by Kris Jayne
His body hardened with every second of his kiss. My hands traced the hot steel of his shoulders and chest. His erection prodded my belly—a reminder of what was suddenly between us.
Had it always been there? This much heat. This much want.
His hard thigh pressed between my legs. I pushed against him—the friction sending the fever of my desire soaring. I strained toward him to return his kisses and take what his mouth had to give.
This was Luke. God. Luke.
He hooked his thumbs at the waistband of my pants. Down. They were coming down.
I jerked back. Breathless. “What are we…I can’t…Wait.”
On that word, Luke pulled his hands back.
I blinked.
He gripped the counter behind him, leaning forward and gasping. His mahogany hair fell forward, rendering his hazel-green eyes unreadable. His mouth was red and full, from our kiss.
“Do you want me to go?” he rasped.
No. I never wanted him to go. That was the problem. But I couldn’t answer him.
His chest still heaved. “If this is a mistake, you’re going to have to tell me because it doesn’t feel like a mistake to me.”
“I don’t know,” I said with shuttering breath.
“Neither do I, but how will we unless we try?”
He made it sound like we had nothing to lose, but I had everything to lose. I loved Luke. Okay, so not like love love. That’s insane. Nothing romantic ever happened between us, but I still loved him. He had been my brother’s best friend and, these days, he was mine. When everything in my life fell apart, I always had Luke.
I was terrible at relationships. Every boyfriend I’d ever had told me that. Boring. Cold. Oblivious. Weird.
Luke loved to tell me, “You don’t give yourself enough credit.” He’d been saying that to me forever. Over a decade of pep talks.
He cared for me, and sometimes, it felt like he really cared for me. I liked thinking that. I liked having that to cling to in the comforting realm of wishful thinking.
Reality killed the dream.
I knew that, and bless him and his optimism, he didn’t. I didn’t want to him to know. An ache crept up my neck, over my scalp, and settled behind my forehead.
“We’re going to fuck up our friendship. Literally.”
“I’ll always be your friend.”
Luke’s face blurred. I blinked and tasted the salty streams falling into the corners of my mouth. “You don’t know that. I’m a rotten girlfriend. Ricky left because he was bored with me. I was boring. And a nag. And I was getting even fatter than when he met me.” I sucked in a breath, and the words poured out unfiltered now. “We stopped having sex. You know what he said to me in our last fight? A few days before he left?”
Was I going to tell Luke? Was I going to say the words that got me up every Saturday morning at the ass crack of dawn and down to the park? My lips shook and could hardly form the words.
“He s-said, ‘If only your legs spread as easily as your ass.’”
Luke cursed and stepped to me, snaking his arms around me. He pulled me into his body and buried his face in my hair. My tears evaporated in the heat of his neck.
“You’re none of that. Ricky didn’t deserve you. You didn’t deserve him. You’re worth a thousand Rickys.”
“It’s not just Ricky. I heard it all before. I’m not good at this. Passion fades, Luke. Then what?”
“We’ll go slow.”
“This is slow?”
My hair muffled his laugh. “We’ll go slower.”
But we’d already tripped the wire. I could feel what was slipping away with each tick of his heart under my palm.
Maybe it was already too late.
Luke cradled my head, eyes blazing into mine.
“No matter what, Erin, I could never stop caring about you.”
He had never lied to me, so I tugged my voice to an upbeat register and lied to him. “I know.”
Chapter 4
Luke
It took everything I had to pull myself away from Erin. I wanted to stay and convince her and hold her and kiss her and let her keep riding my leg until she panted. I wanted to bend her over the kitchen counter and drive into her softness until she screamed my name over and over.
Luke. Not Brother Luke. Just Luke. At the top of her lungs while I rolled her nipples in my fingers.
I. Was. Going. To. Hell.
No. I’m not.
I pressed the hands into my knees and took a deep breath, glancing around the darkness of my townhouse garage. All the way home, desire and guilt fought a war inside me. I had to blink away images of Erin — lips parted, eyes closed, her body tense with wanting.
My phone buzzed. Not a text. An email.
Ricky didn’t have my phone number.
I grabbed my phone and went inside. The email taunted me as I crossed the kitchen, climbed the stairs, and trudged down the hall to my bedroom. Dropping on the edge of the bed, I opened it.
I read through Ricky’s messy diatribe twice, nauseated.
She thinks I just left.
Of course, she thought he just left since that’s what happened. He did leave.
So maybe I’d helped him leave. I didn’t see how that made a difference. Whatever the reason, he left. Period. That’s what mattered.
You manipulated this whole thing so you could screw her.
Before today, I would have shrugged off the accusation. I wouldn’t have thought being with Erin was a possibility. Now, I felt sick.
Five thousand dollars.
That’s all it took get Ricky to move out. If he loved her like she deserved, no amount of money could have made him leave.
He always accused me of wanting Erin. I only ever wanted her to be happy. If Ricky had made her happy, I could have lived with that, no matter how I felt about her. But he wasn’t ever going to make her happy. That thought used to nag at me, but it became inescapable in July.
