Page 54 of Cocky Brutal Sinner

I can’t even finish that thought.

Grabbing my dumbbells off the floor, I have them over my head and start my own chest presses. I usually do 3 reps of 10. This time, I start lifting and I don’t stop. I push myself through rep after rep, savoring the alternating pain and shaking weakness in my arms. If Brinley could see me, she’d tell me I’m punishing myself because I’m guilty. Except this time, it’s not guilt. It’s fear.

Fear that I just lost the only person I can’t afford to lose by telling her the truth.

Fear of what happens when the others learn who she is.

18

BRINLEY

Riiiiipp!

I tear into the box of new releases, wielding my box cutter with a bit too much relish. I wish I could tear these boxes to shreds with my bare hands. I wish I could stab them with my sharp little blade, over and over again, until all my frustration is taken out on the cardboard. I know I can’t. It’s too pathetic, even back in the Copper Cup storeroom with no one to watch me do it. I just don’t have any more ideas about how to handle this whole situation.

Beau is losing his grip.

Last night, he touched my hair, with my brother maybe ten feet away.

Beau and I haven’t really been alone since Italy, which is normal after the trip. We both have a lot to catch up on for work. Beau has employee schedules and upcoming specials to manage, and I have backed-up book orders and food deliveries. We text when we can, but there have been no date nights or rushed hook-ups.

That still doesn’t excuse Beau’s carelessness. Pippa arranged for us all to have drinks in one of the private rooms at Velvet & Vice to celebrate a new series of articles she launched on the website where she works, Belladonna. It’s the kind of group gathering Beau and I have navigated a thousand times, but he ignored all the rules.

It started early in the night, when he held eye contact with me for way too long while Nate and James discussed cybersecurity next to us. I’ve been avoiding James as much as I can since our conversation, but last night, he acted just the same toward me as he always has. Polite but distant.

Beau, on the other hand, was far too close. When he brought everyone a new round of drinks, he pressed his hand to the small of my back when he moved behind me, and lingered for a moment without removing it.

Then, late in the night, when everyone was a little drunk, I heard Luke speaking with Nate in a low voice, saying the one word that could stop me in my tracks.

Peppermint.

“How much longer is your PI going to take on those Peppermint names?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know. He’s narrowed it down to five hundred names.” Luke’s face fell, and Nate clasped his shoulder. “It sounds like a lot, but it’s not. I bet we’ll find out who they are within a week.”

My hand shook so hard, I practically dropped my glass of wine. It wasn’t a death sentence—I was probably still one of five hundred. Maybe my name wasn’t even on that list. I still felt the noose tightening around my neck.

Then Beau touched my hair, shifting it behind my ear the same way he does when he’s trying to comfort me. Anyone could have seen him do it, and frankly, it’s a miracle that nobody did.

I sigh and drag another box toward me. I thought after my reaction to I love you that Beau would retreat. He’d rebuild the walls between us, and we’d both pretend Italy never happened. Instead, he’s doing the opposite. He’s reaching. He’s touching me and looking at me in all the ways he shouldn’t.

It’s not reckless. It’s desperate. Last night, he looked at me like he was begging me to see that he meant it. That Italy wasn’t just the wine and the stars and the distance from real life. That those three words are still true in Toronto, under fluorescent lights, with Luke ten feet away.

“It doesn’t matter,” I mutter, ripping open another box. “It doesn’t matter if he means it.”

This should be the happiest time in my relationship. The post-I love you euphoria, where we’re all over each other, kissing and whispering sweet nothings and generally being insufferable. It feels like that’s what Beau wants.

I have to be the one to keep the distance. I don’t like it, but if Beau and I stop pretending at the same time, everything detonates. I’m not ready to blow up our lives yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. Luke would never forgive me for dating his best friend, or for keeping it a secret for so long. Ruining my relationship with my brother wouldn’t be so bad. We weren’t close to begin with, and Never Have I Ever basically ruined any chance that we ever would be.

Losing Luke would destroy Beau. The two of them are the closest, maybe out of anyone in that little fivesome. If Luke found out about our relationship, he would cut both me and Beau out of his life, and I couldn’t do that to Beau.

Because I do love him. I love him so much that sometimes it feels like it’s rearranging my organs to hold it all, but I can’t say it. Saying it means expecting something to change, and I’ve spent five years learning not to expect anything.

The door thuds open, letting in daylight from the front of the store. Eden stands in the doorway, looking less than impressed.

“So this is where you’ve been,” she says dryly.

I sit back on my heels. “Where else would I be?”