. I saw it, the pure jealousy on his face. He wants you and he can’t have you.” He pointed at his chest. “Ihave you.”
I looked down at my hands. Hehadhadme, that was the problem. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I didn’t have to fake the hurt in my voice. “You know everything about me.” Well, at least until today he did.
He winced as he threw me a sideways look. “I’m sorry, it’s just—” He sighed again, clearly not comfortable with this conversation, but with what was bound to happen soon I needed to know as much as possible.
“Hugo is my half-brother.”
“Okay?” That would explain why they looked nothing alike except for the eyes. Hugo was tall and well built, with wide shoulders, a long, straight greek nose, and a slightly tanned skin that I figured was not due to the sun but simply his.
Ethan was tall too, but much thinner, with pale skin, a mop of light brown hair, thick lips, and a short turned-up nose that was clearly his mother’s.
“His mother was Italian, I believe, but she died when Hugo was four.”
“Oh.” I felt a wave of sympathy toward the horrible man who’d treated me as if I were the scum of humanity. Damn it! I had no place feeling anything like that for him.
“I’m five years younger than him.”
It was easy to do the math—their father had gotten over Hugo's mother’s passing awfully fast.
“I know what you’re thinking. My father got a woman pregnant when his wife was barely in the ground.”
I shook my head. “What I think about your father’s actions has no reflection on you. You had no play in this.”
“Perhaps.”
I frowned at the uncertainty in his voice. “There’s no ‘perhaps’ in this story at all.”
“Hugo had a hard time accepting my mother and therefore, me. He never connected with me. I remember—I was five, maybe six?” He cocked his head to the side, twisting his mouth, trying to remember. “Yes, I was six because Hugo was eleven and he was about to start secondary school. He asked our father to send him to boarding school, so he went to High Wycomb and I stayed behind.” Ethan parked in front of my flat and turned in his seat. “We lost touch then. I think we only saw each other for the mandatory holiday, and even then he spent them doing activities as far away from home as he could.” He shrugged. “I think I didn’t tell you about him because we’re not brothers, not really. Our lives parted so early and he has always been my father’s golden child, the favorite—the one meeting and even exceeding all expectations.”
“Your father loves you.”
He threw me a knowing look. “Maybe, but I was never Hugo.” He sighed, leaning against the headrest. “So, you know, it was good to have you just for me. For once I’ve got something that Hugo doesn’t. Something that he clearly covets and that’s making me genuinely happy, no matter how petty it makes me.”
The man had been hateful towards me, treating me like trash and yet I couldn’t help the little thrill I felt at the idea of him wanting me.
Ethan smiled. “Anyway, did you want to say something?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t tell him today, not when he’d just admitted he had always been upstaged by his brother, not when it made him so happy to have won.