I stopped at Erin’s house to return a portable A/C unit I borrowed. She wasn’t home, and I didn’t see any other cars in the drive. Instead of leaving it on the porch, I figured I’d set it inside the back gate, out of view from the street.
I put the combination in the padlock, swung the gate open, and boom. I saw Ricky’s pale ass bopping up and down in the summer sun and heard some woman’s piercing porno screech high above the buzz of cicadas.
I yelled. They stopped. The chick ran into the house.
Ricky pulled up his pants and started begging.
“Don’t tell Erin. This is a one-time thing.”
Over and over. I didn’t understand. This wasn’t my business.
I finally cut him off. “There’s no scenario where I don’t tell her. She deserves to know that the sack of shit she’s been worried about and supporting for months is fucking someone behind her back.”
Then, he’d put his hands on his hips and smirked. “Fine. I’ll tell her myself. I’ll tell her it was mistake. She knows how stressed I’ve been.” He laughed, face beaming. “I’ll tell her that I was feeling insecure about us and did something stupid, but that now I know what I want. She’s been pestering me about getting serious. Settling down. I’ll give her what she wants.”
“Why?” I advanced on him, fists balled, but resisted the urge to grab him by the shoulders and drop kick his head into the neighbor’s yard. “You don’t love her.”
He scratched a hand through his disheveled hair and backed up. “Yeah, I do. I fucked up. I admit it, but she and I are just…you don’t get it. I can make this up to her.”
“There’s nothing you could do to make this go away.” I shoved a finger in Ricky’s bare chest, and he bowed up.
“She loves me. All she wants is to prove that she can make us work. I’ll tell her myself.” Ricky sighed, and his shoulders dropped. “I’ve been depressed since I lost my job. We’ll work it out.”
“What about your friend?” I gestured over my shoulder.
“Look, she—”
He paused and pointed in the direction of the woman who’d run into the house. “Listen, I love Erin, but she’s complicated. Don’t you ever want something easy?” He snorted. “Of course, you don’t. You’re Superman. That’s what Erin loves about you. She’s always crushed on you. Big brother, my ass. If she felt good enough to have a guy like you, she’d be all over you like flies on shit.”
In a blink, Ricky and I were nose to nose. “She’s good enough to have whatever she wants. You. Don’t. Deserve. Her.”
He retreated with a shaky laugh. “You said that already. And it’s not up to you. We have our problems, but…I don’t have to explain our relationship to you.”
“Relationship? You loaf around all day doing nothing while she pays your bills, and now, you’re banging some rando in her house?”
“She supports me.”
“What if you got support from somewhere else?”
The question popped out before my brain could comprehend what my mouth and my heart were doing. Ricky winced, but then his face slid into a smooth, diabolical grin. “Like who? Like you? How much? How much, Brother Luke?”
“Five thousand,” I said. “You can get your own place. Do that photography road trip you’ve been talking about.”
He didn’t even haggle, which only strengthened my resolve. A quick transfer to the moron’s e-payment account, and Ricky was gone within a week.
I thought he would head west, taking pictures. Instead, I found out from Erin that he scored tickets to Burning Man and disappeared.
I reread his email.
“You basically paid me so you could have sex with her, and that’s not right.”
No. I paid him to go away and not ruin her life. He was bound to cheat on her again and somehow make her feel guilty about it.
But was that how Erin would see it? I hoped. She knew me. She knew I would never do something like that.
I hadn’t even slept with her. Yet.
The itchy hanging thread of doubt still irritated me. No matter how much I tried to recollect my rationale for offering Ricky that money, I couldn’t make it go away.
You better tell her, or I will.
The irony of his last line twisted in my gut like a prison shank.
Erin wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to lose our friendship, and now that she and I had crossed over into something else, I couldn’t lose that either. She worried about screwing up and doing something that would run me off. That somehow, she wouldn’t be good enough.
If only she knew.
Fuck.
Chapter 5
Erin
I crawled out of bed early the next morning even though I was still off work until after New Year’s.
I might have focused on vacuuming out the carpet dents in my spare room and clearing any other remaining evidence of Ricky.
But no. I had to go dress shopping. I downed a cup of coffee and made a quick call to my friend, Abby, who was all too excited to help me find the perfect outfit for my “date” with Luke.
No. Not “date.” Date. An actual romantic outing with Luke Abrams.
Rumblings of anticipation and anxiety—was there a difference?—made me shiver as I hustled into the mall hours later.
My purse chimed and vibrated. I figured it must be Abby. We’d agreed to meet in front of the coffee shop and fuel up for our adventure.
Nope. Not Abby.
Luke: What are you doing today?
Me: Shopping. I have nothing to wear to a fancy party.
Luke: ☺︎☺︎☺︎ I can’t wait to see the results
My stomach clenched again.
Me: No pressure
Luke: You’ll look beautiful in whatever I’m sure
Me: I’ll try
Luke: What are you doing tomorrow?
Me: Cleaning my Rickyless house
Luke: Do that in the afternoon. I want to show you my favorite hike.
