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“We were more than brothers. More than best friends,” he whispered. “And then something changed, and not just for you. Our hugs were different. Holding you stirred a different response in me. The difference between us was that I didn’t want to go there with you. I wanted to get those feelings for you out of my system, but you were a flame ready to burn everything down. Not only did I not want to fuck up what we had, I didn’t want to ruin our family, because if Mom…” He licked his lips. “IfSeleneand my father had found out, it would’ve ruined everything.”
“You can keep calling her Mom, you know,” I said for the second time since his return. “It’s okay.”
“Took me two years of therapy to realize calling her Mom only amplified my self-hate. Now,” he shrugged. “I’m used to the shift. I don’t want to imagine what going back would do.”
The acidic burn of guilt scorched my tongue. I wished I’d been there for him. Wished he hadn’t needed the therapyIso desperately needed but refused to seek out, because I didn’t deserve relief. The pain for what I’d done would forever remain front and center, as it should. But I should’ve suffered in this alone. Not him. Never him. “I’m glad you’re better.”
“What about you, Jas?”
Our food arrived.Saved again.I dug in, faking starvation. Cole speared his chopsticks and did the same.
It wasn’t until my stomach was too full to move that I struck up conversation again. “So, you uprooted your company for a city you’d never been to,” I said, pushing my empty steamer bowl aside.
“I’ve been here before,” he said after a brief pause, kicking the wind out of me. He’d been here before? We’d been in the same city, and he hadn’t looked for me? My mind knew it’d been for the best, but my heart refused to get with the damn program.
“Oh,” I said, unable to contain the weird sense of betrayal I felt. “So today,” I made a circling motion with my finger in the air to encompass what we’d been doing. “The awed tourist performance. Was it all for my benefit?”
“No. I’d flown in twice for business meetings. In and out the same day. I didn’t allow myself to linger,” he said significantly. “I’d been considering it for a while. And yes, it had a lot to do with you, but not everything. Took a couple years to get Nexcom’s affairs in order for the move.” He dropped his napkin on the table. “Let’s get out of here.”
We paid the bill and bundled ourselves up, the sun had vanished, taking about ten degrees with it, so we kept our heads low, collars up, and hustled the few blocks to the train where a panhandler held the station door open for us. Cole dropped a large bill into his outstretched cup.
It smelled of urine and steam, and I’d had to save Cole from leaping into the tracks when a furry rodent scurried along the platform. “We could be in the back of a warm, roomy SUV right now,” he complained over the sound of steel raking steel as our train approached, but I spotted the upward tug of his lips as we boarded the front car and snagged a double-seater in the corner. He was enjoying himself.
We got back to Cole’s place and made it as far as the darkness of his living room before he pulled me to him for a hug. It was natural for us. Not touching meant not breathing when we were alone. Brothers, friends, lovers… It didn’t matter. We’d always been affectionate. We’d always needed it. We could be the same without being the same, couldn’t we?
Even as I posed the question to myself, I stepped in impossibly closer, my hands gliding up his spine from where I’d slipped them under his coat. His breath against my neck came at a faster and faster clip, and I inhaled with my nose pressed against the spot beneath his ear.
“Would you ever leav—?”
I pulled away, bringing an abrupt end to his unfinished question. The lines tightening his mouth said the action hurt or angered him. Probably both.
“I love him. He’s not perfect, but neither am I,” I said to him, and then to myself I gave the whole truth.Because I’m scared to leave him, because if I did, there would still be things holding me back from you. Things I don’t want to deal with, like forgiving myself. It would eat away at us, and then you’d leave me, and I’d have nothing while alone. With Daniel, I get to have nothing with someone.How was I able to look at myself in the mirror?
“Then why are you here with me, right now?”
Because I’minlove with you,I wanted to scream.Because I’m selfish, and I can’t stop doing evil things no matter who they hurt. Because I just want to go back, I want to take it all back. Make my wrong right again. But I can’t, because the only other person I’d ever loved more than I love you is gone. Gone because of me.
“Because I want you…” I said instead of all that, and then tacked on like a coward, “in my life.” I didn’t want to sayit. The thing we both understood right then. I didn’t want to admit why my hands were suddenly roaming up his chest. I didn’t want to later have to face the choice I was making.I wanted deniability.Even from myself.“Aren’t you the one who came looking for me?”
He hummed in the back of his throat, retreating further into the room, leaving my hands to fall and dangle at my side. “It wasn’t too long ago you wanted me on the next flight out of here.”
“Where’s this coming from?” I crossed my arms defensively.
“The truth is, I want you, and there isn’t anything I’m above doing to have you. But I don’t want to risk losing you completely once you wake up and decide to use whatever happens between us as a weapon to push me away, again. I don’t want you pretending you didn’t make a clear choice tonight. I…” He let the vowel hang until it was gone.
“Say it. What are you thinking?” I asked.
He removed a hand from his pocket to ruffle his hair, filling his cheeks with air before releasing it into the quiet. Returning his hand to his pocket, he said, “I’m thinking you should talk to Daniel. I’m thinking you may not be drunk tonight, but you’re still operating from an unclear head because you’re upset with him. I think you need to bedamnsure about this, because I won’t turn you down a third time.”
He needed me to be sure. He needed to know I wouldn’t use this to hate him. And because I wasn’t sure of anything right then, I said goodnight, then backed up and turned to leave. I peeked over my shoulder before getting on the elevator. Cole had perched on the arm of the sofa with his head in his hands.
Had I really been considering an affair? Would I have gone through with it if Cole hadn’t just stopped me—again. What would that even look like? Cole would never be able to share me, and would that leave the door open for him to do as he pleased with whomever while I watched paralyzed, unable to do anything about it? Did I really want to damn us all to hell? Would it be worth it? Would the lies we’d have to tell, and attempting to fight against our possessive nature be worth it?
We were crazy to consider it. And I was the crazier of us two. I needed to leave Daniel, do things the right way for once in my life. But then the cold claws of fear tapped at the mounds of my shoulder, reminding me this couldn’t end with my happiness. I could accept a temporary form of happiness, but I’d forfeited my right to anything more.
This could end badly.Wouldend badly.No, I could handle it,I thought anxiously.I could do this, and Daniel would never need to know.
But what if it didn’t work out that way? What if I ended up scorching everything around me because I couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie? Because I couldn’t get over Cole.
