Gripping her wrist, I wrench her palm away. She stares at me in shock, but she fixes it for a fake smile. Ever the actress.
“If you really cared about your reputation, you would date a sweet guy who gives a fuck about you. However, you don’t care. It’s a cross between wanting to be some stupid gossip girl and being popular. Why go with me, the meanest prick on campus, unless the point is to be noticed?”
It’s cruel, the words twisting around her like rose thorns, pricking her skin. Wonder if the Barbie bleeds. Is she too dead from selling herself out for clout, or are there vital organs under that faux-pas tough skin she has?
“You’re such a dick,” she whispers, noticing the people enter the locker room for a clothing change before heading to practice.
Her body is nearly flush with mine when she leans in, her breath low but too loud from her closeness.
“Don’t think we don’t both realize we’re using each other, Aero Austin. You can fuck like a porn star in some cheap ass home video that gets us both off, but it’s not me you’re thinking about.”
I’m unmoved, unwilling to admit anything. Hiding for so long doesn’t put me in a panic. It puts me in a numb heart-shaped box.
“You’re right, Ren. It’s definitely not your pussy I’m thinking about. If you think I’ll admit to who I’m thinking about, you’re in for a rude awakening. Better yet? Enlighten me.”
She steps back. That plastic smile is back as coach and Darby walk by. Then it melts as her rage explodes. “You better not fuck anyone else. I don’t care if your tastes are as insane as you are, Austin, but if you stick that thing in anyone other than me, we’re done.”
Placing my palms in front of my eyes, I rotate them, mocking her and her crybaby tendencies. “Boo hoo,” I say derisively. “Poor princess doesn’t like that she’s not the queen of my cock. If my dick wants to dip elsewhere, don’t worry. You won’t know.”
She lets out this loud angry squawk that nearly makes me laugh. She’s such a spoiled child, needing to be the best, desperate for the top tier, and obsessed with being seen. It’s disgusting but makes so much sense. I’m not the only one with peculiar tastes. If she didn’t come on my shaft every time we fucked, I would think she pined after pussy. After all, there’s something about the way she looks at that other freak—Charizard or someshit—the one who dresses like Gothic Weekly birthed her. Maybe she’s like me and wants someone she can’t have. This stupid relationship is nothing other than a play-by-play.
“You’re a pig, Aero Austin. A disgusting—”
“Put a cork in it, Ren. Talk to you tomorrow. I’ve got shit to do.”
Her little hissy fit as I turn and head toward my locker has me wanting to punch walls until skin splits, leaving my blood as a message that states Don’t pretend anymore.
This anger inside me needs to go. It’s a driving force many days, and while it won’t make me hurt people, restraint will definitely damage me.
The first time I realized my attraction to guys, I told my dad. Bad idea. He called me a faggot. Not that the word bothered me. His fists did. He beat me until my words changed.
That’s why I became the school’s golden boy, why my parents act like I’m the best child, and why I’ve always kept my distance from Trouble.
Gayness isn’t contagious regardless of what my father told me. I knew. Harley knows it. Dad is just too fucking daft to see it.
Either way, I listened.
Kept my distance.
Became what he envisioned so he kept off Trouble’s case.
It was hard. Harley and I were close in secret. Dad being gone all the time and Mom being high or wasted on repeat helped us be together too.
Harley was alone. I could see his misery. Like Serenity, he craved love and needed affirmation that he’s worth it. Unlike her, though, I want to give it to him. I want to hold him tighter and tell him he’s perfect. There are far more things I’m not allowed to want but I do.
That wasn’t always a curse, our craving for one another. What started as a comfort, a way to reassure him and make him feel better became an urge I believed was one-sided. It helped me move away. It’s my fault. He may only be a year younger than me, but he’s my baby brother. It’s my fault he got twisted.
It happened before our kiss. Before lines were crossed entirely. Before everything changed.
“Dad told me not to hang out with you,” Trouble muses from the doorway to my room. “Is there a reason he thinks you have a disease?”
