LUCAS
“Get your arm off her, or I’ll fucking break it.” He might be my cousin, but I’d never been more serious about anything in my life.
“Lucas!” Aster gasped.
But Raph . . . goddamn, he’d always been a shitty judge of when others had reached their breaking point. It was the reason he’d worn a cast on his arm our entire senior year—the year he’d started telling the girls in school that Jeff Schmidt was “rapey.” Didn’t matter that Schmidt deserved the label—at least three underclass girls claimed he’d roofied them and taken advantage of them. Anyone other than Raph would have known better than to fuck with dudes who were the size of small tanks.
And now, rather than cutting his losses when I was threatening to break his other arm, Raph pulled Em in tighter. “Take it easy, Cuz. No need to break anything. Just thanking your little lady, here.”
Emerson shrugged out from beneath Raph’s arm and gaped at him. “I hope you’re not talkin’ about me. I’m not anyone’s anything.”
The slideshow was still running, and I’d walked up on the three of them, where the lighting was dim behind Raph’s equipment. Anyone with eyes, who wasn’t completely transfixed by the slideshow, could see there was something happening back here.
Anyone . . . like one of Emerson’s brothers.
“There a problem over here?” Seth asked, poking his nose in where it really wasn’t needed.
“No!” Raph, Emerson, and I insisted at the same time.
“Go away,” Em added, sounding even more pissed at her brother for interrupting than she was at me for threatening Raph. “I got this under control. Now, get lost.”
“That’s good, then.” He turned his attention to Aster, acting like he hadn’t even known my cousin had just been pawing all over his little sister. “’Cause it was you I was hopin’ to catch a minute or two with, anyhow.”
Before responding to Em’s brother, Aster shook her head at Raph, Em, and me in disappointment. She stopped short of clucking her tongue like a kindergarten teacher. But when she looked back at Seth, a different sort of expression drifted over her face—one she’d never given me before. She practically . . . glowed. “This seems like as good a time as any.”
He held his arm out, Southern-gentleman style, and I remembered when I’d seen Seth, at his dad’s party, when he was wearing his quadruple-breasted, sister suit.
What the fuck? Since when did Aster have a thing for Seth?
I didn’t have time to ponder that before Emerson marched forward and wrenched my arm in a grip that said she wasn’t even close to finished with me. “Whatever you think’s going on, it isn’t. And now definitely isn’t the time to be having this conversation.” She dragged me away from the DJ stand and I let her, following her like a balloon on a string.
She was right, of course. I was acting like a dick, bum-rushing her like that. But the moment I’d seen Raph’s arm around her . . . on her . . . I’d seen red. Actual pain was radiating from my own jaw where I’d been clenching it so hard as I’d stalked over to break him.
Because he’d touched her.
And so what if he had? It wasn’t like he’d been fondling her or anything. But he may as well have been. That’s what it felt like when I’d seen his hands on her.
Why was that? What was it that had turned me full Neanderthal?
Because . . .
She’s mine.
The realization staggered me.
This wasn’t about Raph at all. This was about Em.
I was possessive because . . . she was mine. I didn’t just want her, I needed her. And the idea of anyone else laying a hand on her . . . well, just thinking about it was like a ripping my still-beating heart out.
Mine, that voice kept saying, even as I tried to convince myself that was bullshit.
Because . . . she was. I needed her.
I . . .
This time, I stopped in my tracks, struck with so much force my heart felt like it might implode.
I glanced up at an image I recognized all too well. On the screen, there was a picture of my brother and me, when Adam was in the hospital for the final time. There were tubes and monitors and electrical leads all trying to keep him tethered to this world, and everyone had accepted his fate except me.
Because I refused to admit I would lose him.
That’s how it felt with Emerson. She’d told me over and over and over again that this thing . . . with us, was coming to an end. But I refused to believe her. I refused to listen.
Because . . .
I loved her.
“What?” she turned and glowered at me, her fingers still gripping my wrist tightly. Then she looked up at the screen and mistook the look on my face for agony. I mean, yes, there was agony that came with my realization, agony of the worst kind. But it was agony I could live with. Agony I wanted to live with.
I smiled back at her. “Nothing,” I answered.