Poaching His Heart

The guy I wanted and the girl my brother wanted were always together. We'd gotten into the same college, and on our first day there we each fell for someone at first sight.

We figured we had come across a couple, so we went after them, each of us poaching harder than the other. In the end we both surrendered.

But not long after we quit, that gorgeous pair showed up at our door together: "So you two have been using my cousin and me for entertainment?" Chapter 1 My brother and I are boygirl twins.

We're about equally smart, and even our SAT scores came out close. So, predictably, we ended up admitted to the same college. The day we moved into the dorms, the weather was good.

Bright sun, not a cloud. A whole stream of people was coming toward us, and two of them stood out. Drop them in a crowd and you'd still pick them out in a second.

My brother and I got hit by the view at the exact same moment. They came closer, and their faces got clearer.

The guy had a pair of soulful eyes, sharp features, and presence for days. The girl needed even less explaining.

Just as tall, delicate features, long straight black hair, walking like she owned the place.

Both of them carried the kind of grownup ease that said they were a good bit older than us and playing in a completely different league. "Damn, the faces on those two…" I didn't snap out of it until they'd already walked past.

I turned to check on my brother. Right. Still gone. "Dominique, do you believe in love at first sight?" He nudged me.

I clicked my tongue. "I believe in lust at first sight." "This is genuinely different.

I have a crush." I poured cold water on it without a second thought. "Did you not see the hot guy next to her?

That could be her boyfriend." My brother said, "There was a guy next to her?" … So his eyes had room for the crush and nothing else. "There was, and he's a lot hotter than you." My brother scoffed. "Your taste has always been questionable." "Beckett Moreau, we may be twins, but it is a universally acknowledged fact that I'm betterlooking than you and I have better taste." "Dominique, blind confidence is a medical condition." "You're the medical condition!" … I could not stand my brother. "Don't tell anyone at school you're my sister.

I can't take the embarrassment." ? That was my line. Movein was followed by one Welcome Week event after another, all of them out under a blazing sun.

In under two weeks I went a full shade darker. … One day my brother came running over, thrilled, to share. "Dominique, remember that girl we saw on movein day?" "What about her?" "She's in my major.

She's a junior." I still didn't see where this was going. "It's fate! Your brother and her! I'm going after her!" ? My eyes went huge. "Are you insane, Beckett?

You're going to be the other guy?" He smacked the back of my head. "Quit making things up." "I asked around. She's currently single." Currently.

I gave my brother a long look until his face started to lose some of its confidence. "Nobody knew what she is to the guy she was walking with that day.

But those two are kind of famous, and people see them together sometimes." According to my brother's grapevine, both of them were currently single.

Chapter 2 The most widely circulated version was that the two of them were talking but hadn't put a label on it. If they weren't together, other people had a shot.

That didn't count as cutting in. So what if they were talking? So what if it was mutual? My brother has no morals anyway. The man never wastes time. He already had her number.

Her name was Verity Steadman. I stayed out of my brother's pursuit. He wasn't a child. College life. Lots going on.

Before the freshman talent show that closed out Welcome Week, my brother came to recruit me for his act. He wanted to do hiphop. "Dress kind of neutral, wear a hat.

Your hair isn't that long. Odds are nobody out there will even clock you as a girl.

Plus you're shorter and skinnier than me, so you'll make me look tall and handsome." … I was unilaterally terminating this sibling relationship.

Who peacocks for a girl and drafts his own sister as the sucker? In the end he paid me fifty dollars to be the backup that made him look good.

Unfortunately, I was too obviously feminine.

No matter how neutral the outfit, you could tell I was a girl, so my brother and I both walked away with first dibs on the dating pool for the next four years.

Welcome Week ended and classes started. The sky seemed to be doing it on purpose.

All through Welcome Week we prayed for rain and got nothing but glaring sun, and the day it ended it rained three days straight. That weekend I went to the library.

It was fine when I left. Then I looked up around dinnertime and it was coming down in sheets. … No umbrella. So I waited it out in the library doorway with everybody else.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of my brother's crush. Verity was in a long white dress that day, still radiating that same grownwoman energy.

I was bored, so I texted my brother and mentioned it in passing. He answered instantly. [Does she not have an umbrella? I'll go get her!] ?

I raised a question. [Beckett Moreau, is there any chance your beloved sister is also stuck at the library?] Then he Venmo'd me fifty dollars. [Your brother only has one umbrella.