He doesn’t laugh or smile, just hones in on my face, watching everything. That’s Harley, though. He dissects, studies, and pays too much attention to detail. Whether large or minute, he doesn’t miss a thing.
“Maybe. Can you keep a secret?” I ask, curving my finger to tell him to come in. “Close the door behind you, and lock it.”
His brows raise, wrinkling in the center, but he has half a mind to keep his mouth closed. Smart kid.
He shuts the heavy wood, putting the tiny lock into place. The air feels tighter, suffocating, and irritable, almost like a balloon waiting to pop from excessive helium.
As he travels to my bed, standing and staring at me the entire way, I keep my face passive. If I don’t, I’ll crumble.
The past year, we’ve spent secret time together—movies, comic books, you name it—but it’s always done away from home, in the quiet and safety in one of our rooms, or at the park a mile away.
Dad watches me when he actually pays attention. He gives me a scathing look, one that strips me of any fantasy of having a friend in my brother. It ruins my idea of happy, hardening my heart and scraping my soul clean from my body.
“What is it?” Trouble asks after a moment of silence. He bites his lip with nerves.
My palms sweat as I try to form words. The scrape of my jeans as I wipe my damp flesh burns me. It’s like sandpaper abrasions. The rawness from sports wears the skin thinner with each passing season. Now, it’s showing the outcome.
“You know how when you notice a pretty girl,” I start, “and you—”
“I don’t find girls pretty,” he mutters almost angrily.
His face reddens with fear and almost trepidation, and he sucks in a shaky breath. I watch it wheeze out of him a moment later as he tucks his knees under his chin.
“They’re pretty, I guess,” he mumbles.
The correction causes me to crunch my nose. Does he think they’re hot? Is he into guys like me? I’m really confused, and it has nothing to do with my own sexuality.
“What are you saying, Harley?”
His eyes shoot to me at the use of his name. I guess it could come off weirdly. He’s been Trouble to me for a long while. It’s just how it is.
“I…” He pauses and almost tucks his head deeper. “Girls are beautiful… but, Aero… it’s guys who are hot.”
He explains it simply but barely. On the crux of sixteen could do that, I guess.
“It’s okay, Trouble. I’m gay, too.”
That was the first night he stayed in my room and cuddled me. When Dad came home belligerent and drunk, probably after screwing someone, he scared Harley so much that he slipped in my room and begged me to keep him safe.
When Dad found Trouble dressing differently, dyeing his hair, and getting tattoos and that fucking tongue and septum piercing, he flipped. So did I, but it wasn’t because he looked like he wanted to be fucked. No, it was from knowing he would be using that tongue ring on some lucky sonofabitch who wasn’t me.
That night, when he cuddled me, it was the first time my body and flesh both warmed and hardened for my brother. As unnatural as my feelings are, they haven’t abated. It was also six months before he kissed me, which means I ruined him. I’ve fucked him up. Badly.
Chapter Four
Aero
Practice doesn’t last as long as usual. Coach has some plans for his wife and cuts our drills off early. I would be more frustrated, but honestly, my body aches from emotional strain. As much as I would lik
e to blame Serenity, it’s not her who’s constantly taking residence in my thoughts. It’s Harley.
The anger, disappointment, and sadness in his eyes while I finished inside my girlfriend hurt me, but it also made me cum harder than ever before. His gaze locked with mine like that was the hottest I’ve ever been. What’s stuck on my mind is the taste of him and the way he soaked my palm with his stolen pleasure. I wanted to lick every drop so it didn’t go to waste.
All of this is why I find myself driving to my parents’ house and not to my apartment.
The roads blur while my car travels down the remembered paths home. It all seems the same. Trees, boulders, cliffs, and the gravel lead me to the house that holds as many happy moments as terrors.
Harley’s car sits in the long drive, Mom’s too. Dad isn’t here.
Of course not.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been here for the Sunday dinners. Mom hasn’t called. Dad avoids me as much as possible, and Harley sets me off.
