Brothers At War [completed; unedited]

Brothers At War: Chapter Two

The flight to Arizona came a whole lot quicker than I actually thought it was going to; I'm sure time intentionally sped up so that this date arrived quicker than it needed to.

It felt like only yesterday that I was opening the envelope and reading the piece of paper with my name on, the piece of paper which was actually inviting me here in the first place; even if it was simply to rub my face in his own happiness now.

I was still debating which was worse. The fact I was going to come face to face with Matt for the first time in three years, or the fact I had been desperate enough to invite my mother as my plus one.

“So, who is this Matt Barnes and how do you know him?” my mother asked.

I had already had the lecture from her about not sleeping with anyone who’s invited. She had even given me the lecture warning me to stay away from anyone who happened to be related to Matt; which wasn’t going to be difficult to do.

Marcus Barnes.

Matt’s younger, and less successful, brother.

He didn’t do relationships, didn’t care about family and didn’t understand that people do have feelings and, in particular, he didn't understand that he had a tendency to constantly hurt those feelings.

He was everything that I hated about the male population, so there was very little chance of me wanting to sleep with him; not unless he’s changed in the little time since I last saw him - but I’m not going to hold my breath on that one.

“Just someone I know. He stayed in dad’s hotel for a couple of months over the Summer. The one I was working in at the time, and we became pretty good friends.” I shrugged.

Sure, that was one massive lie, but I was hardly going to tell her the truth. I only knew him because he had been my lecturers during my final year of University. I would often sneak around the place, just to spend time with him; there was more than one occasion where he invited me back to his place.

I knew it was wrong, but I got a huge thrill out of doing it; I got a thrill out of the possibility of being caught.

Whether it was by someone from the University, or whether it was by his wife.

I loved sneaking around knowing there was the chance someone could see us.

“Does he have any brothers? Sisters? Parents?” my mother questioned.

“A brother. Marcus.” I replied, slowly regretting the decision to ask her to come with me and wondering why I didn’t just ask some random male to come along with me instead; at least Matt would stay away from me and wouldn’t bother me if I was in the company of another male.

It was too late to wonder what would have happened though had I brought someone else with me because we were a little over halfway into our twelve hour flight from London to Arizona; apparently that’s where Matt had decided to go to when I told him that he needed to leave and needed to go somewhere I was never going to be able to see him again.

“Do you know him?”

“Unfortunately.” I spoke through gritted teeth. I didn’t want to know him, but that was the unfortunate thing about working the job that I did; you were always going to see people you wanted nothing to do with.

“How do you know him then?”

“My company does business with his. He often travels to London to complete all the deals we arrange.” I spoke quickly, not really wanting to talk about Marcus for much longer than I had to. He was a subject I always tried to avoid for as long as possible, but my boss always sent me to deal with him on purpose.