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Voicemail box for: Brienne Tarth
You have 1 new message. Last message sent Saturday at 2:38am.
Brienne. I can’t just not call you, alright? Tonight was . . . just – call me.
***
Jaime only had to slam his door for his little brother to materialize beside the SUV, disapproval overwhelmed by the shit-eating grin on his face.
“How’d you find out?”
“Jaime.” Tyrion sometimes got that way, like he was the older brother, wise and world-weary. “You took her to the mall.”
“Prom,” Jaime defended, though it had turned out to be the sorriest excuse he’d ever come up with.
“Taena Merryweather,” Tyrion countered.
Right. The sophomore.
Jaime bit back a groan. “She saw us?”
You’re losing your touch, Lannister.
But it had been hard to keep an eye on his peripherals when he was buried between Brienne and a cement wall, and she was so eager to learn how to kiss.
“Everyone saw you,” Tyrion clarified, crossing his arms in a way that drew attention to his tux. “This isn’t some courtly tête-à-tête from Arthurian legend. High school has Instagram.”
Any hope he’d been harboring about Brienne cooling down—or maybe him wearing her down—was quickly and ruthlessly dashed. His face must have emoted more than usual, because Tyrion’s expression softened to commiseration.
Jaime dug into his pocket, unable to help himself. His dad wouldn’t let him scrub out his twitter, some crap about fans and networking and recruiting tactics, but he’d disabled phone updates within an hour of the first #scandal. It took him a minute to reload the app, to scroll through the explosion of reaction tweets to the original pic.
There they were, haloed in a streetlight, set off against shadows. Brienne’s face was endearingly red as her mouth prodded his, and any moron could see his eyes half-open, captivated.
How the hell he’d missed the small, dark underclassman was beyond him. She’d obviously gotten close enough to snap a high def cover photo.
For half a second, Jaime was glad Brienne was long gone. Confessing every dumb schmuck thought he’d ever had about her wouldn’t be enough to salvage that situation.
A shudder reverberated through him, and Jaime refocused on the short teen in front of him.
“So minion #1 Instagrammed and Cersei –“
Tyrion shook his head. Jaime cut the words with the straight line of his mouth and let his brother talk.
“It was Margaery, actually.”
Satisfaction flashed hot, echoing some visceral feeling that had arisen when Loras Tyrell had poked his head through the curtains of Brienne’s window. Pleasure was not his normal reaction to Loras Tyrell.
She told her friends.
Some friends.
“Miss Tyrell dropped that bomb in a well-executed coup de grace.” Tyrion’s expression was musing, not quite impressed. His Tywin Lannister was showing. “Cersei was getting desperate, and the new queen put our dear sister out of her public misery.”
“And into mine,” Jaime snapped, but he knew it was pointless. He should probably be grateful that Margaery had banished Cersei before Taena’s blast hit. He shuddered to think of what damage his stepsis might have done with that picture and a willing audience.
A crash echoed from the house, and Jaime’s gaze shot to the pulled curtains beyond Cersei’s terrace.
“Why is Cersei throwing things?”
Tyrion turned, strolling smugly up the drive, and Jaime followed, hitting the lock button on his keys with more force than was necessary.
“Tyrion,” he warned. He was not in the mood for his family’s games.
“I disrupted the wi-fi and disabled her 4G,” Tyrion was aiming for offhand, but he couldn’t smother the grin he aimed up at his brother.
Sometimes Jaime really didn’t deserve him.
“That won’t keep her offline long.”
“Then we’ll find a new approach,” Tyrion assured him as they reached the house. “There’s two of us and one of her, and you have better motivation.”
Brienne flashed before his eyes, biting her smile as her eyes twinkled impossibly blue under the porch light. She had leaned close to snag the Seven Kingdoms bag from his busted hand, and it had taken him an extra second to fumble to the house key with her warm against his arm, totally clueless about what she was doing to him.
Jamie set his face in a grim mask.
“Fuck right I do.”
***
Voicemail box for: Brienne Tarth
You have 4 new messages. Last message sent Sunday at 9:52am.
Will you stop being a mule for a second and listen? I know you don’t want to hear it, but Cersei’s on the warpath. I can’t keep throwing Tyrion at her, he’s as small as you are tall and almost as –
***
Lance cowered on the way out, whimpering like Jaime might hit him. Jaime might. His phone had buzzed 7 new notifications since his cousin had fled the succubus’s lair.
