I can’t believe he asked Iz. It makes me want to cry again. Or kiss him. Or die of happiness. But I need to know how much time I have before being inundated by phone calls about place settings and tablecloths.
“When did you go to see them?”
“Last weekend.”
“You said you had a business meeting.”
“I did. I had the serious business of figuring out how to escape if your father decided that he actually did want to kill me.”
I laugh. “You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’m sure of you.” A flicker of pain crosses his face, and he kisses each one of my fingers before looking back up at me. “I’m just sorry it took me so long to get here.”
“We got here. That’s all that matters.”
There’s only one more burning question. The most important one.
“Do you think...would Jack be happy for us?” I ask.
Luke doesn’t stiffen the way he used to at the sound of my brother’s name, probably because we say it almost every day. We tell stories, good and bad and ugly and everything in between, and it feels a little bit less like he’s missing and a little bit more like he’s still here.
He grins and points to his right temple. “I’m pretty sure I would have gotten a matching set of punches, but yeah, I really think he’d be happy for us.”
It’s the answer I wanted to hear. I snuggle into his arms, perfectly content to stay there forever. But then I remember the rule-breaking. Letting him off the hook sets a bad precedent for marriage. He’ll win the battle eventually, but life’s a hell of a lot more fun when I make him work for it.
“You bought me jewelry. That is a massive overstepping of the no presents rule. We might need to do some renegotiation.”
His eyes, more joyful than exasperated, meet mine. “What is it that you want, my love?”
“Laundry duty should be on the table. Also, I know how much you hate the attic apartment, so I’m willing to reconsider if you’re willing to make some minor concessions...”
He rears his head back and laughs. “Unrestricted access to my body and unlimited kisses?”
“Starting right now?”
“Starting whenever you want.”
He starts to fulfill his end of the new bargain, but he stops abruptly and pulls back, his lips only inches from mine. “I didn’t know I could be this happy,” he whispers, his breath tickling my ear. “I love you, Stella bella.”
When I look at his face, so peaceful, so content, so vastly different from the face of the man I had once known, I remember the question scribbled in Sharpie on the back of the chair.
What can change the nature of a man?
The answer, complete with stupid, silly, romantic heart doodles, was staring me in the face. I dismissed it then, but I won’t make that mistake again, not when I’ve tasted true love, the shifting of molecules and souls to fill in the cracks so that you both become whole.
I grin and pull him closer. “I love you, too.”
The words are swallowed up in his spectacular kiss, but I know he hears me.
T
he throaty laughter, mixes with mischief and glee, falls heavily over the room, hanging like a fucking thundercloud.
Ah, shit. It’s happening again.
I was a crazed madman for months. Years, probably. I thought that putting an ocean between her and me would create enough distance, but I was a bloody idiot if I really believed that. There’s not a corner of the world remote enough to hide from her.
I can’t count the number of strangers with shimmering blond hair and cat-like green eyes that I’ve mauled. Can’t count the number of times that I expected the resounding clap of thunder just before I touched their flesh with my own. Can’t count the number of times that I was disappointed by the emptiness.
My eyes have finally cleared and my madness has transferred itself to new senses. Maybe I’ll hear her sexy little voice, bitching at me for something or another. That’s one of the few advantages of utter insanity.
It’s been at least a year since I’ve mowed down an anonymous stranger, but I broke that streak today, with that goth chick. She bore no resemblance to Stella, but there was some hint of otherworldly attraction in the air that I couldn’t resist, and so, like an idiot, I rammed her into the ground. The eyes were the right color, too, a rich emerald green, but everything else was wrong.
Fantastic. My fucking eyes are fixed, but my hearing and spidey senses are shot.
Peals of that same, unbridled laughter strike the air.
My world tilts. The past catches up with the present. In an instant, I know that I am not losing my goddamn mind. That laugh belongs to her and her alone.
I feel her presence, the unmistakable clenching of muscles that indicates that we’re sharing the same air, that same uncontrollable reaction that I’ve been ignoring it for years.
