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“That’s right.” He straightens back up again. Charlie takes a moment to clear his throat and fix his shirt, even running his fingers through his hair. It strikes me that he’s trying to shake the little brother look and slide back into the role of business tycoon.
But I know him too well. Him and his brother, both.
I know the guys under that hard exterior, the ones that are being pushed into a tough spot.
Charlie clears his throat once, twice, and then tells me, “You should tell him.”
“What?” I wasn’t expecting that.
“You asked me what I would want,” Charlie says. “I would want to know if I was with someone that had caught feelings for me. That changes things, doesn’t it?”
I look down at my feet. “I know that it changes things. That’s what I’m afraid of. Charlie, it was my idea. And now I’m out here, thinking that I want more.”
“Exactly,” says Charlie. “And Grant should know.”
“You’re not just saying that because you want to cause problems, are you?” I ask, frowning a little bit.
Charlie shakes his head. “I don’t know what I want at this point, but I’m being honest with this. You should tell him.”
And then he turns, without waiting for a response from me, and he heads up the stairs. For a few long moments, I just stand there in the lobby. And then I turn, and I make my way towards the elevator instead. I step into the glass box and hit the button that will take me up to the floor of our shared room.
Normally, watching everything rush past through the clear glass brings me a lot of joy. But this time, I’m not feeling that joy at all.
I’m only thinking about Grant, and whether or not Charlie is right.
Maybe I should tell Grant how I feel.
Maybe that’s the only right way to handle this.
Chapter nineteen
Grant
Idrankonemoreglass of whiskey after Ashley left on the heel of Charlie. And then I went back to the hotel, wanting to have a chance to collect myself in case things took a turn for the worse. When the penthouse door opens and she lets herself in, I’m sitting in the lone chair, having just started on my final whiskey for the night from the minibar. There’s a movie on the TV, but I haven’t been paying it a lick of attention.
The moment that the door clicks shut behind her, I stand up. “How did it go?”
But instead of answering me, Ashley comes over and throws her arms around my neck. She catches me in a kiss. It’s not chaste. It’s a messy sort of searing, teeth in my lower lip and tongue in my mouth. Her body collides with mine a second later, and my arms wrap around her waist.
I spin her around on instinct and press her up against the wall. “Should I take this as a good thing?”
“Yes,” says Ashley, breathless when she answers me. Her face is flushed the prettiest shade of pink, and her eyes are bright with something that I can’t quite place.
I like the way that it looks on her, though. I like the way that it all feels. Her against me. The room near quiet. The way that her arms are wrapped around my neck. Her hands tangled in my hair, sliding through it.
“Yes?” I ask. “He’s not going to say anything?”
“He’s not,” says Ashley. And then she’s kissing me again, and I don’t totally get why she’s doing this right now, but I don’t have it in me to complain. It’s been a long few weeks and an even longer day. I’ve got so much stress built up inside of me, it makes me feel almost sick.
While the massage earlier had helped some, it hadn’t helped enough. I’ve got so much want in me, so much frustration and love and need and—and she’s right here, feeling just the same way.
Our mouths crash together again, our teeth clinking with each press. My hands drop down to her waist, grabbing onto the fabric of her dress, bunching it up around her hips.
“This,” says Ashley. “This is fine. Charlie isn’t going to say anything. He gets it. He’s mad, but he gets it.”
“Mad at me?” I ask, with another press of my mouth to the curve of her jaw, and then to the side of her neck. I work a dark mark there without thinking, and it draws a low, desperate sort of whine from her. Hands tangle in the back of my shirt and then push up under it, pulling it from where I had it tucked into my pants.
There’s no tie—stripped off before we went to the bar—and the top two buttons on my shirt are already undone. When I pull back, her lipstick is smeared over the side of her mouth, and it’s one of the sexiest things that I’ve ever seen.
