AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She had a bad heart, Jas. Isn’t it possible her heart attack stemmed from the shock of walking in on us together, and not the actual fact that we were together?”
“If we’d only waited. If only we hadn’t acted on an impulse—”
He stopped himself. I knew he was referring to us making love the night I’d arrived home after completing my last semester of college. I’d finished high school a year ahead of him, but had taken a gap year so we could leave for Harvard together. The irony was that he’d ended up graduating a semester earlier than me. He’d gone home to help my father care for Selene while I’d completed school at their insistence. The night I returned home we’d made love in his bedroom. We’d stopped taking risks under their roof after high school, but Jasper couldn’t wait, no matter how much I’d insisted we should.
I’d spent years on my therapist’s couch working out how to let go of the guilt I’d carried. Some days it returned with a vengeance, but I had to believe she loved us enough to want our happiness, and Jasper and I had made each other happy once.
“If we had only waited,” he repeated.
In a sick twist of fate, she’d made it to the top of the donor list. Twenty-four hours after she’d gone into cardiac arrest, we got the call we’d been waiting all year for. But she was gone.
I wanted to hold Jasper, rock him in my arms and place kisses to his temples while breathing love into him. I couldn’t, though. I didn’t know if I had the right to. I didn’t know if it would’ve brought us closer or sent him running away.
He swallowed another shot, and then shoved the glass my way markedly. I plucked two tumblers from the dishwasher and poured us a heartier portion.
“It takes someone special to win the heart of Franklin Kincaid without even trying. To raise a man like you. I refuse to believe she doesn’t approve of us. Can you try looking at it from that perspective, Jasper?”
He grunted, his equivalent to easier-said-than-done. “Do you miss her?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, reaching to brush a rogue strand of hair away from the plump vein at the center of his forehead. It protruded when he was angry or sad. Moved by the raw brutality of pain and love in his watery, green gaze, I gave him honesty. A different type. Revealing how flawed, how imperfect I was. It came from the dark place I’d only ever allowed him to see and touch. I said the thing others would warn me to think but not say. “I miss her, but sometimes, I miss us more.”
“Me too.” His words were slurred and whispered like the walls had ears. “Does that make us vile people?” he asked.Begged.
“Maybe,” I answered. “Maybe it does.” I didn’t give him what he wanted to hear, I gave him what he needed. I gave him the truth. That we were the same. That I bore the same shame for how I felt, too. That I wasn’t over it either. But unlike Jasper, the truth didn’t make me want to run from him. I’d made it to the other side of denial. I’d made it to acceptance.
Seeing Jasper this conflicted, this unhappy, felt tragic, and I was at a loss for how to help him. It made me dislike Daniel even more, which made me want Jasper even more because someone needed to save him. I wanted that someone to be me.
If still wanting him, knowing the pain loving this version of him might bring me, made me an unapologetic sadist, then so be it. I’d do bad things with a clear head to have him. And then I’d do them all over again if it meant I got to have him in the next life, too.
We polished off the bottle of gin, and sat for hours talking, not talking, apologizing, and pointing fingers. All too soon the sun slinked below the horizon, and when he’d said he needed to get home, while remaining rooted to his stool with sorrowful eyes, only then did I tell him what hewantedto hear.
“Stay,”I’d said.“You’re my brother. He’ll understand.”
And so he stayed, and we laughed through our intoxication, listened to music, and for the most part we avoided the good ol’ days in favor of the here and now. And then we fell asleep on the sofa.
At some point in the night I stirred, finding us too close to one another, finding him in my arms. I told myself it was in the spirit of being past brothers and now tentative friends, and only hoped if he woke he’d think so, too. Above all, I hoped he wouldn’t pull away from me.
Daniel
4 Weeks Ago
“SON OF Abitch,” I bark angrily into my clenched fist, crashing onto my office chair. It’s never enough. Nothing I do is ever enough for them.
Jessica, my assistant, hovers nervously outside my open office door. I wave her in.
“Not good?” she asks.
“Not good at all,” I reply grimly.
“Is there anything I can do?”
I shake my head even as the cogs spin for a solution.
The photo of Jasper I keep perched on my desk catches my eye. I snatch up the picture frame, thinking. “How fast can you organize a birthday party?”
“Depends on the scale.”
“The largest scale you can find,” I say.
