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He glanced at me, maybe sensing me pulling away. “You do a better job with people, I think. I’m glad… You do a good with that.”
It was an awkward compliment, but I thought it was one. Maybe.
“Um, thanks. I could if you wanted me to, though,” I said slowly. It would fucking kill me to watch strangers pick through their belongings, judging them and haggling for what they thought was a good price for the invaluable. But if I had to, I would do it to spare Adrian. “It might be the easiest way to do it. We can donate what’s left…” I trailed off, unsure of what else to say.
I might’ve been good with people — sometimes — but that didn’t mean I was good with my brother.
“No.” He shook his head. “Your idea was more practical. I’m not sure either one of us wants to sell stuff and talk to the neighbors.”
I shrugged as though it didn’t bother me at all, even though it threatened to rip me apart. I’d always seen my brother as someone stronger, more confident, but the past few months had shown the lie of that.
I could see the allure of something like puppy play to him, but if I tried to offer again, that same tension in the air might reappear. I didn’t know what I’d do if he realized how turned on I was…
But maybe this was the first step toward helping him heal, toward helping us both heal.
“We’ll go through it then figure it out.” Abruptly aware that I was only wearing a towel, I tugged awkwardly at it to make sure it was going to stay in place, and I wished I was hiding in a robe. It wasn’t like I was embarrassed about my partially completed sleeve, but under Adrian’s gaze, I was keenly aware of it. “I should, um…” I nodded toward the door of my room.
Adrian glanced down at my towel and blushed. “Yeah, probably a good idea.” He took a step back and started heading toward the stairs. “I have to get going but yeah… Saturday. Um, thanks.”
“Sure. Saturday.”
I watched him go, closing my eyes briefly. My brother was a mystery to me. With anyone else, I’d have poked at it until I’d seen what lay beneath the surface. But he was different from others, and I didn’t know what to do.
Shaking my head, I turned as well, going to my own room and closing the door behind me. There, I was alone with my thoughts, and I didn’t want to be. But for now, there was nowhere to run.
All I could do was hide.
Chapter 5 Adrian
I’d been staring up at the ceiling for longer than I wanted to admit. But considering I’d been awake to watch the sun rise off the neighbors’ roof, I’d been up a while. But being awake and being ready to face the day were two different things.
I wasn’t sure how Saturday had snuck up on me so fast.
Normally, the week seemed to take forever. Classes would drag on, then the mad dash from school to the accounting office downtown where I was interning made the day even longer. And that didn’t even count the endless hours I spent working at less than minimum wage when you totaled everything out.
I kept telling myself it would be worth it when I could get a full-time job in just a few months, but some days it was hard to believe that. The future seemed too bleak and too fucked up to see a rosy future where money wasn’t an issue and I could buy anything we wanted at the grocery store.
I’d thought things couldn’t get harder, but somehow, I’d jinxed myself because it had. I just didn’t know how to fix it. Or fix myself. I hadn’t realized I was that broken. Now I was desperate to keep Owen from finding out, but I wasn’t sure that was possible either.
How was I supposed to hide it?
How was I supposed to fix it?
How was I supposed to handle being attracted to my brother?
I didn’t even know how it happened. One day he was ignoring me as usual, and the next he was talking to me about the things he’d done and was running his fingers through my hair like I mattered to him. The project was partly to blame.
Something had changed for me when he’d walked in and saw me on the floor that day but that couldn’t be the only thing. I’d done my best to apologize for the hurtful things I’d said, but that wouldn’t have made him nicer to me. If anything, that would have made him angrier.
Had he realized how broken I was inside? Was that why he’d been so nice to me? Had he felt sorry for the damaged guy who was drawn to things that were wrong? He said he’d experimented with BDSM, so he wouldn’t have thought the research was weird. It had to be the other part, the part that was warped and twisted.
But the guy I knew, the Owen I’d grown up with, wouldn’t have felt sorry for me like that. It would have been the best ammunition — too good to ignore. So what changed? Something in me, clearly.
The easiest thing to do would be to blame it on the class, but making me look at fetishes online wouldn’t give me one. It wasn’t like some kind of virus or plague that passed from one person to another.
He’d just been so nice.
No one had ever made me feel like that. And it wasn’t just the sexual part. It had felt so good to just relax and let go. For those few seconds while he was touching me and feeding me the cookies, there was nothing else to think about and nothing to worry over. He’d been in charge and he’d wanted to feed his good boy… the puppy kneeling at his feet.