Jack, normally genial and laughing, turned into a monster the instant any guy gave his baby sister a sidelong look. Giving in to my desire would have meant losing my best friend and losing the only family I ever had. If it hadn’t meant losing her, too, I would have capitulated ages ago.
Base human instinct can only be repressed for so long.
She’s here. I know she’s here.
“Luke. I need a drink. Can you be a doll and go to the bar for me?” a voice whines.
Stella’s never whined in her life, except when I’m being my most asshole-like self and taunting her.
I had forgotten Nicole entirely. I’d like to continue to forget her, but my arm is caught in a bony grip. It disgusts me to give into her pout, but I need an escape.
“Yeah. I’ll be right back.” Probably not.
Before I can scour the crowd for any sign of Stella, Nicole catches my hand again. I whip around and see a tall, good-looking guy putting some serious moves on her. Good on him.
Nicole thrusts a little bag into my hands. “Here. Hold this for me.”
She says it with the confidence of a beautiful woman who’s never known rejection. Even though we just met a couple of days ago, I know all of her tricks. I’ve been with dozens of Nicoles over the past couple of years. I hate myself for it, but I can’t seem to stop.
Sex magnifies the pain, and a perverse part of me wants that. Needs it. It’s no less than I deserve. I can almost see Caroline’s little pity-filled smile, the one that says, “I know exactly what you’re doing, Luke, and you and I both know it’s never going to work.”
It’s usually not a problem. I can silence her voice, unlike her daughter’s.
I start to shove the bag back into Nicole’s hands, fully intending on accompanying the gesture with a snarky comment, but I freeze.
There’s a flash of light, and my heart implodes.
This was inevitable. The universe was going to align itself for us sooner or later. It doesn’t change the fact that I could never have been prepared for the reality of her.
Green cat eyes peek out from skin the color of cream mixed with honey, but my eyes slide lower, to red lips made for all kinds of things that I should not be thinking about because she’s practically my little sister, even though I haven’t had a brotherly thought about her in more than five years. Shit. I look at the lines of the green and gold dress, taking in the curves hidden below the mesh-like fabric. Part of me wants to scream at her for wearing the dress in public. A bigger part of me wants to rip it from her body, the rest of the crowd be damned.
Her expression is flickering from amused to serious to laughing and back again. I follow her gaze and realize that she’s talking to someone in the crows. Talking without words is just one of her innumerable talents, but it’s one that I haven’t thought about in a while. My physical response is immediate and undeniable.
The shimmering blond hair is gone, replaced by jet black waves that don’t quite line up with my fantasies. It doesn’t matter. She looks so incredibly beautiful, and so incredibly fragile, that I can’t take it. I have to touch her. I don’t think she knows that I’m here, don’t think that she felt that same jolt.
Desire is my burden alone, then.
I hand the bag back to Nicole. “No.”
Stella’s body shakes with the effort of taking a breath. If I were a better man, I would leave right now, but I’m not a better man. I’m so fucking tired of fighting this.
The stormy sea in her eyes knocks me back to earth. She’s not the least bit surprised to see me. If anything, she’s pissed.
The goth chick in the hallway. It was her, and she didn’t say a word.
Her body is readying itself for flight. Nice try, but I don’t fucking think so.
I’m pissed, too, and from experience, I know that repressed heat turns into combat. We haven’t had a conversation that didn’t end in a fight in years, not since I realized that I was so in love with her that I couldn’t see straight.
“Come. Dance with me.” I sound like an overbearing jackass. I try again, my voice shaking with the effort of maintaining control. “Come.”
Her eyes move back and forth between the girl in the crowd and my hand on her arm, but eventually, I feel her body surrender. I curl my fingers into her skin.
I don’t trust myself to speak to her, because if this is all I get, I’m going to need to relive it for years. It’s not a dream, because dreams are phantoms, and her skin, trembling and soft and damp, can only be real.
Dancing seems like a truly terrible plan, but I can’t think of another option. I seek a space in the crowd, a place away from prying eyes. When I find it, I hesitate for a fleeting second, and then I draw her into my body and try not to crush her with my unchecked need.
