Page 16 of Misunderstood (Neighbor from Hell (YA) 1)

Ended up groaning when Jonathan reached over and stole the book out of her hands, again. “Where are you stuck?” Jonathan asked, thumbing through the book as he sent her a questioning look.

Knowing that it was pointless to argue with him at this point, Mikey reached over and flipped the pages back until she came to the spot where she was stuck and pointed at the sentence that she couldn’t make sense of. It probably didn’t help that she’d spent the last two hours sitting here, worrying about the boy that she was no longer speaking with.

She should be trying to get this book report done as soon as possible so that she could go to tryouts on Monday, but…

Mikey couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d told her this afternoon.

Blinking, Jonathan looked down at the book, then at her, and then back at the book before he asked, “You’re stuck on the first page?”

“Yes!” she bit out, ignoring the heavy sigh from behind her as Sebastian wrapped an arm around her, most likely to stop her from killing his brother.

“How long have you been reading this book?” Jonathan asked, throwing her another questioning glance that she really didn’t appreciate.

; “Two hours,” Mikey said with a look that dared him to say something about it.

“I see…” he murmured only to clear his throat and follow that up with, “Why did you pick this book?”

“I didn’t,” she bit out evenly.

“Then why are you reading it?”

“Why are you judging me?”

“Because it’s easy?”

Nodding, Mikey said, “We’re done here,” as she shoved Sebastian’s arm away, ignored his heartfelt sigh that she didn’t appreciate at the moment, crawled off the bed, making sure to knee Jonathan in the side as she went and headed for the door only to end up turning around, marching back to the bed and snatched the book that she hated more with every passing second out of Jonathan’s hands.

Once that was done, Mikey narrowed her eyes on him one last time before she remembered that she wasn’t actually supposed to be here right now and headed toward the window, grabbed her newly acquired sweatshirt and crawled out the window, allowing herself one last glare at Sebastian to let him know that this wasn’t over yet.

Not by a longshot.

*-*-*-*

“She’s going to kill you one day,” Jonathan murmured, looking thoughtful as they watched Mikey throw one last glare in his direction before disappearing out of sight.

“Probably,” Sebastian said, sighing heavily as he tossed the book that he’d already read aside and moved to climb off the bed to go after her to make sure that she got off the roof safely when his brother’s next words stopped him.

“Your therapist called today.”

“What did he say?” Sebastian asked, watching Jonathan pull his cellphone out of his pocket as he shifted to get more comfortable on the bed next to him.

“Many things,” Jonathan murmured absently as he scrolled through his phone, making Sebastian narrow his eyes on his twin brother, his fraternal twin brother, who lived to piss him off.

“You want to clear that up for me?”

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Jonathan countered, making Sebastian sigh as he shoved him off the bed.

“There’s nothing going on,” Sebastian said, ignoring his brother’s pained grunt as he climbed off the bed and headed toward the window.

“No? Then why didn’t you grab the book that Aunt Haley left on the table for you?” Jonathan asked, making everything in him go still.

“Which also makes me wonder what happened to your hand since Aunt Haley wasn’t there to ask you to do anything,” Jonathan said, sounding smug as he dragged himself back onto Sebastian’s bed with a satisfied sigh.

“What does Mom and Dad think happened?” Sebastian asked, watching as his brother made a show of getting more comfortable while he was forced to stand there waiting for his brother to answer him.

“Oh, do you mean because you weren’t where you said you were supposed to be?” Jonathan asked with a sad shake of his head, clearly enjoying tormenting him.