August 19th 2015
“Hang out?” Brayden asks.
I still can’t believe I’m doing this, calling him.
“Yeah, hang out. Not sex.” There’s silence, and I wonder if the connection was lost. “Hello?”
“I’m heading down. Do you want to watch a movie? Play a game? I can bring my PS4.” The eagerness in his voice catches me off guard. “We could go to Dave and Busters, or maybe Kings Island.”
My heart hammers against my ribs. Why did I think this was a good idea?
“Whoa, slow down there, sparky.” The crinkling on the other end of the phone stops. “Just come home, we’ll figure it out when you get here.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
I don’t get another word out before he hangs up and reality settles in. He’s coming over. Just me and him. Alone.
My hands begin to shake and I run upstairs. The pajamas I’m still wearing will not do. Hell, the most I’ve accomplished today is breakfast and brushing my teeth.
After stripping out of my clothes, I jump into the shower for a quick hose down. Just because I said no sex doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be at least presentable, is the lie I tell myself twenty minutes later as I work on my makeup.
There’s a cute tank top hanging in my closet that catches my eye. I slip it on, leaving my bra off, since we’re just going to be hanging out. The sight of my nipples poking at the fabric makes my pussy clench with visions of Brayden’s fingers pinching them.
More of him yanking the neckline down, exposing it before attacking it, devouring my skin as he strips us both, ready to fill me.
This freaking Brayden fever is going to kill me.
Even telling myself I don’t care what he thinks, my actions tell the truth—I want him to want me.
I want him as consumed with the same thoughts I’m having simply so that I’m not the only one suffering.
A car door slamming as I pull my shorts up surprises me and I glance at the clock. Time has flown by. I take a few deep breaths and head down the stairs, my feet hitting the landing at the same time the front door opens.
As soon as he steps through his lips are on mine and I have to force myself to push him back. Which really is a hard thing to do, especially when all I want is him all over me, around me. But I set the terms of today, and I have to stick by them.
“I said no sex.”
He smirks at me, almost radiating with happiness, practically bouncing with excitement. “That was just a hello kiss.”
I roll my eyes at him, trying to hide how much it affected me, how much I want more. “Whatever.”
He swings his arm around my shoulder, pulling me toward the basement. “Come on, brat. Time for a lesson in defeat.”
Still smiling, happier than I’ve seen him in years. It’s strange. That weird déjà vu that only comes with knowing someone for far too long, and the changes that time brings to a relationship.
I pop my elbow into his ribs. “Jerk face.”
It’s reminiscent of an easier time, and the simple teasing calms my nerves. I missed this, as much as I hate to admit it.
The basement is dark and with the house empty, it’s a dangerous place to be. But instead of coming onto me, trying to touch me, kiss me, Brayden opens up a cabinet by the TV and pulls out one of the gaming consoles.
He’s different. Pure happiness and calm. A lot like he was years ago.
It’s a side of him I haven’t seen in a long time. The usually overpowering sexual presence replaced with a childlike playfulness.
Maybe all the sex the other day has had a calming effect on him. No longer the tortured guy forcing himself to stay away from me. A relief from his soul.
Not that it’s not there. Just like with me, the weight is always pressing down, twisting and pulling. Old battle wounds that refuse to heal.
His smile is infectious, and when he turns to me, holding up two games, I can’t help but smile back.
“Lego Batman or Mario Kart?”
I quirk my brow at him. “Going old school?”
He shrugs. “No one uses the Wii anymore.”
My lips twitch. No, Brayden doesn’t use the Wii anymore, but I’m the reigning Mario Kart champ with my friends.
“Okay, Mario.”
After sliding the disc in, he hands me a remote and plops down next to me.
“Prepare to eat my dust,” he says with a grin.
I turn back to the screen. Brayden has chosen to be Diddy Kong, while I pick my favorite girl, Baby Peach.
“Of course you’re a girl,” he says with a roll of his eyes.
