Enraptured

Chapter 14

"Gaël? What are you doing here?"

A man with shaggy midnight black hair and a familiar set of grey eyes— the two key traits inherited by all the men in the Nikolaos family— stared back at me blankly, clearly not in the best mood.

When I opened my door this morning, I hadn't expected to see my younger brother standing outside my apartment. With only a five-year age gap, we never had a bad relationship, especially since he had no desire to take over the family business, but he wasn't one to visit others.

He worked as a freelance hacker who would've stayed inside his house 24/7 if it wasn't for my mother's mandatory weekly family dinners. As such, he stood just half a foot shorter than me at only 6 feet tall, with a much leaner build than my own from sitting around at his apartment all day.

"I didn't want to come, but—" Gaël was abruptly cut off when an arm was suddenly thrown around him, and a familiar brunette popped up in the doorway.

"I thought we should hang out together this weekend. You know how Gaël never leaves his room, and you never stop working, so I thought it would be good for us to go out. Halloween just passed, so they should be decorating downtown with thanksgivie stuff, " exclaimed an overly energetic Sebastian.

I gingerly slipped his thermos out of his hand, wincing from being punched in the face with a ridiculously strong pumpkin spice aroma. "And, you're not  allowed to have any more sugar for the rest of the morning."

He pouted and dragged my brother into my apartment, completely uninvited, as if it was his own home. "Then see it as a conciliation present after how rudely you blew up at me."

I arched an eyebrow in question. I thought that he had already forgiven me after I dropped off some sweets at his office last week.

Ignoring my questioning look, Sebastian continued, "There's a farmer's market popping up downtown with all sorts of specialty items. Perfect time for both you and your brother to do some grocery shopping."

"I don't have time to—"

"I could just order—"

Walking across my apartment as if he owned it, Sebastian cut both of us off with a sharp glare, "You guys live as if you are still in college, ordering out all the time. It's honestly shameless and quite unhealthy. I don't know how your mother deals with the two of you."

He turned away with a swish and started rummaging through my closet.

I stared at him in confusion, wondering why a fully-grown man was digging through my clothes regardless of whether or not he was my closest friend.

Finally escaping from Sebastian's grasp, Gaël tiredly slumped onto my sofa, grumbling, "Don't even bother stopping him. He did the same thing to me this morning."

I sighed as a clump of clothes was thrown onto my chest. Catching what appeared to be a thin beige sweater with some black pants, I walked into my bathroom to change, figuring that there was no point in arguing with Sebastian about clothes.

He was... how do you say... a bit more on the feminine side of things in the sense that he liked playing dress-up and finding picturesque sweet shops.

Once I exited the bathroom, he tossed a thick coat toward me and started dragging both my brother and me out of the apartment, barely giving me enough time to lock up my place. He brought us down to his car, which was haphazardly parked in a fire lane.

After my brother and I reluctantly got into his car, he zoomed out away from the building, braking and accelerating with jerk movements all the way up to downtown NYC. By the time we arrived at the farmer's market that he spoke of before, Gaël was nearly about to puke in the back of his car. Luckily, he managed to at least make it to a trash can before emptying out his stomach, making Sebastian wince at the sound of vomiting.