Me: I perspired outside yesterday
Luke: It’s supposed to be a gorgeous day. Plus, I wanted to talk to you about something.
I gripped my phone without responding, and it buzzed again.
Luke: Did I mention it was my favorite hike?
Me: OK What time?
Luke: 9?
Me: Make it 10.
Luke: 10 it is.
He texted me the location in an area of hills west of the Austin city limits.
Me: That’s a drive. Make it 11.
Luke: 10:30
Me: Done
Luke: Have fun shopping, princess
He included a crown emoji, which I answered with a vomiting face.
Me: LOL cu tomorrow
I sent him a thumbs up and dropped the phone back in my purse. He probably wanted to talk about yesterday, which I didn’t. Tension crept up my neck, which I tried to ignore on my way to the coffee shop.
I turned down the next mall corridor, and the cloying scent of cinnamon and sugar hit me from four storefronts away. The inescapable smell lured and repelled at the same time. I didn’t matter. I hadn’t eaten those since I was a kid, and anything from the coffee shop bakery was likely to make fitting into a sexy New Year’s dress that much harder.
Coffee. That’s all I was having. I spotted Abby and waved.
“I can’t believe you were waffling about an invitation to a party at Graham Ryan’s house.” As we strolled through the mall with our coffees, Abby clucked her tongue at me with her regular disapproval of my dating life. Her smooth, dark ponytail swung like a metronome.
As a stylist, she excelled at balanced aesthetics—makeup, clothes, accessories. Her casual shopping outfit involved a jeweled clamp in her hair, a black catsuit, leopard ballet flats, and bright aqua wrap that set off her olive complexion.
Abby also held strong ideas about how to dress up my life. I complained but welcomed the pushes she provided. She aimed for high glamour in every experience, dragging me along on occasion.
“I went a few years ago. Posh people. Stunning food.” Her pendulum of hair kicked into high gear again.
“I’m not big on posh.” My eye twitched. “I talk to Alexa at the gym, but I don't know him. What do I care about going to some rich guy’s fancy party?”
“That isn’t the point. Think about who might be there,” she admonished. “Okay, so you’re not interested in Luke—or so you say. The party will be crawling with successful, eligible guys.”
I cast Abby a sideways glance. “I’m not saying I’m not interested in Luke.”
Abby rushed in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. “You said, ‘He’s only a friend, and we’re not each other’s types,’ about ten thousand times. I’ve always thought your protests were bullshit, by the way. Now, you’re not lying to me and yourself anymore? Exciting.”
She wiggled her eyebrows.
“I’m saying…I mean it’s not like I haven’t thought about him that way.” Her mouth dropped open, and I poked her shoulder to turn her around. We kept walking. “The whole situation is awkward. He was Sean’s best friend, and he’s always been like a second brother.”
The tingle lingering in my body since Luke’s kiss reminded me how much that was a lie even before Abby corrected me.
“He’s never been a brother to you.”
I thought my throat might close up entirely and I’d choke to death. Air somehow found its way out of my lungs, letting me speak. “Luke has always been there for me. Especially after Sean died. Always.”
“There are other reasons why a man chooses to be there for woman, Erin.”
“He doesn’t…” I caught the usual denial starting out of my mouth. “Maybe he does.”
“Of course, he does. The only thing keeping this lie going is how much you want to believe it. The dating gods handed you a gift. You have a super sweet, totally hot guy obsessed with you, and you’re oblivious. Worse. You pretend to be oblivious.”
I answered her truth with my own. “Luke matters to me. I don’t want to screw up what we are by having a relationship.�
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Abby punched my arm, and I feigned a tumble. “Who says you’re going to screw up? You don’t always have to think the worst.”
“My history of wayward dick says otherwise.”
“Not all dicks are wayward.”
“All the dicks in my life have been wayward. Can I enjoy clearing my house of one asshole’s crap for a second before latching onto a new one?”
“I didn’t realize Luke fell into the asshole category.”
“He doesn’t!”
Abby raised her hands. “I know. Your words, sister.”
Having no interest in receiving another lecture about my negative self-talk, I pulled Abby toward the home goods store. The shine of a silver candelabra in the window drew me in like a tractor beam.
My friend tugged at my elbow. “We’re not shopping for trinkets. You need something gorgeous to wear on New Year’s.”
I peered at the glittering housewares, marveling at every carefully designed object. Candlesticks, picture frames, and pearl-handled letter openers — the array of shiny bric-a-brac thrilled. So what if I didn’t need candlelight, print pictures, or receive any mail?
I’d much rather spend my time and money on beautiful objects for my house versus my body any day of the week. The less time I spent dodging my fluorescently lit, half-naked form in a mirror, the better.
But that wasn’t today’s mission, and I was only delaying the inevitable, so we kept walking to the fanciest department store the mall had to offer. The formal wear area was abuzz with willowy Texas blondes pouring through racks of sequined mini dresses.
“Nothing here is going to fit me,” I declared, admittedly without looking.
“Not true.”
