Page 32 of Enemies with Benefits (Finding the Right Brother #1)

Well, that took me off guard, and I leaned back with a startled laugh. "That’s news to me. Where in the fuck did that even come from?"

"You've always been like that. Everything is just so easy, and you expect everyone else to have it as easy as you do."

"Again, confused where the fuck that's coming from.

And getting pissed because you sound like a dick head who doesn't know what he's talking about.

" It wasn't like I pretended I’d had a particularly hard life, especially compared to some people.

That didn't mean my life had been easy , and even vaguely insinuating that I had floated through life without struggle was stupid.

His face contorted for a moment before he grimaced and looked away, peering out at the rain. "Before...a few weeks ago, what I knew about you was that you were straight. You'd never shown any interest in guys. Then I find out that isn't true."

"Right, things can change when you leave high school."

"I know that. But it doesn't look like it's bothered you in the slightest."

"Should it?"

"Does me."

Reflex told me to shoot down the idea as stupid, to roll my eyes at his constant need to make everything a struggle. The words died in my throat before they could be given a voice as I watched him, his expression strained, his fingers curled into fists on his knees.

"It used to," I replied before thinking what I was doing.

The strain on his face gave way to a mild surprise as he glanced at me. “What?"

I shrugged. “Things weren't like they are now.

Even back in school, I knew there was something.

..different about me, and deep down, I suspected what it was.

It wasn't until I left high school that I had my first really clumsy experience with another guy, and I couldn't deny it anymore.

Even then, it wasn't easy to admit, and I was practically on the verge of a heart attack trying to admit it finally. "

"To your family?” he asked with an incredulity that bordered on suspicion. " Your family?"

I laughed a little. “Yeah, man, even my family."

"That's stupid, your family was known by everyone for being cool with just about anything."

Annoyance flashed through me. “Yeah? And what's got you so scared about admitting it to yourself? I hope it's not your parents, because they're gone. And from what I saw, your buddy, Kayden, wouldn't give a shit if you told him you were into guys. Emotions are fucking stupid, especially fear."

He opened his mouth and then closed it gently with a thoughtful grunt. “Yeah, I guess...sorry, that was stupid of me."

Anything I might have said in return was lost in the face of an apology I would never have predicted. I didn't think he was even capable of the words, let alone use them for me. I supposed it was a sign of the war that was waging inside him, which, if I were honest, I understood all too well.

I sighed. “If it makes you feel any better, at least your first time was somewhat fun."

"Was it?"

"Dude, you got off hard ."

"You didn't your first time?"

"No, we were both drunk off cheap boxed wine at some party, both of us so deep in the closet we would have passed Narnia if it existed.

Just drunken awkward fumbling, some groping, he got off in thirty seconds flat and made a mess of my shirt, and then ran when he got that post-nut clarity.

Little shit left me in the lurch. So I got my bi awakening and didn't even get an orgasm out of it. "

Jace snorted. “You know, it shouldn’t, but somehow you getting fucked over like that does make me feel a little better."

"Wow, it's nice to know my suffering is good for something."

"I think you've managed to recover in that amount of time."

"Yeah, well, the bad sex maybe. Took me a little longer to deal with what that meant for me. And even longer to lose my best friend."

Jace's brow jumped. “Wait, you fooled around with Logan?"

I couldn't help but laugh at the open shock on his face.

“Yeah. Sometimes, I wonder if that was part of why we were so close for so long.

Both of us were closet cases, and both of us were into each other.

But the minute we tried to step out of the closet, he freaked out and backed deeper into it, and decided he wasn't as into me as he thought. "

"Oh, so he didn't...you guys didn't?—"

"Nothing else happened between us. After that, he stopped talking to me, went off to college, and got on with his life, without me in it.

Last I heard, he married some girl a year later, had two kids, got divorced, had two more kids with two more women, and now works for some construction company and apparently bitches endlessly on Facebook about how fucked up the system is because he's broke all the time from child support. "

"Jesus," Jace grumbled, wrinkling his nose. "No offense, but from how much of a man whore you used to be, I would have expected you to have a kid out there."