She’s tinier than I remembered, and the dress reveals too much skin. I will not touch her flesh. I won’t do it. I slide my fingers up and down the dress, touching every inch of fabric until I get to her back, which is entirely exposed.
I drag my hand away. Fuck.
My newly hatched plan breaks apart. I touch her arms, her back, her face. My fingers linger on her cheek, and I will her silently to look at me.
She refuses. Smart girl.
I notice, for the first time, that our feet are moving. It’s the same old dance we’ve done a thousand times. Just before the grand finale, I’m the one who needs to look away. Does she trust me? I lower her into the final dip, letting her hair brush the ground before pulling her tightly into me.
A lock of black hair falls onto her cheek and I brush it back behind her ear and feel my face relax into a smile. My reward is a flash of emerald brilliance, a look that makes me feel like I’m the only person in the world. She used to look at me like that all the time, back when we were kids and I was her favorite playmate. Then, her eyes turn to smoke, her unpainted lips widen, and she finally releases that breath.
We’re playing far more treacherous games, and I lose all sense of time and place, of promises that I must have known would be broken.
I’m in love with her.
It took me a long time to figure that one out. I pulled my head out of my ass long enough to realize that she was beautiful when I was eighteen. Jack and I had shown up at her track meet after baseball practice and she was dancing around with one of her silly little friends. The rest of the girls were still in training bras, but Stella had grown up and gotten all kinds of gorgeous while her brother and I weren’t watching.
Some random junior commented on the shapeliness of her legs. Jack decked him in the head. Personally, I think he got off easy.
After that, the word got out. Anyone would have to be crazy to mess with Jack, so she managed to stay blissfully unaware of the effect that she had on men. I watched from a distance and tried to ignore everything about her.
It worked, at least until the red dress incident. I couldn’t keep my hands off her. My filthy hands that she wanted no part of.
I love her, and the best possible thing I can do is to get in my car, drive to the nearest airport, and head for Timbuktu and make the disappearance permanent this time.
She’s frozen in my arms, so I press my lips to her temple in the most brotherly of ways. I fully intend on releasing her before I get any bright ideas, but she smells like honeysuckle and moonlight and heaven. I’ve never felt less brotherly.
I slide my hands around her waist and hold on tight. This might be my last chance. I ignore the violent shaking of her body, the clear indication that she needs to be released, because I’m a selfish fucking pig and I want to keep her in my arms forever.
“Stella.” Her name is a sacrament.
She struggles against my arms and I clasp her tighter until eventually, unable to be the cause of any more of her pain, I let her slide into the crowd. But I can’t stop myself from calling out her name.
* * *
O
h fuck.
What have I done?
I place both hands on the windowsill and the ferociousness of my grip splinters the paint. It flakes off in tiny chips, but even that does little to dampen my need for destruction. I’d break the damn thing, but then I’d have to clean it up and I already have a much more perilous situation on my hands.
I want to roll back the annoying red numbers on the clock. I should have left Izzy at the door. I never should have come here. I knew the temptation would be too great for me to withstand. I’ve gotten used to trying to destroy myself, but I just had to drag her into this.
Breaking something might release some pent-up energy, but what I really want is to curl myself back into her soft little body, to take everything that she’s freely offered to me and to make sure that she never offers anything to anyone else. I want to watch the emerald turn to smoke, I want her to yell my name, and I want to kiss and touch and play with her stupid hair until the end of time.
“Stay away from my little sister. She’s everything good and pure in this world, and you’re everything that’s not.”
“I love her.”
“You think you do. But you’re going to break her fucking heart, and I won’t be there to pick up the pieces. Promise me, Luke.”
A beat. “Yes. I promise.”
I’m sorry, Jack. You asked too much of me.
I can’t stand to be in the same room without looking at her, so I glance backwards and then immediately curse my own stupidity. She’s curled up into a tiny ball in the corner of the bed and half of her is endless, streaming waves of hair.