Take Me 01 - Love Me

Travis walked into Janica's studio as if he owned the place. She purposefully ignored him. Which wasn't easy to do when he was hunkering over her, huge and angry.
    “Hey sis. How's it going? Since you missed dinner, I brought you a burger.”
    She didn't buy the greeting. There was nothing easy, nothing nice about it apart from the actual words.
    “I'm busy. What do you want?”
    “We need to talk.”
    Still not bothering to look up from her computer where she was double-checking orders for the month, she said, “Fine. Talk.”
    “What kind of game are you playing with my brother?”
    Knowing her own eyes were blazing now, she shot back, “You want me to draw you some dirty pictures?”
    His mouth tightened, the mouth that was so like his twin's and, yet, so completely different. Of course she saw the surface similarities between Luke and Travis, but to her, that's all they were. Surface stuff.
    She wasn't in love with Travis. She would never, ever be in love with Travis.
    But she loved Luke with every goddamned cell of her body.
    She watched Travis take a step back from her desk, walk to the window to look at the crowded city streets below.
    “You know I've always thought you were a little bit crazy, right?”
    He wasn't trying to be mean, and the truth was she didn't take offense. It was just the way she and Travis talked to each other.
    “Yup,” she agreed. “And you know I've always thought you were a little bit of an asshole, right?”
    Finally, the hint of a grin.
    “But here's the thing—I never thought you were stupid, Janica. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met. Both you and my brother have big, huge brains.”
    Her stupid heart skipped a beat at the mention of Luke, damn it.
    “So then why the hell are you acting so stupid now?”
    It killed her not to combat his awful words with worse words of her own. But, really, what was the point? Nothing Travis did or said was going to change the truth of the matter.
    Luke didn't want to love her. And she couldn't do a damn thing to change that.
    Except for stupidly, foolishly hoping that maybe, at some point in the future, he'd look at her and see everything he wasn't seeing now. Because didn't he see that loving her despite himself wasn't enough?
    “I've got a lot of work to catch up on,” she said by way of a get-the-hell-out.
    But Travis didn't get the picture. Or, maybe he did, but he didn't care one whit about what she wanted him to do.
    “We all know you're in love with him.”
    She met Luke's twin's gaze with clear, direct eyes.
    “I am. So ridiculously, pathetically in love with your brother that I can hardly believe it.” A muscle in Travis's jaw twitched in what she figured was shock and she continued with, “And trust me, he knows it.”
    After all, she'd only told him about a hundred times.
    Clearly caught off guard by her sensationally straightforward admission, Travis stopped, stared, then sat down hard on her leather couch. He shook his head, confusion taking over his face. “So then why won't you take him back?”
    It was easiest to say, “Because I'm a bitch.”
    His eyes softened. Just slightly. “You're not a bitch.”
    “But it would be easier if you thought that was the reason.”
    Not just for him, but for her too.
    “You're right,” Travis agreed. “It probably would be. But I'd rather hear the real reason.”
    She thought about it for a second. “I really don't want to have to say the words aloud to you, Travis.”
    He nodded and she thought that maybe, just maybe, he was going to go now and she would be left alone in her abject misery. Instead, he said, “All my life, until Lily came along, Luke was the most important person in the world to me. He was the only one who really knew me. But the thing is, I don't think I've ever been able to see all the way through his. I've seen him work himself into the ground, I've seen him date women who are so cold you wouldn't want to touch them with your tongue because it would stick. But I've never seen him like this, Janica. Help me help him.”
    They were more words than she'd ever heard strung together out of her brother-in-law's mouth. Now it was her turn to be stunned.
    “What makes you think I know how to help him?”
    “I can't believe I'm about to say this,” he said, looking well and truly appalled, “but on the way over here I started to see things differently. Different enough that I actually think you're perfect for him. You're not one of those