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One blue eye opens. “Touché, Peapod.” The other eye opens, and his soft gaze snares me. “Can you stay a while? At least until you have to pick up Damien from camp?”
For the first time since Lucas Adler barreled back into my life and turned it upside down, I feel zero conflict. No panic. No uncertainty or fear.
“Yeah, I’ll stay.” His smile crinkles the edges of his eyes and fills me with effervescent warmth.
The moment shatters when his stomach growls loudly. Like it’s answering a mating call, mine growls, too.
Laughing, Lucas sits up. His arms trap me in his lap, and I squirm a little at the feel of him half-hard against my inner thigh.
He gives me a slow, lingering kiss. “After I make you lunch, I’m coming inside you. As many times as possible.” My breath hitches and my thighs clench. Then he frowns. “In a bed, though, because I’m not a teenager anymore and my knees are killing me.”
I smirk. “You should have thought of the rug, like I did.”
He nips my chin. “Brat.”
I sniff. “You like it.”
His eyes spark. “So do you.”
He’s right, of course. I really, really do.
As we disentangle and Lucas tugs me upstairs for dry clothes before lunch, I count the faint, beautiful freckles on his broad back and wonder why I don’t feel ashamed for what just happened.
But even when I look for the feeling, it doesn’t come.
33
Celeste is naked in my bed. Her head rests on my chest, one leg draped over mine. She fits against me like a dream, all soft curves and long limbs. Sweat lingers on our skin, and I know she needs to get up soon. She’ll want to shower before picking up Damien.
But I cling to her, anyway.
I’ll cling as long as she lets me.
Drained of tension—and most of my body’s water—after spending an hour lost in her, my mind wanders into a fantasy that the past fifteen years were a bad dream. Instead, I told Jeremy the truth that night behind Eagle Cabin. I told him that Celeste had feelings for me and I had feelings for her.
Maybe our friendship would have survived it. Maybe his life would have followed a different path. Or maybe it wouldn’t have, but Celeste and I would have weathered his loss together.
But as soon as the fantasy floats, it capsizes. Without Jeremy, there’d be no Damien. And no matter how much I might long for a way to rewrite history, I can’t imagine a world without my best friend’s son in it, or a world wherein Celeste isn’t his mother.
I don’t regret the path my own life has taken, either—however radically different it was from anything I envisioned as a kid. Despite carrying around a suitcase full of emotional baggage into adulthood, I’ve managed to have several meaningful relationships with amazing women. I even have a decent group of friends, most of whom I met in college or shortly thereafter. And I’ve had a challenging career, not to mention massive professional success.
But something was always missing.
Two somethings.
One, I doubt I’ll ever have again: a male friendship so close it was brotherhood. And the other… the other, I’m going to do everything in my power to never let go of because she’s the gravity that keeps my feet on this rock hurtling through space.
Even if I don’t deserve her. Even if she never feels for me what I feel for her. If I can give her pleasure now, maybe a little joy, but primarily the support and friendship I robbed her of for the last twelve years, maybe someday the grossly imbalanced scales of my karma will equalize.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
I kiss her head and breathe in her scent. “Honestly?”
Her snort puffs against my chest. “No, lie to me.”
My lips twitch. “I was thinking about the scales of judgment.”
Celeste props her chin on my chest, her eyes wide and laughing. “Since when do you believe in a Higher Power?”
