He breathes out a long, slow breath and sits next to me. “Listen, Lexie. I’m really sorry I led with sex because that’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?”
He lifts my hand off the bed and traces the lines of my palm with a fingertip. “Even before I got your text, I’d been thinking a lot about this, and I don’t think it has to be one or the other. I think we can be friends and lovers.”
I bury my face in my hands. “I want that so much, but I’m scared.”
His arms circle me, and he pulls me to his shoulder. “I’m scared too, but the one thing I know is I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. This feels like forever to me, Lexie. It really does.”
I’m not usually swept away by my emotions, but, all of a sudden, I can’t contain them. It’s like everything I’ve been working so hard to suppress erupts out of me. The love, the lust, the fear, the agony, the shame, come heaving out of my soul on sobs that I can’t stop.
“I’ve got you,” Trent whispers into my hair, and at that instant, I know he does. And I know he always will.
When my sobs turn to hiccups, I pull my face out of his chest and look at him. “I love you.”
He smiles and reaches for his jeans on the floor.
“What are you going to do?” I ask with a sniffle as he pulls his BlackBerry from his pocket. “Post it on Facebook? Dad and Julie would love that.”
He pulls me back into his arms and flips through his menu. “That wasn’t in my general plan, no.” He pokes at the screen a few times with his thumb, then lays the phone on the bed next to us. “I would do this for you real time, but I was kind of in a hurry and trying to pack light,” he says as music starts.
It only takes a chord for me to know the guitar in the recording is Trent. It’s a tune I haven’t heard before. The vocals start low, and I listen as he sings about the person he trusted with his soul, and now the feeling has swallowed him whole. By the time he works up to the chorus, I already feel tears pressing at the corners of my eyes again.
You picked me up and helped me heal,
You taught me what it meant to feel.
Now I can, now I do, and everything I feel is you.
I would never do you wrong,
or let you down or lead you on.
I can’t stop now, I’ll come unglued, when everything I feel is you.
The tears start in the middle of the last verse, about how we’ve had each other’s backs for so long, and he knows it won’t be easy but that he’s lost without me, and I feel like home to him. By the time the last chord fades out and Trent shifts off the bed to fish something out of his duffel, I’m a weepy mess again.
I reach for him to pull him back to me, only knowing I need his arms around me, but when I wipe my eyes and look at him, he’s on a knee in front of me with a black velvet box in his palm. When he opens it, the diamond catches the fading light and sparkles. It’s a simple round solitaire in a thin white gold band. Not big, but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I came here today because when you finally realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” he says, nearly quoting the line from When Harry Met Sally that always makes me cry.
I can’t speak past the hot, pulsing lump in my throat.
“You never seem to run out of ways to blow my mind, Lexie. You’re my best friend, and you’re the one woman I can imagine spending the rest of my life with. Do you know how lucky that makes me? Marry me. Please.”
When I still can’t speak, he draws me off the bed, and I curl into him where he kneels on the floor.
“Please.” He cradles my face in his hands, wiping my tears with his thumbs. “I miss you so much, and I never want us to be apart again.”
“I love you,” I whisper.
An unsure smile plays over his perfect lips, and his eyebrow quirks. “Is that a yes?”
I sniffle back tears and nod, and he pulls the ring out of the box and slides it onto my finger.
He showers my face with kisses, and pure, unadulterated joy bubbles out of me in laughter, but then his kisses find my mouth, tender and sweet. His fingers thread into my hair as his lips brush softly over mine.
“I love you, Lexie,” he whispers. “I always have.”
After a brief pause for an equipment change and to relocate to the bed, he loves me again, and this time it’s warm and gentle and so tender that it hurts. My heart sings to the slow rhythm, and I never want the feeling to end. I want to lie in this bed forever as he moves on top of me, inside me, through me. I’ve never felt closer to anyone than I do right this second. And as he brings me slowly and surely to the sweetest, most intense climax I’ve ever experienced, I know. We were made for this—for each other. Nothing we could have said or done would have changed it.
After, I lay curled in his embrace, drinking in his spicy scent, his strong, sure arms, his warmth, and all else that is Trent, and we fall asleep. When I wake, it’s dark, but in the little bit of moonlight filtering through the window, I see by the sparkle of his beautiful brown eyes that he’s awake too.
He kisses my cheek. “Are you happy?”
I moan my affirmative and burrow deeper into his warmth.
He sighs, deep and weary, and I pull my face out of his shoulder and look at him, suddenly worried. “Aren’t you?”
He bites his lips between his teeth, and I stop breathing for a second, afraid he’s changed his mind. “I am,” he finally answers. “I just realized why I’ve never been happy with anyone else. I’ve been looking for you in every girl I’ve ever been with.”
The second he says it, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. “Oh, shit!”
His eyes spring wide. “What?”
“What about Sam?”
He grimaces. “She’s a little pissed at me right now.”
“At you?” I thought it would be me she was furious with.
He tucks a strand of my crazy, just-fucked hair behind my ear. “I told her I’m in love with someone else.”
“You didn’t tell her it was me?”