It’s better to keep my distance, for Dad’s sake and mine.
After today, though, I need a fix, just enough to hold me off until I’m in college and he’s eighteen. Then I can tell him all the meanness and detachment was for a good reason. I’m protecting us still, keeping us safe. It’s what I’ve always done.
Harley is six months from eighteen. Half a year and he’s mine. Half a year until he can run with me, not from me. Six months until we’re okay.
Our being related is one of the largest obstacles, but I’m willing to try for him. If I get accepted into Valley West, we’ll move. We’ll change our names if we have to.
My friend Texas used to live out there. Maybe he has someone who can save me. He knows how hard it is to live in a small town, to be stuck, suffocating, dying from the inside out.
That’s why he left. He married his best friend’s dad, and now he’s in Vegas, living his best life.
I want that.
Harley.
Us.
Marriage.
After sticking my car in park down the street, I head over to my old house. I make sure Dad didn’t park behind the house or in the garage. When the coast is finally clear, I open the back sliding-glass, sneaking in and avoiding the front doorbell camera.
The kitchen’s empty as I step inside. Noise trickles in from a TV. Must be Mom. She usually zones out while watching soap operas and Maury. She’s a zombie who does nothing except mope and slowly kill Harley, eating his soul to live.
Her room is on the top floor. Trouble’s room is in the basement, mine too. Dad did that purposefully. He didn’t want us hearing when he beat Mom or fucked her brutally as she cried. He’s a freak, and when she stopped condoning his behavior, he took himself out of the equation. Now, he hardly comes home.
Silently stepping down the staircase to the basement, I avoid the spots that creak. They’re how Dad knew we were sneaking out for food late at night.
After safely making it to the bottom, I look around. It’s dark. There are three rooms down here besides our joint bathroom and bedrooms. The last is a second living room Dad donned his Man Cave. He spends next to no time down here. Hell, he doesn’t come here most nights? Why would he have time to waste in his designated room?
Light shines from under Harley’s door, but instead of knocking, I slip through my old room. Since moving out, I haven’t stepped foot in here. It’s nearly the same. The bed’s stripped of everything, and the single dresser, lamp, and random shit I didn’t want to bring with me is still here.
My fingers trail the hollow walls, memories filtering in with each stroke.
When my palm resides on the door to our connecting bathroom, my heart pumps for the first time in a year. The blood rushes in, telling me my heart’s alive and needs sustenance. It needs Harley. My body warms with the new thrum in my veins. It’s heating, blistering, and tingling. It’s ready to explode.
That’s what this house does to me.
As I turn the knob, my favorite memory of Trouble hits me like a fresh wave of weed.
“Fuck me harder,” he hisses, and that’s when I rush to see who’s touching my Harley. Who dare think they get to have him, taste him, fuck him?
When I round the clear glass of the shower, I see his shut eyes. He’s leaning against the wall, his throat exposed, water droplets trailing lasciviously down his flesh, inviting me to touch, to taste, to take, take, take.
I peer downward, seeing if someone is somewhere hiding, but there’s no one, only my brother fisting his cock like he’s angry.
“Please fuck me…”
His moan is so desperate that my own shaft is pushing against my zipper. My heart aches as I wonder who has him all knotted up like this, so twisted that he’s envisioning them inside him, delving into the sweet tightness between his cheeks.
“Aero, fuck.”
My eyes go upward, wondering if he caught me watching, ogling, desiring.
No. It’s me he’s lusting after. It’s me he’s wanting inside him.
“Why can’t I stop, Aero?”
“Because I don’t want you to,” I whisper to myself.
Before he can see me, I rush out.
That night, I jerked so many times my hand was raw. I couldn’t see straight the next day. The fog of what sickness we have held me under water, rushing through my nose and mouth, and made me die a little.
He feels it too.
Even now.