“Shut your mouth. Baby Peach is awesome.” He’s not going to disrespect my girl. Especially since she’s going to kick his ass. “Do we do same teams or not?” I ask after we’ve set up our characters.
“Different. Whoever gets the most points wins and gets to pick what’s next.”
“Deal.” We shake on it, binding our friendly bet, and start.
After four races, the Blue team, my team, squeaks by with a win, but I’m twenty-five points lower in the polls.
“Best two out of three?” I ask, needing to wipe the smirk off his face and the conniving thoughts from his mind.
He glances at me, then nods. “That will give me more time to come up with something spectacular to do.”
“You’re going to say anal, aren’t you?”
He turns to me. “I thought this was a no sex day.”
Shit. Now I’m the one corrupting the situation, contaminating the purity of our day. But it’s an improbability that it could really stay that way. My skin crawls, itches with a base need. I’m high off his presence infecting every cell, simply by being near.
It’s me that will break first, and I hate that.
“Just because it’s a no sex day doesn’t mean I don’t think you’ll try something.”
“And you want to try anal?”
I squirm in my seat. “No.”
“Then why did you mention it?” he asks.
Embarrassment floods in as I silently beg him to drop it. “Because it’s something your perverted mind would come up with.”
His fingers move down my arm and I’m almost hyperventilating. “Trust me, baby, with a body like yours, I’m always thinking about every one of your holes and sticking my dick in them.”
“Such a charmer.”
“Now you have me thinking about anal,” he says, then licks his lips. “That’s your fault. Keep it up, baby, and your no sex rule is out the window when I win.”
“Who said you’re gonna win?” I ask as I pull my controller up, ready to kick his ass.
Now I need to win.
“Your funeral.”
And it was. He beat me every game, even on the areas I owned.
“Yes! Yes!” He’s bouncing around, arms open, before falling back down on the couch.
“Are you proud of yourself for beating up on a poor helpless girl?” I ask as I fold my arms in front of me.
He turns to look at me like, really?
My eyes narrow at him. “Jerk.”
He chuckles, still beaming from his victory. “Tell you what, as victor, I say we watch a movie and I’ll let you pick which one.”
“Any movie?”
“Anything.”
“It’s going to be girly,” I say and wait for a groan or some complaint, but he shrugs.
“My penance for wiping the floor with you.”
“It’s a start,” I grumble.
I get up and pluck Pride and Prejudice—the 2005 version—from the shelf. Not sure why, but I’ve been wanting to watch it lately. Maybe because the relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy reminds me a bit of me and Brayden.
When I sit back down, he throws his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in until my head is resting on his pec. I freeze for a moment, waiting for him to do more, but when he pulls back the recliner, I relax. My hand rests on his abs, and one of my legs hitches up over his.
It’s an intimate position that scares me with how comfortable and right it feels.
If we could reset the last year, this would be an everyday thing. Just chilling, wrapped up in each other. Instead, so much happened.
I’m so distracted in the what-ifs, barely paying attention to the screen, that I don’t even realize that my fingers are fisting and twisting his shirt.
We’re only about half an hour in and question after question I’ve built up for months screams at me. I have him here, all of his attention, no interruptions, no distractions but each other.
“Why did you expect to get sex on my eighteenth birthday?” I ask, needing to know the answer to the most prominent one.
“Because you were legal then,” he says without missing a beat, like it’s the most obvious answer.
It’s not the one I’m looking for.
I pull back and stare at him. “Eighteen isn’t some magical number. If it happened last summer, it wouldn’t have mattered.”
He turns to me, his jaw flexing. Talking about his feelings like this is hard for him, but I’m going to make him. He owes me.
“No, it’s not, but sometimes it’s the lie you need to believe to protect the one you want the most. To keep yourself in check. But the lie doesn’t always work.”
“Why would you have to lie to yourself?” I ask, trying to piece together what he’s saying.
He blows out a breath. “When I kissed you that first time, I wanted to do so much more, but I told myself I couldn’t. You’d just turned fifteen and I was about to be eighteen. I wanted to wait . . . for you.”