Be strong.] Fine. I accepted the payment promptly and forgave him for putting a girl before his sister.

The rain thinned out, and before my brother showed up I saw another figure walking over under an umbrella.

Deepset eyes, a high bridge to his nose, a build and a bearing that set him apart from everyone else, and just like that I remembered exactly how stunned I'd been the first time. … Turned out my own moral compass wasn't much better.

Goodlooking people naturally pull the eye. I watched him pause for a beat, then head straight toward the girl in the white dress. What a wellmatched pair.

Then somebody cut in out of nowhere.

A figure under a black umbrella swept past him and reached the girl in the white dress first. "Verity, what are the odds!" I heard my brother's voice, sweet enough to rot teeth and so slick it practically smoked. "Where are you headed?

Let me take you!" Through the rain and the chatter around me, I heard Verity's voice for the first time. "Don't trouble yourself, I—" Cool and gentle at once.

Forget my brother, I was halfway in love myself. My brother said something I couldn't hear, and just like that he'd claimed the privilege of getting her home.

He never once glanced my way, as if a whole entire sister weren't standing right there.

And the other figure, umbrella up, two steps from the library stairs, just stood there quietly and watched them go.

Chapter 3 Maybe I'd already decided what I was going to see, but I could have sworn I read a little loneliness on that superior face.

The person he liked got intercepted and he didn't move? And Verity hadn't seemed to see him either. Had they had a fight?

In which case my brother had genuinely moved in on a weak moment. Shameless. I stared at that face for a few seconds straight.

I don't know what he thought he was doing being that goodlooking, but it set off something possessive in me. He hit every single one of my buttons.

It would've been even better if he weren't already spoken for. A man who isn't mine has no business being that hot. Suddenly I really wanted my brother to succeed.

The man at the bottom of the stairs clearly hadn't been coming to the library. He stood there a moment, then turned to go.

In that moment, I'll admit it: a pretty face makes people impulsive. My body moved faster than my brain.

The second he turned, I shot through the rain and ducked under his umbrella. "Sorry, Asher, I don't have an umbrella and I really need to get back to my dorm.

Could I trouble you to walk me?" I tipped my head back and smiled up at a guy who had a good half a head on me, my voice carrying exactly the right amount of shyness and urgency.

I'm very pretty. My brother is probably the only person on earth who thinks otherwise.

So in a situation like this, unless he had somewhere urgent to be, odds were he wasn't going to say no.

Under the narrow umbrella, rain drumming on the canopy, noise all around us, I ran straight into those soulful eyes. "Do we know each other?" he asked. "Asher, I know you.

You don't know me." I took the opening to introduce myself. "Asher, hi, I'm Dominique Moreau, freshman, finance major." My brother was serious about going after someone.

Of course he'd done his homework. Know your enemy before you go to war. Which includes the romantic rival.

Asher Conley heard that and looked down at me again. "Hi." "Let's go." Very kind, but completely uninterested in who the hell I was. "Asher, were you on your way to the library to study?" I said, reaching for a topic. "Passing by." Passing by as in coming to pick up the girl he was talking to, only to get cut off?

Tragic. Unfortunately my morals are bad. "Asher, I heard you're a French major. Is French hard to learn?

If I wanted to try, could you recommend a beginner book or a class?" "Asher, is there anything fun to do around campus?" … I'm very good at opening a conversation.

I worked his name into every sentence I said. Even if he had no idea who I was, I could say his name enough times to talk a stranger into being someone I knew.

Asher probably wasn't used to anyone being that instantly familiar, but it was raining, and we were under the same umbrella, standing close. He smelled faintly good.

So he knew how to put himself together. I approved. Then I remembered he'd very likely done all that peacocking for the girl he liked, and I couldn't help sighing.

By comparison, my brother's competitiveness was really… "Here you are." Asher stopped. I was in no hurry to leave his umbrella. I beamed up at him. "Asher, thank you.

Can I get your number? So I can ask you things when I don't understand something?" Asher did not spare my feelings at all. "No need.

If you have questions, ask the upperclassmen in your own major." Then he left. Now that is a flower you don't get to pick. Clearly hard to catch.

It woke up every competitive instinct I had. Chapter 4 Asher might have been aloof, but getting his number wasn't hard. He was captain of the school debate team.

And they were recruiting. On the day of tryouts I sat down in front of a row of veteran members and smiled at Asher, who was sitting in the middle