I can’t hide anymore. Avoiding him and staying away are impossible now. My dick aches as the memory leaves me. I wait in our bathroom, trying to calm it down before I rush in there and fuck him like I’ve fantasized about for ages.
The brass of the doorknob cools my skin as I finger the roundness in hope of strength. One would say my brother makes me weak, but they don’t know Harley. He offers strength in a way no one else can.
Whether he realizes it or not, he pushes me to be better, to work harder, and to keep my soul intact. Without him, I would have drowned in my darkness.
My body hums with a scary kind of peace. It’s like I’ve been fighting a war inside my mind for so long, and now that I’m accepting it, it finally relaxes.
As soon as the door pushes open, the scent of Trouble fills me, infiltrating my nose with intense manliness. In the center of the room on his bed, my brother fists his cock, watching his phone. The sounds of two men fucking echoes in my ears. It’s quiet enough that silence would bleed from this room, but it’s so fucking loud to me, knowing he’s getting off to two men instead of me.
Darkness pervades me. A cloud of envy as red and black as can be mixes in my system, swirling like a fog of recklessness, urging me forward.
Swallow me whole, demon. Bring me to my kingdom.
He doesn’t notice me as he thrusts his hips and groans, but fuck, I see him. Creeping toward him, I beg my body to calm, but it beats erratically, drumming like an Escape the Fate song. He lets out this whimper, and I’m done for.
“Stop,” I command.
His phone falls, and his bright green eyes connect with mine. The black part of his pupil is dilated, hiding the pretty effervescent shade that looks nothing like mine. It’s almost feral. Vicious.
“Why?” It comes out as a whimper, and he drags his teeth over his lip, digging in deeply all while thumbing the head of his cock.
I approach him cautiously, my fists tight with infernal cravings, each step more nefarious than the next.
My knees connect with the plush comforter on his bed. It dips from my weight, hiding under me, like it knows my intentions.
Trouble’s gaze doesn’t deter from mine. He knows… He feels it.
When I’m practically on top of him, I close his naked thighs, feeling the hot flesh beneath my hands covered in goosebumps.
Taking his phone next, I lock the screen and toss it on the pile of dirty clothes by his closet.
“Because if you’re going to jerk to something—give your orgasm to someone—it’s going to be me,” I bark, feeling
my skin prickle with our closeness.
His mouth drops open, showing those taunting pieces of metal.
“You and I both know, Trouble, your body, blood, and life are all mine.” My palm shoots out to grab his chin, feeling the force of it before he does. “If you don’t close this mouth, I’ll make good use of it and those piercings.”
He closes it slightly, only opening it to bite on his tongue ring. It unfurls me. Leaning in, the room around us is hushed. We both groan when I bite down, tugging gently as his sweet flavor erupts my taste buds. Fuck me. He twists it in my mouth, the little ball teasing me in the best way.
Release.
Let go.
Give in.
My mind chants for me, and I listen.
“Do you still have that knife I bought you for your seventeenth?” The question comes out before I can stop it resulting in a tilt of his lips.
“The one you shipped to me since you refused to see me after Uly?” He rolls his eyes with amusement. “Yeah, it’s in the drawer.”
His gaze goes to the dresser against the wall, and my blood pumps fiercer, ready to do something that is as wrong as it is right.
Chapter Five
Harley
If you told me ten minutes ago that my brother would have showed up and flirted with me as I opened my favorite porn download to get relief from school earlier, I would have laughed at your stupidity. Guess I’m the dumb one.
Aero searches my dresser, touching everything, not missing an item, all while I watch from my bed.
My dick is out, still hard, and my balls kind of ache.
If I touch while watching him, will he print my skin with bruises?
The thought alone has me testing the theory. Instead of waiting for his direction, I grip my stiff flesh and stroke harder than before. Now, there’s an uninhibited need for pain as he rifles through my stuff.
When the pleasing resonant of metal against metal echoes in the stagnant room, my dick jumps in my palm. Aero turns, his eyes darker than before, headier, unhinged.
Another Family Affair Page 20