Freaking hell. It’s . . . sweet.
“Realistically, I know I wouldn’t have been able to wait nearly that long—you would have broken me down long before.”
As much as I hate to admit it, he makes sense. Now that I’m older I can see how the logistics could hold him back.
My chest clenches from the sentiment alone, because I believe him. Because he was my best friend back then. Because I was innocent and I know he always cherished me.
“Okay, I get that. Even though I wouldn’t have minded back then, I get it. I even . . . appreciate it. Why did it stop you later on?”
“Like that day when I was high?” he asks. I nod. He runs his fingers through his hair, looking away before reaching down and adjusting his junk, then looking back to me. “If Sonia hadn’t called for us, things would be different, but I don’t know for good or bad. That day, once again, I used your age, but even then I knew it was a cover.”
“For what?”
“For what I knew reality for us really was. Having you then would have complicated things for us even more. I was only home for a few weeks, then back to college.”
Back to being away from me. School called, and it’s not like he could stay behind just to go out with me, even if that was an option.
“Our age difference has fucked everything up for years. Not because of you being legal or not, but where we are in our lives.”
“And now?”
“Now it’s our time. Now, there’s nothing holding us back.”
“Except for you being my stepbrother.” Except for me keeping him at a distance.
“Words on a paper. I don’t give a shit about that anymore. It was just another stupid excuse. Another way to try to not hurt you that only ended up hurting you.”
His words stop me. “So, you did it all for me.”
He grimaces, jaw clenched. “The good, the bad, and the really ugly, and I’m not sure I can be proud of any of it.”
There is some really ugly, painful stuff that happened. Choices he made that hurt both of us. But then there’s the underlying reason why. “Yeah, you can.”
Not all of it, though.
He was a whore long before that kiss and long after. I don’t know if I’ll even understand why, but I do know it will always hurt.
I feel like telling him that’s the one thing I can never forgive him for, but I have a feeling he already knows.
“How so?” he asks.
That’s when I realize what neither of us has seen in all of this. It’s fucked up, but if he wanted to hurt me, use me, he easily could have. He could have destroyed me long ago. He could have indifference like I have with Austin and used me without remorse or feeling.
Instead he’s here, telling me how he wanted me and kept himself away. Noble intentions that crumbled what we had to the ground.
Then there’s my brother.
“Ryan hasn’t told you to stay away. As much as he’s your best friend, I know I come first. If he thought you were bad for me, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Even I can’t explain why we’re sitting here. Maybe I just missed the other connection, the one we used to have.
“He’s always the voice of reason. When he found out, which was an unfortunate public display, I was such a fucking mess. He made me wait, to help me get my emotions straightened out. To pursue you with a clear mind instead of razing my way to you.”
Sounds like him.
“Ryan pressed for it, with his fist I might add, because you’re his baby sister. You know how protective he is. If we hadn’t been at college, he’d be the cliché father figure with a shotgun, ready to shoot any male that came near you. His baby sis having sex before eighteen was unthinkable to him.”
I giggle at the image. It’s true, Ryan will always do what he thinks is best for me, just like Brayden. Only difference is that Ryan mulls over and uses his brain before acting.
“If I give up on this—give up on you, on us—I give up on any chance of ever being happy.” His head falls forward, resting against mine. “And I don’t want to live a miserable life.”
Now I’m the fucked up one.
I reach up and stroke his cheek, soothing, giving us a small taste of that link to the past, to each other.
I’m not ready to give in, to trust him, to open the locked box in my heart, but I will give in to the nostalgia that calms me. Makes me remember when I didn’t hate him.
But it also raises the question I’m afraid to ask myself—do I really hate him or am I just punishing him?
His head drops, lips pressing against mine. Light, sweet kisses. Many of them, fogging my mind. NO sex? Did I really say that?
He pulls back, only enough to detach his lips, and nuzzles my nose.
“I love you, Kira.”
For the first time I have to catch myself, stop from responding in an almost automatic response.
I’m cracking and it scares me more than anything.