I don’t want new.

“Does this have anything to do with my sister?” Sophie asked, turning to face him. “Is this like some new level of psychotic in the little war you two kids won’t let go of?”

Will didn’t answer. Didn’t have to.

Sophie groaned. “Oh God, it is about Brynn. I should have known when you started asking so many questions about where she lived. And here I thought it was just a little good old-fashioned one-upmanship, but it’s something more, isn’t it?”

“You act like I’m out to ruin her life,” Will grumbled. Sophie’s tone didn’t bode well for him. Sophie and Brynn were close. If Soph thought Brynn didn’t want him around, this was going to be one painful uphill battle.

“I know you guys get some sort of perverse enjoyment out of the whole fighting-like-cats-and-dogs thing,” Sophie said. “But isn’t it getting a little…old?”

For a second Will wanted to tell Sophie everything. About that night. About his agenda. About how seeing Brynn again made him feel like a pathetic boy trying to get the attention of the girl he liked by pulling her hair.

But he couldn’t risk that Sophie would tell all to her sister and scare Brynn off before he even had a chance.

“She’s happy, you know,” Sophie said softly.

Of all the things that Sophie could have said, that, quite possibly, was the worst.

What if he was wrong? What if his presence here did nothing but make her miserable? He wanted to shake her up and challenge her, not ruin her life.

“Tell me about this James guy,” Will said, trying to keep his tone indifferent.

Sophie looked at him closely. “I thought I already did. In fact, I distinctly remember giving you the full scoop on the phone the other day.”

“You gave me the résumé version,” Will said, turning and leaning against the window. “I want the paparazzi version. This guy could be my neighbor one day soon.”

“I doubt that,” Sophie muttered, settling onto one of the larger moving boxes.

“Oh?” Will asked. Casually. Too casually. “You don’t think he’s ‘the one’ or whatever you women call it?”

Sophie shrugged. “On paper, they make sense. And God knows my mother’s done enough interrogating of the guy to determine that he definitely wants a family someday. So he and Brynn are pretty much perfectly aligned right down to their hourly to-do lists.”

“But…?” Will prompted.

“There’s something missing,” Sophie mused.

“You always think that about Brynn’s boyfriends,” Will said. Not that he ever disagreed with Sophie.

“That’s because she keeps choosing the wrong ones,” Sophie said, waving her wineglass around wildly. “She picks these perfect guys that are mirror images of herself. And she wonders why she gets bored.”

“She said that? That she’s bored?” Will asked.

“Well, no,” Sophie admitted. “Admitting boredom would be akin to admitting mistake, and that would send her over the edge. But it’s obvious that there’s no spark.”

“Maybe Brynn doesn’t want spark.”

“That’s just the problem. She needs it.”

He wanted to ask more questions.

How many guys had Brynn seen since he’d left?

How many had she slept with?

Did she ever mention him?

But Sophie was already looking at him suspiciously.

“Want pizza?” he asked, wanting to distract her.

“I had a salad for dinner.”

“So?” he asked, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.

“So of course I want pizza,” Sophie said, heading into the kitchen, presumably for more wine. “Hey, you want me to start on this pile of boxes here?”

Naturally, she’d spotted the breakable items. “Nope, I want to finish up in here first,” he called. “Bring that bottle with you.”

“What’s with the cookies?” Sophie asked, returning to the room just as he finished ordering the pizza.

“What?”

“The cookies on the counter,” she said, gesturing with the bottle. “They’re awesome.”

“Brynn brought them over. She made a big show about them being homemade, but I call bullshit.”

“Yeah, those are definitely from Speciality’s,” Sophie said with a dreamy look. Then her eyes narrowed on him. “So Brynn knows you’re here, huh? I bet she shat a brick when she saw you.”

Will gave a wry smile. “Let’s just say she needed a tranquilizer. She thinks I’m here to make her life miserable.”

“Well, aren’t you?” Sophie asked.

Will was taken aback by the seriousness in his best friend’s tone. He guessed he’d always known on some level that Brynn came first in Sophie’s life. Sibling relationships were like that…not that he had any personal experience.

But it still chafed that she was so sure that he had nothing to offer other than annoyance. Not that he’d given either woman reason to think otherwise. For as long as he could remember, it had been him vs. Brynn, with Sophie doing her best to play mediator without taking sides.

The sad part was, he couldn’t even really remember when the war had started. He knew from Brynn’s perspective it had started when he, as a hotshot, cocky high school junior, had snagged her bra from her cheerleading bag and put it up on the flagpole on a dare.

She had responded like a cat in a bath. And then, just because she’d become a pro at ignoring his very existence, he’d gone for the one thing that had gotten a rise out of her: her baby sister.

But Sophie had turned out to be, well…Sophie, which had turned into perhaps the one lasting platonic friendship in all of history between a freshman girl and senior boy. But despite his lasting friendship with Sophie over the years, and his eventual welcome into the Dalton family, Brynn and Will had never grown out of their roles as childhood adversaries.

He supposed he couldn’t really blame Sophie for assuming he was here to cause trouble. But if his best friend didn’t believe he might have good intentions, how the hell was he supposed to convince his worst enemy?

More disgruntled than he cared to let on, Will grumpily set Sophie back to work on unpacking his DVD collection. He’d have to rearrange everything later, but at least the monotonous task of lining them up by name and by year would keep her from rattling on about Brynn.

An hour later they were chewing on messy, cheesy pepperoni pizza, and Will became increasingly aware that Sophie’s attention was on him, and not the pizza.

Hardly typical behavior for his best friend.

He tried not to look at her. Not only because he knew the woman could read him like a book, but when she was serious like this, it spooked him how much she looked like Brynn. Same long blonde hair, same wide-set eyes, same mouth…although Sophie’s mouth was invariably a lot more smiley than Brynn’s.

“You know that I know, right?” she said, breaking the strained silence.

He irritably set his empty plate aside and walked over to one of the half-unpacked boxes. “Know what?” he asked, setting a picture of his parents on the shelf.

“About you. And Brynn.”

His fingers faltered for a moment on the frame, and he felt a burst of hope. Brynn had sworn him to secrecy on their one night together, but if she’d confided in Sophie about it, maybe she wasn’t as ashamed of the encounter as she let on.

“What do you mean?” he asked casually.

“You’re in love with her.”

His hand jerked, and the picture shattered on the floor, but neither of them moved to pick up the broken glass.

He hadn’t expected her to know that.

A million denials ran through his head, but he couldn’t bring himself to utter them. Lying to his best friend by omission was one thing. Lying straight to her face felt wrong.

“Does Brynn know?” he asked finally, hating that his voice sounded like a nervous kid before asking someone to prom.

“No,” Sophie said softly. “I think she’s still as convinced as everyone else that you hate her guts.”