Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(2)
“Shut up.”
I pat his back to console him as Viggo mutters under his breath about emotionally constipated siblings. “Even if you did read romances post-dating the nineteenth century,” I tell him, “you weren’t going to have a clue what was going on until Ax was ready to tell us. That’s just how he is.”
My oldest brother’s a man of few words. Deeply loving but intensely private and quiet, Axel lives on the family property, here, in his own cabin, so we see and hear from him less often, and when we do hear from him, it’s frequently via the written word.
Axel’s on the autism spectrum and finds writing the easiest way to tell us personal things. Which is why, when he told us how twisted up he was over Rooney this past Christmas—when I saw how long they spent alone on the porch after she showed up, how close they seemed while she spent the next few days with us—I wasn’t terribly surprised to receive a beautiful hand-written note from Axel last month, explaining that since the fall, he and Rooney had been together and that they were now married. The letter also said that he was sorry he hadn’t been able to make us a part of their wedding, but he still very much wanted to celebrate their marriage with us.
The only thing that made getting that heartfelt letter written in Axel’s tall, sloping scrawl even better was watching Viggo’s dawning horror as he read his letter, too. Not because he disapproved of Axel’s methods but because he’d been clueless about what was going on.
“As I was saying.” Viggo sniffs, maneuvering around the other vehicles parked in the clearing. “My plan to cope. It’s a low-key party. It’s not like you’ll have to see them get married. Knowing Axel, it’ll be chill. Practical. Relaxed. We’ll pound some delicious food. I’ll get you good and liquored up, tuck you in, and you’ll sleep it off. Tomorrow it’ll be back to the same old family shenanigans, and you can blast me in the face with a soccer ball when we play pickup.”
“For the hundredth time, it was an accident.”
He rubs the bridge of his now slightly-less-than-perfectly-straight nose. “Uh-huh. And it had nothing to do with the fake snake I put in your bed the night before.”
“If it did,” I say testily, throwing my phone, water canteen, and snacks into my carry-on bag between my legs, “it was subliminal. And you deserved it.”
Wrenching the car into park, Viggo turns and looks at me. “Listen, something I tell myself regularly, as I wait for my one true love—”
“Here we go.” I slump back in my seat and scrub my face.
“—is that someone’s romantic gain does not equate to my loss. Most of our siblings are happily paired off, and while I wish I was, too, I can be happy for them while I wait. Our time will come.” He sets a hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Until then—well, more like for the next seventy-two hours—let’s be the untethered man cubs and have some fun. Got it?”
I sigh and throw open my car door. “Fine.”
Well. I’m intoxicated. Thankfully I haven’t veered into shitshow territory.
Though I think I might be on my way.
Stashed in a shadowy corner of the A-frame’s wide back deck, I’m outside the golden reach of countless twinkly lights strung overhead. A cool late-March breeze weaves through the small gathering, and as I nurse my who-knows-what-number beer, my gaze travels my family.
Mom and Dad sway to the music, eyes only for each other. Mom slips her hands through his copper hair, which is threaded with white, and smiles softly up at him. Dad’s eyes crinkle as he grins at her, wrapping his hands tighter around her waist.
They look so in love, and I love that my parents are still gone for each other, but I don’t need to see them kiss, which they’re about to. So I look away just in time and catch the oldest of us, my sister Freya, with her arms around her husband, Aiden’s neck—ack!—kissing him.
I shut my eyes briefly, and when I open them again, there’s Axel, next in birth order, swaying his wife, Rooney, to the music’s rhythm. He’s the tallest of us, which makes him gigantic, seeing as no one in the family is under six feet. His hair, chocolate brown like Viggo’s, falls over his forehead as he stares at Rooney, her spun-gold waves adorned by a crown of flowers. He kisses her forehead, eyes shut, his world nothing but her.
Then there’s Ren, so much like Dad, with his broad build and ginger hair, and just a little like Mom with her pale blue-gray eyes and sharp cheekbones. I try not to watch him make his girlfriend, Frankie, flash a rare wide smile and laugh as he whispers in her ear.
I was hoping I could count on my grumpy lumberjack-looking brother Ryder—with Dad’s feisty green eyes and penchant for provoking the woman he loves—to cut me a break, but even he’s being romantic. A heated grin plays on his mouth as his girlfriend, Willa, smiles up at him and sinks her hands into his dirty-blond man bun, tugging him down for a deep, hard kiss.
My sister Ziggy, the only one younger than me, sits happily curled up on a deck chair, a lock of long, red hair twirled around her finger, smiling to herself as she reads one of her thick fantasy romances. I know that look, her green eyes darting down the page, a fiery blush heating her pale skin—she’s being swept away by another dark-haired, sardonic villain who’ll somehow be redeemed and turn into a love interest by the end, if the past few stories she’s gushed about are anything to go by.