Brother’s Best Friends Are My Mates novel Chapter 12

Matt

I kept pacing in front of Lia’s room. She had to smell and hear me. The pacing was just going to make her nervous, but if anyone was extremely nervous in this situation then it was me. It felt like my heart was going to leap right out of my chest.

“Why are you pacing outside the room?” Rain hissed from down the hall. “Matt just knocks on the door and asks Lia if you can speak with her.”

“And if she says no?”

“Then tell her everything through the door. Problem solved!”

I sighed, deciding it was better to take Rain’s advice than just pacing back and forth, doing nothing but wearing a path on the carpet.

So, I took a breath, knocking rapidly at the door.

“Hello…?”

“Hey, Lia… it’s Matt.”

“I know, I can smell you.”

I cursed under my breath. God, why was she such an awkward idiot when it came to her now?

“Anyway, can I come in?”

((

…. Yes.”

With my nerves on edge, I walked inside and stayed in the doorway. Standing in the room where she spent her time was difficult. Her scent was overpowering.

“I… was wondering if you wanted to hang out,” I muttered.

“You want to hang out?” Lia asked, confused.

I sighed. “Okay, let me just get straight to the point. The guys were talking and we want to spend some one-on-one time with you. Colby made reservations and bought movie tickets for us, figuring I would chicken out.”

The look on Lia’s face shifted from one of uncertainty and confusion to one of amusement.

“You and I are both in agreement about this then.”

I sighed again. “Is that a yes or a no, Lia?”

“I’ll go since you asked so bluntly.”

She made a point of not saying that I asked nicely, but she was right. I hadn’t exactly been that nice with my questions. Instead, I was rather blunt and curt, wanting to get straight to the point. However, that’s what I wanted to do!

It was easier to just tell her everything that was going on in my mind because beating around the bush was never a clever idea. “Okay so let’s leave around 5:00 pm tonight,” I told her. “We’ll take my car… if that’s all right.”

“It is.”

I left, closing the door behind me. My heart was beating loudly in my chest, making me want to go back there and tell her that this was a bad idea.

But my friends were never going to let me live it down. Rain would start to cry. Then Rain was going to cry while Colby was there just trying to figure out the best way to rectify this situation between us. I didn’t even want to think about what Jesse would do. He would just stare at me in his usually creepy manner.

***

Lia

When I smelt Matt out there my blood ran cold. He kept pacing back and forth, getting closer but then his scent would start to get weaker.

What was his game? Why was he pacing in front of my door, repeatedly? I had no idea what I was going to do.

Then he knocked on my door. Begrudgingly, I let him in, and the Matt that was standing before me wasn’t the Matt I remembered. He used to be so confident, ready to tease me until I was close to tears. But besides that, he was also a confident person in general.

I wasn’t used to this side of him. It was beyond confusing.

But his offer to take me out was something I didn’t expect. It was expected that Colby would go ahead and plan it based on how he had acted since finding out the two of us were mated or rather going to be mates in the future.

That was why I said yes. Best to get it over with, anyway. I couldn’t deny the fact that I was stuck with four people who I didn’t want as my mates. There was no getting away from that.

The first person I had to talk to was Simone. She was the only person I could talk to given I didn’t have many friends.

Hey, what are you up to tonight? – S

Ugh, I have a date with Matt. – L

“Why are you acting so weird with me lately?”

He nearly slammed on the breaks. “What?” Matt croaked out.

“You’ve been avoiding me and acting like I have the plague. It’s strange… almost as if you’re struggling with being my future mate. Shouldn’t I be the one struggling after all the bullying I’ve endured?

Everything came out all at once. Word vomit wasn’t something I could hold back but even if I wanted to… it was too late. “Because I was an asshole to treat you like that. Yeah, I did find some humor in it but that’s what makes me an asshole! Now you’re stuck being mated to us and… it’s just hard for me to wrap my mind around it.’

I blinked. “It sounds like you’re doing some self-reflecting.”

“I am… and the other guys want to make things right with you. They don’t want things to be difficult going forward because there is no changing the fact that we are mates or will be in the future.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” I whispered.

Matt stiffened. “Yeah, it’s no problem.”

The awkwardness was back but throughout the night it started to fade. He started to become more at ease with me and by the time we went to the movie, I was starting to feel comfortable with Matt.

This threw me for a loop. It wasn’t something I expected to happen and I think neither did Matt. He didn’t make any moves, obviously still having some level of denial with this whole mating thing. But so was I.

“Night,” he said after we headed back home.

I smiled nervously. “Night.”

It was good to be back in my room, but during the entire time I was with Matt this evening, I was fine. At no point did I feel uneasy or unsafe. He was good to me, something I hadn’t expected. Matt had always been one who would be a bit more aggressive with his teasing. Nothing physical, but out of all of them he would get up in my face.

It was difficult to see Matt in this light because it was not Matt I knew. But, he had talked to me, opened, and shared something I never thought he would share with me.

Simone and I texted a bit. She was thrilled that the date went well, but I don’t know if I would call it a date, no matter what Simone said.

It was… okay, no it was a date. With one of my future mates.

I needed to get used to that and wondered what the rest of the weekend held for me. A part of me was dreading it but there was also a part of me that was almost looking forward to it. It was something I wasn’t expected to feel.