“I’m not giving you a hundred and thirty dollars,” Spencer repeated. He’d already covered all Caleb’s legal fees and was paying a ridiculous amount every day for that ankle monitor—not to mention his brother’s food, utilities, and the literal roof over his head. He had yet to receive so much as a thanks for any of it.

“Then you’d better choose an exercise,” Caleb said. “You made me do a hundred and twenty crunches last week when one of my socks barely touched your side. Fair’s fair.”

Spencer threw up his hands. “Fine. I’ll do the push-ups.”

“Excellent choice.” Caleb lowered himself to the grass and wrapped a casual arm around Caesar. The bulldog settled in to watch the spectacle with his favorite Wilson brother. “I’ll keep count. On your mark, get set, go!”

Spencer didn’t go on his brother’s command. He didn’t even go in the next twenty seconds. He took a moment to undo the top few buttons of his shirt and roll up his sleeves, not to mention kick off his shoes. He always dressed comfortably for his veterinary work, but not that comfortably. He wasn’t going to ruin his favorite brogues just because Caleb was a cheating bastard.

It was a stupid game, and he was even stupider for playing it, but rules were rules. The only way the two of them could coexist inside a house was by dividing it in half—in literal half—and strictly enforcing the boundary. They could each stay on their side of the house and the yard, but there was no crossing over the line.

Spencer got into position and started in on his one hundred and thirty push-ups. After ten, he fell into a fairly good rhythm. Twenty, and the familiar strain of exertion started creeping in. Thirty, and he let himself follow the pattern of Caleb’s counting.

He’d never admit it to his brother, but it felt good—the monotony of the exercise and the cadence of Caleb’s voice, this game they’d been playing in some form or another since they were kids. It had started out innocently enough, a system of retribution for when one of them lost a dare or a game of Monopoly. The loser had a choice: pay a quarter or do five push-ups. At age six, both of those had seemed unsurmountable feats, especially since they increased with each subsequent loss. Two quarters or ten push-ups. A dollar or twenty push-ups.

As they’d gotten older, the stakes had changed—mostly in terms of monetary compensation, since there was a limit to how many repetitive exercises a body could feasibly do. A few more weeks of living like this, and there was a good chance one of them would either end up ripped as all get-out or broke.