He shakes his head. “I know we have some things to work out before we go public with this, so, no. Mom and Randy don’t even know I’m here. They think I’m spending spring break on campus.”
My stomach knots at the thought of what “going public” means. I focus on the smaller picture to keep from launching into a full-on panic attack, and for the moment, the smaller picture is Sam. “You were … together, right? So, she probably assumed, you know, that you loved her.”
He sighs. “That first night, when she came by the house just after you left, we went out and talked”—his gaze lifts to mine—“mostly about you. I wanted to know if you’d maybe said anything … told her you were into someone. We sort of connected, and by Thanksgiving, it was obvious you didn’t want anything to do with me, so I was just trying to do what you wanted. I was trying to move on, but …” He trails off and scratches the top of his head. “I couldn’t.”
“Why would you think that I didn’t want anything to do with you?”
“Well, let’s see … maybe it was when you texted me you’d confessed everything and hoped you wouldn’t … how did you put it … burn in hell? Yeah, that was it. And then you never texted me again.”
He sounds a little angry, which makes me a little defensive. “I did too!”
“Only an occasional picture, or a line or two in response to my texts. I figured you didn’t want to hear from me anymore.”
He’s right. “I was just … seriously confused.”
“Well, Sam wasn’t. I even told her I was on the rebound, and I didn’t see anything serious happening between us, but she didn’t care.”
“So you slept with her.”
“Lexie,” he says, lifting his fingers to my face and pulling my gaze back to his, “I never slept with her. I haven’t slept with anyone since you.”
I shak
e his hand off my face but hold his gaze. “You went out with her the night you got home for Christmas—left me standing there.”
“We agreed that nothing could happen between us before you left. I was just trying to honor that. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“But the concert … the Hyatt.”
“We went to the concert and dinner, but I told her I couldn’t stay.”
“But she … she …”
“She wanted more. I know that, and I’m sorry. But I was straight up with her from the beginning … well, not about you, but about the fact that there was someone else.”
“So, at Christmas, if I’d … if I’d gotten up the nerve to tell you I was in love with you, you would have said, ‘Okay’ and not gone out with Sam?”
His eyes darken, and his voice gets quiet. “I would have made love to you all night long.”
My heart aches so hard. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear it … how you’d react. I was scared.”
I don’t get it. “You’ve always been so confident with girls. Why were you scared?”
His fingertip traces my eyebrow, and I shiver. “It’s easy to be confident when there’s nothing to lose. When the stakes are everything … you … it’s a little harder.”
Even now, there’s something a little unsure in his voice. I pull him closer because I need him to know there’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here, in his arms. “I should have said it.”
His lips brush my forehead, and I close my eyes and revel in the feeling of Trent this close. “I wanted to tell you how I felt. I planned it, a whole big speech pretty similar to the text you sent me. But then I couldn’t read you. Everything was so awkward, and you seemed weird about being around me. We’d never been like that before, and it nearly killed me.” He shrugs. “I chickened out, afraid to make it worse, I guess. And, stupidly, I kind of I hoped you might say something to stop me from going with Sam if you’d changed your mind. Then I’d know what you were thinking. But you didn’t.”
“I want to hear it.”
“What?”
I pull back and look into his sincere chocolate eyes. Butterflies tickle my stomach with the sudden realization this is real. He’s really here. He came halfway around the world for me. I thumb the diamond on my finger as the love I have for this amazing man swells and overflows, nearly drowning me. “Your speech. The one you had planned. I want to hear it.”
The hint of a smile settles over his gorgeous face. “Wow. Talk about putting a guy on the spot. Okay … so … it went something like this.” He blows out a nervous breath and locks his gaze on mine. “Do you know how lucky we are? I think we found each other too soon in life to recognize what we had, but the truth is, I’ll never know anyone as well as I know you, and I’ll never love anyone so much. I’m sorry I can’t be who you thought I was. I can’t be the brother you look up to anymore. Not when all I can think about is being more to you. From the first time I met you, you’ve affected me like no one else ever has. I don’t want to hide it from ourselves or the world anymore. I love you and I want to be with you. Some people might think the stepsister/stepbrother thing is a little warped, but they say the most stable relationships are the ones that are based in friendship. We have that.”
He kisses me, and I lose myself for a second, but then I remember all the hurdles we still have and what he said about “going public.” “So, what happens now?” I ask, parroting back his words from right after the first time we made love.
His fingers stroke down my back, sending goose bumps over my skin. “First this,” he says, rolling on top of me and kissing me again, slow and deep.
I smile up at him as an electric tingle ripples through me. “And second?”
He props himself above me on his elbows. “We need to tell our parents.”
“What do we say? ‘Hey guys, guess what! Trent and I have secretly been sleeping together for months.’ ”
He brushes my hair off my shoulder and kisses my neck. “I can’t speak for you, but I’m going to tell them how I feel. I’m going to tell them I’m in love with you.”
