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“Right now or ever?”
He scowled at me but didn’t say anything.
“I don’t want to go years without talking to you again,” I said quietly.
“Well, I don’t give a shit what you want. I stopped caring about your opinion when you left me to go chase a fucking football scholarship.” He shoved his forearms against my chest, breaking the hold I had on his arms. Once I was out of his way, he darted forward and threw open the cooler door. It crashed into something on the other side, but he didn’t slow down.
Shaking my head, I picked up the items we’d dropped and set them on the shelves. I checked the flowers quickly to make sure they weren’t damaged and set the box up high where it was less likely to be crushed by anything inadvertently falling.
I didn’t blame Aaron for being mad, but I did blame him for acting like a goddamn child. Running from his problems was the easy way out. Refusing to talk was the easy way out. From now on, I wasn’t going to be fucking easy on him.
5
AARON
Valentine’s Day — 11:57 p.m.
When the last of the bridal party finally staggered out of the banquet hall, I exhaled a sigh of relief. I was used to the chaos of a kitchen, but the chaos of a wedding party? Ugh. Fuck me, no thanks. If it wasn’t for the money I made doing this, there’s no way in hell I’d subject myself and my staff to this bullshit every year.
The only good thing about it being so busy on Valentine’s Day was that I successfully avoided Alex for the rest of the night. Between overseeing the restaurant and checking in on the wedding, I hadn’t had any time to freak out over what happened in the cooler. Or what didn’t happen, I should say. Story of my life. Expect one thing, get something totally different.
Asking Alex for help was such a bad idea. All it did was stir up shit from the past and make him think I wanted to reestablish some sort of relationship. Friendship? Whatever the fuck he wanted to call it, it wasn’t happening. I learned my lesson a long time ago not to hang my hopes on Alex and anything he said.
Except, the way he looked at me earlier during set up made my stomach do stupid somersaults. Having his arms wrapped around me, warming me in the chill air in the cooler? Keeping me from falling flat on my ass and wounding my pride? God, it was just like the first time I kissed him.
Despite the fact I’d downed a bottle of vodka at a summer kick-off party, I managed to stumble home while it was still dark. I not-so-stealthily climbed the lattice to the porch roof and crawled through the open window to what turned out to be Alex’s room instead of my own.
Landing in a sprawl on the floor, laughing hysterically, I didn’t even realize my mistake until he was suddenly in front of me, half-naked, yanking me up to my feet.
“What are you—Jesus! How much did you have to drink?” He leaned back, taking me in with a furrowed brow, but not letting go. Probably so I didn’t topple over, which was entirely possible since I kept swaying once I was vertical.
Shrugging in answer to his question, I rested my hands on his waist for more stability. It was pretty sobering considering for the past couple of years I’d made an effort not to touch him or be anywhere around him when he was less than one hundred percent dressed. No swimming. No barging into bathrooms or bedrooms. No locker rooms. Nada. It made for some awkward (not to mention boring) vacations, but it was a sacrifice I had to make.
I knew I was in trouble when I turned fifteen and started having wildly inappropriate dreams about him, but I thought I was safe because it was never reciprocated. How could it be? We were stepbrothers, for fuck’s sake. And until that point, I’d assumed we were both straight. Even after he came out to his mom, I didn’t get my hopes up. Alex was a Grade A Golden Child. There was no way he’d ever see me as anything other than the little brother who was shoved into his life when we were kids.
Our parents got together when I was six and he was seven, which meant I’d spent more than half my life growing up with Alex as family—not someone to lust after. But lust I did, like the fucked-up reject I was. I didn’t even know what my sexuality was back then, I just knew the mere sight of him made my dick hard and when I furtively jerked off in the shower, I always came to thoughts of him.
So when I stumbled into his bedroom, drunk, and was confronted with him in nothing but boxers? Fuck yeah, I kissed him. But to my infinite surprise, he kissed me.
Even with liquor sloshing in my brain, I knew it was wrong. It was the wrongness that made it a thousand times hotter. All of my wildest fantasies were on the verge of coming true.
Neither one of us even tried to stop the other. We didn’t try to point out all the reasons we shouldn’t proceed down the dangerous road we were on. Once the ice was broken, we plunged headfirst into forbidden territory and we didn’t look back.
That night was one of the greatest of my life, followed immediately by one of the worst days ever.
In the morning, Alex was a total stranger. He acted like the whole thing never happened. Not a peep after his mom knocked on his door, telling him breakfast was ready. Not a single word over the piles of eggs and waffles. I even purposely withheld the syrup from him, but he neither asked for it nor glanced in my direction to see what I was doing, which was hoarding the bottle and stealing glances at him from behind the jug of orange juice.
And then my fucking dad made the announcement—not only was he and Heather getting divorced, but I was being forcibly removed from the house that had been my home for eleven years and ripped away from the only real family I’d ever had.
Alex left the next day and made his life in Mississippi, meanwhile, I struggled with my new reality.
After a particularly rough night of trying to lose myself in the bottom of a bottle I stole from my fuckhead father’s liquor stash, I saw a commercial for a culinary school, and my brilliant plan was hatched. I packed a bag, cleared out my meager savings account the next day, and ran away to the city.
Now here I was, back in Middleton, freaking the fuck out over the same guy I was ten years ago.
Watching Alex disassemble his floral masterpieces from across the ballroom, I couldn’t help all of those old feelings as they came flooding in. He was still as muscular as he was in high school. Every time he hoisted a bucket of flowers, I swore his white t-shirt was in danger of ripping. Not that that would have been terrible.
No, it would have been terrible. I’d tried so hard to forget him and yet the second he so much as glanced my way, my proverbial tail started wagging like crazy.