“You’re going to hell for this,” Jaime informed him. A growing sense of impotence itched beneath his calm indifference, but Jaime refused to let it take him.
“I’m sorry, Jaime,” Lance clutched his tech bag close to his chest and edged toward the door. He was probably more worried about that damn computer than his own safety. “You know how it is.”
He did. Lance had taught him that.
“Get out of here,” he commanded.
Lance obeyed, grimacing and scuttling out the patio door. A smaller figure took his place.
“Your cousin is a tech-head,” Tyrion was not pleased to admit that the kid had outsmarted him. “He’s blocked her in somehow.”
Jaime wasn’t pleased to hear it.
“Can’t you call someone?”
“Cersei called Dad.”
Well so much for bribing the cable company.
“All we’ve got is ground interference?”
That wasn’t promising.
“You intercepted Little Oz,” his brother pointed out.
“Lance got in,” Jaime said sourly, but he was already moving. “Keep a line on the front gate. I’ll block the stairs.”
Tyrion tottered resolutely toward the large bay windows overlooking the drive, and Jaime tried not to wince. He’d feel so much better about their chances if Brienne were around to bolster their defense.
***
Voicemail box for: Brienne Tarth
You have 7 new messages. Last message sent Sunday at 7:17pm.
Get your head outta your ass and pick up the damn phone. This is serious. You can’t ignore me forever. I need you –
***
“Where’s your sister?” were the first words out of Tywin Lannister’s mouth when he strolled in Sunday evening, briefcase in hand and his wife at his side. “We’re having a family conference.”
Jaime’s stepfather looked distinctly unimpressed as Tyrion explained that Cersei had locked herself in her bedroom after losing prom court and hadn’t been seen since.
“If she can’t learn to win she needs to accept failure quietly,” he said, flickering a glance at the ceiling, where angry faux-rock drilled through several walls to hit them in a harsh whisper. “Tyrion, go and fetch her.”
Tyrion grunted, probably out of concern for life and limb, but he didn’t question the command. The head of Lannister & Lannister disappeared into his office as his youngest slowly climbed the grand staircase to face the loathsome task.
Joanna hung her jacket inside the armoire. Her purse found its way into a hidden drawer, and she smoothed her skirt, glancing through the open frame of the entertainment room. Her lips pursed. Two fallen controllers lay abandoned, one kicked haphazardly under the coffee table, its cord snarled around a leg. Jaime had muted the TV when Brienne was otherwise occupied, but he hadn’t been back to turn it off; the screen still flashed game over over two defeated warriors.
“If you treat her like you treat my house, you won’t last until graduation.”
He snorted at the routine chiding. His mom glanced at him, and just like that Jaime felt like a kid trying to hide a sprained thumb.
“That bad?”
“Cersei walked in. Brienne bolted.” He tried to stay detached, but he knew his mom heard the growl buried in a catch in his throat. “If you thought cotillion practice was rough . . .” he lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
His mom sighed. She reached a hand to his cheek, gliding up to sift her fingers through his hair. The scrape of her manicure on his scalp felt familiar, sloughing the ache from his temple and into air.
Jaime grit his teeth and closed his eyes.
“What do you do when you’re not the problem?”
“Wait her out or walk away.”
Footsteps thudded overhead. His mom pulled her fingers free with a sharp, fond tug that brought him back to the same time last night, watching Brienne laugh while two fake knights bested each other with blades and footwork.
Tyrion descended, looking dour.
“She’s coming,” he announced, stalking past them into the sitting room and depositing himself on a couch outside of their father’s office.
Jaime followed before Cersei could appear, preferring not to ruin the weekend by smacking his stepsister where her father could see. But when his mom advised, “Defeat is a new perspective and a challenge to do better,” he knew she wasn’t just talking to Cersei.
***
Voicemail box for: Brienne Tarth
You have 11 new messages. Last message sent Monday at 6:57am.
Look, I won’t bug you today. But either Cersei’s more important than me or she isn’t. Brienne. Let me know.
***
The gift shop bag tipped over, spilling a pair of metallic plastic swords across his bedroom floor. Jaime stepped over them and kept walking.
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Voicemail box for: Brienne Tarth
You have no new messages. Press end to return to mailbox.
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