I trace my fingertip along the lines of the tattoo over his heart and press my palm into it, feeling his heartbeat. It’s slow and steady and calm, and I realize mine is too. All the panic is gone. Our matching kanji tattoos over our hearts—the symbol for knowledge. Our hearts know. They always have. “I am so in love with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“MEN ARE DIRTBAGS, that’s all there is to it.” Sam slouches into the blue vinyl chair in the back of Starbucks clutching her iced mocha to her chest as she finishes her tirade against men in general and Trent in specific.
Katie looks at me with a grimace. “Speaking of which, did you hear about Rick?”
“Rick,” I say with a shake of my head. Three and a half years of my life, and it feels like it belonged to someone else. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, Rick was all about going through the motions. There was no intensity. No passion. “No. What about Rick?”
She grimaces. “Stacey’s pregnant, and she’s saying it’s his.”
I hang my head. There’s no gloating. No one wins here. “Wow. That’s tough.”
“Like I said, dirtbags,” Sam mutters.
I sip my espresso, and my face scrunches involuntarily. It’s not nearly as strong or good as Italian espresso. I can’t help the mournful emptiness in my chest at the memory of so many afternoons sipping espresso with Alessandro. I hope he’s okay. “I don’t know if they’re all dirtbags.”
“Well, let’s start close to home, shall we?” Sam says, sitting straighter. “Your ex-boyfriend. Dirtbag, yes or no?”
I nod. “I’ll concede that one.”
“Your brother. Dirtbag or no?” she fires, her eyes narrowing to slits.
“No.”
Her mouth drops into an O as her eyes fly wide. “So a guy treats you like shit, and he’s a dirtbag, but he treats me like shit, and he’s not?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Her eyes narrow again, and her fist clenches the plastic cup so hard, I’m expecting it to explode all over her at any second. “Yes you did. I asked point-blank if your stepbrother was a dirtbag, and you said no.”
I swallow. I wish I could just tell her. I’ve been home four weeks, and Trent and I have been waiting for the right time to tell Dad and Julie. We have to tell them first, that much we know. But when I first got home, Julie was all, “Oh my word, Lexie! It’s so good to have you home!” and, “Our whole family is finally together again!” I didn’t want to ruin all that with our big confession, so I talked Trent into waiting. Then Julie got all weepy for like a week and kept saying how this was going to be the last of our time as a family because Trent had graduated and would be “flying the coop,” so I didn’t want to make her feel worse. But the longer we wait, the more awkward the whole thing gets.
“I just mean … did he ever lie to you?” I ask, remembering what Trent told me.
“Yes,” she spits.
“What did he say that wasn’t true?”
“He …” She bites her cheek for a second as she thinks, but then her eyes widen and shoot to me. “You knew, didn’t you? And you didn’t tell me? He told you he was into someone else.”
I shake my head. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
She springs out of her chair and glares down at me. “He did! He told you, and you just let me go on about him like some kind of pathetic loser.”
“No, Sam. I didn’t know he was in love with someone else until just a few weeks ago.”
“He’s in love with her?” she says, exasperated, her free hand flying to her perfect auburn waves and yanking. Her eyes widen even more. “Oh my God! He told you who, didn’t he?”
I drop my head into my hand, warding off the headache that’s brewing behind my eyes. “Yes. He told me.”
She flops into her chair. “Who is it?”
&
nbsp; When I lift my head and look up at her, there’s murder in her eyes. “Who it is doesn’t matter. He said he told you from the start that there was someone else.”
She slouches back in her seat and folds her arms across her chest. “He also said she wasn’t into him.” She glares up at me. “He just told me a few months ago that she’d met someone else. Why would he say that if he didn’t want me to try to take his mind off her?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, Sam. Maybe he was just trying to be honest. Maybe he just needed to talk to someone.” I remember his saying how happy he was that I’d found someone to confide in. He didn’t have anyone.
Katie’s straw slurps in the bottom of her iced-coffee cup, and I look at her.
“How much weight did you say you lost?” I ask to change the subject before I get myself into serious trouble.
“Thirty-two pounds,” she says proudly. Apparently, her roommate at San Diego talked her into joining one of those fat-burning boot camps. It’s turned her into a whole new person. Her dark brown hair is pulled back off her face, and she’s wearing lip gloss and mascara. Her neckline is a little lower than I ever remember seeing before, and she’s in shorts instead of her usual jeans. I’ve always thought she was pretty, but now she’s stunning.
“You look amazing. Maybe I should try your boot camp,” I say.
She rolls her eyes but smiles.
When Katie drops me off at home, and her Beetle chugs away, Julie is on her way out.
“I’m running out to the store,” she says, giving me a quick hug. “Is there anything you need?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If you think of anything, text me.”
“ ’Kay, Julie.”
“Your dad will be home around seven, so we’ll plan on eating then.” She closes the door, and when I head up the stairs, I hear Trent singing in the shower. I’m more than a little tempted to join him in there, but I restrain myself. Instead, I head to my laptop at my desk and flip it open. When I see I’ve got one unread e-mail, I assume it’s from Abby. Grant was in London this past weekend. The fact that he made the trip surprised me in a good way, but I’m still worried about her. I spin her leather bracelet on my wrist as I open my in-box.
A Little Too Far Page 23
