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I inhaled his jealousy, swam and danced around in it, letting it stroke my loneliness. It wouldn’t cure it, though, and I needed more than a temporary fix. I needed him. “Leland isn’t my type,” I said, my back to him as I stared unseeingly into the night.
“Why not? He’s handsome enough.”
Leland was gorgeous, the son of a model, but he’d want to top me from the bottom, then slip from my bed and into the streets in search of round two. Two qualities that clashed with my need to dominate and possess. We’d be a match made in hell. “I like my men submissive with only the occasional flare of temper in bed for those moments when I’d rather take than be given. Because sometimes, I like to fight for what’s mine.”
Jasper’s hitch of breath was the only sign he’d been affected by my declaration. He didn’t come closer, he didn’t move a muscle. Probably remembering the time he’d innocently accepted a ride home from Matthew—a high school classmate who’d been interested in him. It had ended with my knuckles bruised, Matthew scraping himself off our front lawn, and me tackling Jasper to the floor behind my locked bedroom door before conquering him. Our relationship had already progressed to something more than sexual by then. We were hungry for each other, our need unquenchable.
I raised the fallboard and stretched my fingers, wondering where to start, wondering if I still had it in me. I let love guide me. I let my love forhimguide me.
My fingers floated over the keys self-consciously, but with every note I landed correctly, and with every click of Jasper’s shoes announcing he was drawing near, I became more confident. More secure.
“Claude Debussy,” he said, settling next to me on the bench, resting his head on my shoulder. “My favorite.”
I played like the song didn’t have an ending, restarting before the moment had a chance to slip away from us. I played through every uttered, “Again,” that escaped his lips. I played until my fingers hurt, until the ebony and ivory keys were slicked with sweat, or blood, or tears. Until finally Jasper placed a hand over mine, until harsh panting and impending truths filled the air.
“He says I don’t support him.” His voice trembled. “And he’s right.”
I wanted to smash something with my bare hands. I wanted to force him to take those words back. But more importantly I wanted to listen, because he needed me to.
“He’s right,” he repeated, voice labored and soft with sadness. “He’s got this great opportunity, and instead of supporting him, I secretly hope he fails. Because then I wouldn’t be tied to you. I could walk away from you, again.”
But he’s the one who didn’t support you!I wanted to bellow.I told him he could go. I told him how important the fundraiser was to you. And he’d chosen himself when work could’ve waited until tomorrow.
“You scare me,” he said in a small voice, putting an end to my mental shouting. “The things you make me want to do to him scare me.”
My brows nudged each other. “Like what?” I asked. What could I have possibly made him want to do to Daniel?Leave him?My lovesick heart supplied.Cheat on him?A more sinister part of me said. The part that knew he wouldn’t leave Daniel, and that I’d do anything to have even a tiny piece of him.
“I love him,” he said, and someone stabbing me in the gut would’ve hurt less. Would’ve angered me less. “Not like I loved…” He swallowed, and then settled on, “He’s misunderstood. He wants to be a good man. Heisa good man. He’s good.” He nodded. “He’s better than me.”
I pressed a kiss to the top of his head to keep from barking out the crude words clogging my throat. I breathed steadily, winding myself down. “No one’s better than you, Jasper. No one.”
His laugh was vicious, aimed inward. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew—” He stopped himself.
I shifted us so we faced each other. His sluggish eyes spotlit by the moon’s glow. I should’ve cut him off after the fifth drink, but he was in a mood, and I hadn’t wanted to make a scene. “Knew what, Jasper?”Didhe want to have an affair?
“I manipulated you to have you. From the very beginning. From the moment I met you all I could think about was what I could do to have you. Not inthatway. Not at first. But I wanted you. Always in some way.”
“I knew that, Jas. All your subtle and shy attempts at seducing me when we got older didn’t go unnoticed. You weren’t the clever little mouse you thought you were.” I tapped my forehead to his.
He sliced one hand through my hair, and used the other to situate my palm at the base of his skull. I moaned, my forehead rolling against his. It’d been so long since we’d touched like this. “I hate it when your hands aren’t on me. Always so hu–hungry. Starving for–for your touch, Cole.” His words were disjointed, a mash of feelings brought on by too much alcohol digested in too short a time span, and by whatever sat here with us, eating him alive.
“Jasper,” I rasped, “you’re drunk.” And he’d regret this come morning.
He hummed ambiguously. “How were things after I left?”
This was safer territory, although still heavy to discuss. “It was lonely,” I said at last. “My father was a ghost. I’d had to learn the business quickly and eventually take over much of his day-to-day tasks.”
“I ran and left you there with him. How did he treat you?” Jasper hadn’t even stuck around for Selene’s funeral. He couldn’t even meet my father’s stare. Other than Maggie, Selene’s childhood friend, visiting whenever she could, it had been my father and Jasper taking care of Selene those months I was off finishing school. My father hadn’t put up a fight when Jasper announced he was leaving. If anything, he seemed relieved. One less reminder. Me, on the other hand, he was stuck with.
Jasper’s guilt took him away from us, mine kept me there. I couldn’t abandon my father after killing his wife, even if he didn’t know it. One of us had to stay behind, and I understood why it had to be me. Most days he found it hard to stomach me. It wasn’t in what he said, or did. It was in all the things he didn’t say. The times I’d catch him watching me, only to turn and leave without saying a word. I’d assumed Selene’s death triggered recollections of his first lost love. My mother. I’d assumed it rekindled the memory of how she’d met her end. By giving me life.
I applied pressure to the back of Jasper’s neck, while his fingers scraped across my scalp, and something close to a purr rumbled in his chest.
“I understood my father’s feelings toward me. I had never resented him for it. Losing you is what crushed me, Jasper.” I’d let him go. I’d given him what he’d begged for, because how could I not? After what we’d done, how could I have expected him to stay with me? And I was looking for ways to punish myself, too. I’d killed my first and second chances at having a mother. What better way to pay penance than to sacrifice the one thing I loved most. Why did our love get to live when his mother, and my father’s second chance at life, had died at our metaphorical hands?
“If only we’d waited.”The memory of Jasper’s words knocked around in my head. But he hadn’t been able to wait. That night in particular he was uncharacteristically the aggressor. We hadn’t been apart that long since he and Selene had moved in when we were boys. I understood his need because it matched my own.
“Did you lock the door?”I’d asked.
