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He smiles at me and places a hand on my shoulder, steadying me the same way he’s always done. “Ruthie, I’m going to tell you something you’ve told me often enough. You need to stop getting in your own way. You have what it takes. You’ve always had what it takes. You just need to believe in yourself like I believe in you.”
“Mom thought Rand was too good for me.”
“And she pickled her brain long before you came along,” he says, his tone harsh. “If you believe her about that, then do you believe all the sweet things she and our father had to say about me? Do you think there’s something wrong with me for being the way I am?”
“No, of course not,” I say, my hand lifting to my chest. I find myself holding the ring, something I’ve done a few times this week. I release it like it’s a burning coal.
“So why the hell would you believe anything she has to say about you?”
“Because I’m not good at finishing things,” I tell him, feeling tears prickling. “I always feel like I’m barely getting by. Maybe I’m a leech. One of those people who feeds off of more successful people, you know?”
I think of the wishlist gifts. Of the dress from Eden. Of Tank fixing Vanny.
Of Shane giving me the ring…
Danny puts his hands on my arms and looks me in the eye. Sustained eye contact usually makes him uncomfortable, but he doesn’t look away. “You stop that. You’re a wonderful mother and person, and if you can’t see all of the things you give everyone around you, then you need to know that I see them. So do other people. I’m lucky you’re my sister.”
Tears well in my eyes and start falling. “Not as lucky as I am that you’re my brother,” I say, wrapping my arms around him. He hugs me back hard, because he can probably tell that I need it. I thank him. I hug him. I tell him again that I love him and am so damn lucky to have him in my life.
Still, that lump stays firmly lodged in my throat all the way to Shane’s house, which I’ve never visited before. What an odd thing, to be married to a man whose house you’ve never been inside. It’s blue and tidy, and the clapboard shutters are painted a bright white.
I sit in the driveway for half a minute, thinking, wondering if I should just drive off. But if I leave, I’ll be guilty of what Shane accused me of the other day. I’ll be a quitter. Someone who’s afraid.
The truth is, I am afraid. My hands are trembling, and my heart is beating faster than it should. Last week, I felt confident that I could sleep with him and shake off any feelings it might create, but that was foolish. Because here I am, afraid to go inside. Afraid of how it will feel at the restaurant when he slips an arm around my waist and acts casually fond toward me.
This is pretend, I remind myself. It’s not real.
But my heart beats even faster as I take the ring off the chain around my neck and slip it onto my finger. Then I take a deep breath and get out of the car.
Shane meets me at the front door of the house. He’s wearing a suit, because of course, and the green tie I wove around his hands the other night. His eyes take me in, dilating a little as they move down my new coat to the bottom half of my dress and then up again. His jaw works, and I know he’s not immune to me.
Heat pumps between my legs, because I have a visceral memory of how that tie felt against my hand, of how heady it was to have my way with him. To sink down onto his big, deliciously thick cock while I was holding his wrists.
There is something deeply wrong with me—and him, I guess, because he looked at his collection of dozens of ties this morning and decided to put this one on.
“Is that tie your version of my bootie shorts?” I ask, cocking my brow.
He smiles. “Good to see you too, kid. You got a new coat.”
Talk about mixed messages.
He’s wearing that tie, but he’s gone back to calling me kid, a nickname he admitted he used to keep me at a distance. He insisted on having a security system installed in my apartment but has barely been in touch all week. I probably shouldn’t be surprised we’re still playing a game. This is what we do—we play with each other the way a cat toys with its prey.
He tries to step forward, to leave the house and keep me from entering, and my stubbornness kicks into high gear. I’m going into that house. He’s been in my apartment, after all. It’s only fair.
“Aren’t you going to invite me inside?” I ask as I duck under his arm and enter the foyer. It’s small and compact, but it must be the tidiest house in Asheville, not that I expected anything different. In the front room, there’s a leather futon on the wall next to the door, along with an oversized coffee table with nothing on it. Seriously, nothing, not even a coaster. Across the room, a flat-screen TV is anchored to the wall. There are a couple of uncomfortable looking armchairs, and the whole place has the look of being unused. As if Shane had wandered into a model house and decided to stick around.
I’m not surprised, really—Danny told me he used to practically live at his office, and here’s the evidence. It’s a house that’s barely been lived in by a man who doesn’t want a home. I should remember that.
He follows me in, sighing, like my expectation for him to fulfill this basic piece of social decency is unacceptable.
“I’d like a tour, I think,” I say.
He dips his head to look at his watch. “We’re going to be late.”
“I arrived exactly when you asked me to,” I say loftily. “If you didn’t schedule in time for a tour, then that’s your own rudeness biting you in the ass.”
He grumbles something, then says, “This is the living room.”