"Mmm, that's a bold claim for you to make," I said, glancing over at Micah, who was now practicing floating on his back.

I recognized it as a sign that he had probably gotten himself too riled up earlier and was consciously doing something that still required focus, but was far calmer.

It was something Moira had worked with him on over the past few years, and at eight, he was clearly able to do it on his own.

"Alright, that's...actually fair. Never mind."

I laughed, raising my hand and making a cutting motion. “Plus, I took care of any possibility of that happening many years ago. You wouldn't believe how hard you have to fight to have something like that done. Doctors are so convinced that eventually you'll change your mind."

He cocked his head. “Wow, you actually found a doctor willing to do that?"

"Yep."

"How?"

"Female urologist. If there's anyone who understands that you don't want to risk kids and want a procedure done at a young age that most doctors refuse to do just in case, it’s a woman."

"That was good thinking."

"I have my occasional moment."

"Regretted it like the other doctors said you would, yet?"

"Nope. How about you?"

"What do you mean?"

I glanced over at Micah, smirking when his head sank beneath the water before he corrected himself, snorting water in the process. "Regretted procreating yet?"

"No," he said quickly. "I mean...I'm not sorry the kid exists, he's a good kid. I was just...never sure about being a parent, and now it turns out I didn't get a choice, and now I've got that choice, and it just...it's a lot."

"You know, it's alright not to know yet. Not everything has to have an answer right away. My sister didn't exactly give you much of a chance to deal with everything beforehand."

"Would she have told me at all if I hadn't come in here that day?"

"Do you want the honest answer to that?"

"She probably wouldn't have, I know."

"Probably not."

His shoulders slumped at that, and he sighed heavily, looking back toward Micah, who was now using one of the rails at the pool ladder to stay afloat, clearly having given up on trying to float.

"I just...I still don't know how to feel about that.

I get why she didn't tell me in the first place, but it just doesn't sit right with me that I had a kid out there the whole time and never knew.

Never got the chance to decide if I was ready to be a parent or not. "

"Would it help if I said that she was fucked up for making that choice for you? You deserved to know."

He snorted. “What a weird place in my life, where you, of all people, are backing me up on something."

"Yeah, well, life is weird."

"Tell me about it."

I didn't have to think too hard to put myself in his shoes.

I absolutely knew I didn't want kids, and being an uncle was the closest I ever wanted to get.

Yet if my vasectomy had failed and I got a woman pregnant, I would want to know if she carried that kid to term and decided to raise it.

Not only would I deserve to have a say in whether I was in that hypothetical kid's life, but that kid would deserve a chance to have a father in their life as well.

It was that last thing which really bothered me, even more than deserving to have a choice.

My sister knew just as well as I did what it was like to grow up without a father.

Sure, Marcus was a good man, and it was nice to have a father figure, but even then, I had lost someone who meant the world to me.

Sure, I had gotten over it...mostly, but that event still left its mark on my life, and I knew it had been the same for her.

So what was it like for Jace, whose father had been an abusive piece of shit from what I'd heard?

To be the sort of person who was terrified of the idea of being a parent, not just dead set against it, to find out you actually had a kid?

I could barely imagine how awful it had to be, knowing you had a kid the whole time and now trying to figure out if you were the right person to be a father.

Parents left a mark on you, sometimes it was the gentle touch that carried you through life, or in Jace's case, the scars left behind by the person who should have been your protector and caretaker.

"You're an insufferable asshole," I told him without thinking.

His eyes widened, and he turned to glare at me. “Thanks, like I didn't already know you thought that."

"But you're not an awful person," I told him quickly, knowing I'd already dug the damn hole, so now I had very little time to recover. "You're not your dad."

Fear flashed through his eyes before the shutters came down, and he frowned. “What would you know about me? You can't stand me."

"There's a difference between being an insufferable prick and a monster," I said with a shrug. "We're not doomed to become our parents, even if we're terrified of it sometimes."

He gave me a confused look. “What would you have to fear about becoming your parents?"