Page 9 of Promised Secret (Promises, Promises #3)

Chapter Six

CLAY

I ignored Dan’s question to focus on the man who’d been feeling him up. I’d watched them dance for a while. At first, Dan looked like he was enjoying himself, grinding up against the man who was very clearly interested.

The more I watched them, the more it felt like I was being gnawed on from the inside out. My skin tingled with a restless energy that had me pacing to try to dispel it.

The people coming up to try to talk or dance with me didn’t help either. They kept distracting me or actively blocked my view. I blamed them for failing to notice Dan’s annoyance sooner.

It was in the way his movements became stiffer, or how his eyebrow twitched in the way it did when he was upset. No one else would have noticed if they weren’t paying close attention to him.

I was always aware.

My body moved to protect him before I could even process what I was thinking. Which was how I ended up being caught following him and grabbing at the person who’d had their grubby hands on him.

“Clay?” Dan tried again when I didn’t answer.

My eyes were still locked on the stranger, my grip on him growing tighter just thinking about how he was all over Dan earlier.

Was it crazy that I wanted to chop his hand off for trying to grope Dan?

Dismemberment was definitely against the police handbook. As a law-abiding officer, it was strictly against the rules, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t think about it.

“Clay,” Dan repeated, this time his warm touch landed on my wrist. He subtly shook his head, and I released the stranger’s hand.

The man shook the hand I’d had in a death grip and glared at me. “That’s right, you better—”

The rest of his sentence abruptly cut off when he saw the look I was giving him. “Fuck, y’all are crazy,” he yelled, back already turned to us in his rush to escape.

I glowered as I watched him leave and tried to push down the urge to follow him and show him just how crazy I’d go to protect the people I cared about.

“Clay.”

Dan’s warning tone had me breaking the daggers I was shooting at the man’s back to look at him.

Dan sighed and swept a hand through his hair. He’d styled it today. His longish bangs, gelled meticulously to frame his face, turned into a mess from the disturbance. Not that it mattered. Dan looked good, even if he was sporting bed head.

“What are you doing here, Clay?” Dan asked again.

I shrugged.

“Oh, no. We’re not playing that game right now. You don’t just get to chase away my dance partner, then stay silent,” he yelled with a finger pointed at my face.

I wasn’t going to think about why I had the sudden urge to suck on his finger.

I looked to the floor before I had more weird thoughts. Maybe I slept wrong or something, since tonight seemed to be filled with them.

“He was being inappropriate to you,” I spoke loud enough to be heard over the booming music.

“That’s what people do here. We’re at a club,” he argued.

“But you weren’t enjoying it.”

Dan opened his mouth, then closed it, and I knew I’d read his body language correctly. When he was dancing with Frederick earlier, I hated it, but I could tell he was enjoying himself. It changed once the other man got his grubby hands on Dan.

Dan closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. I wondered if the flashing lights were giving him a headache.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re here?” he asked again, sounding more tired now.

I tried to shrug again, which earned me a glare that threatened bodily harm if I didn’t cut my bullshit.

“I ran into Rosa on my way to the clinic, and she said you and Frederick were going out for some trouble. I got worried, so…” I rubbed the back of my head, not really wanting to admit the next part.

“So what? You followed me?” he guessed, right on the target.

“You should be more aware of your surroundings when you’re driving. I was behind you the entire ride here,” I replied.

“Jesus, Clay.”

Dan did the angry hand through his hair again, messing up his hairstyle even more. I preferred it this way. He didn’t need to doll himself up to look nice. He looked best in his usual casual and cozy style.

Dan muttered something too soft for me to hear over the blaring music. He shot me a glare, then spun around.

“Where are you going?” I called, grabbing his hand to stop him.

“To dance.”

Panic had my skin feeling too tight. I already had to watch him grind all over Frederick and that asshole. I didn’t want to see him cozy up with someone else.

“Dance with me.”

“Clay…I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” I asked, trying to ignore the sting of rejection. Was I not good enough to dance with him? “You danced with Frederick.”

He sucked in his cheeks. He was looking at me, but something about the way his brown eyes were out of focus told me he wasn’t actually seeing me. He was wrapped up in his own thoughts.

I used the chance to pull him toward me. His body landed against mine, breaking him out of his head as he glared up at me.

I didn’t give him a chance to push himself away and kept him trapped inside my arms. I’d only danced a handful of times in my life, so I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I tried my best to sway my hips in tempo with the music.

“What are you doing?” Dan asked, amusement clear in his eyes.

His chuckle told me I probably looked as stupid as I felt, but I didn’t mind looking stupid in front of him. Dan never judged me.

“Dancing,” I replied. “You’re really not going to dance with me?”

His hand on my chest gripped my shirt as his dark eyes looked into mine. I wanted to know what he was thinking for him to look so serious.

Having been by his side all these years, I thought I knew everything about him. We were best friends. More than that, we were stepbrothers—family. We knew each other better than anyone else.

But there were these moments where Dan would get lost in thought when looking at me, or how he’d go from acting like he usually did to suddenly becoming distant with me, which made me think I didn’t completely understand him as I thought I had.

Not knowing everything about him irritated me more than I cared to admit.

“You make it so hard,” he told me.

I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant by that when his hand slid up my chest, pulling a shiver out of me. I wanted to feel more, but it didn’t last long as his hands found their way around my neck.

After experiencing my sperm donor hitting me—his own son—with a disturbing smile stretching his face like he was enjoying causing me pain, other people’s touch made me uncomfortable.

I didn’t mind it so much with Mom or the gentle pats on the shoulder Victor did instead of hugs. But with Dan? I enjoyed feeling him close to me. It was probably the comfort his touch gave me, since he was the person I felt safest with.

Dan leaned against me just enough for our chests to brush against each other as he swayed along with me. Our eyes locked, and everything else faded into the background.

We weren’t swaying in tune with the upbeat club music anymore, but moved to a slow rhythm of our own instead. One that belonged only to Dan and me.

All the restlessness I’d been feeling this week washed away. I wasn’t filled with worry that Dan might be pulling away from me or that I wasn’t enough for him, because right at that moment, everything was right.

Nothing else in the world might make sense, but Dan and I did. We were best friends, the closest people to each other, and we shared a bond that was unbreakable. And I knew Dan knew that, too.

He closed his eyes lazily and rested his head against my shoulder. I tightened my hold around him and wished I could keep this feeling forever. The gentle buzz that lit up under my skin and the blissful silence that washed away my torrential thoughts.

Was this what peace felt like?

I swept his hair away from his face and pressed a kiss to his temple. Dan looked up at me. There was a wariness in his eyes that I hated seeing. I wanted to take it away from him, to protect him.

So, I did the only thing I knew would comfort him. I leaned down and tried to kiss him, but I was met with something other than his lips.

My eyes popped open to find Dan looking sad.

“We shouldn’t,” he spoke so softly that I more read his lips than heard the words.

His hand blocking my mouth kept me from replying, so I couldn’t question why we shouldn’t.

It wasn’t like it would be the first time we kissed. From our disastrous first kiss when he was nine and me ten, to the first time we kissed each other as adults in college, there had been countless more kisses between us scattered throughout the years.

It first started as a way to comfort him when he was particularly sad over a breakup. We’d both been drunk in our apartment during college, and it probably was a mistake, but neither of us had stopped it.

In my drunk-hazed brain, I might have thought it was wrong—stepbrothers shouldn’t be kissing each other—but kissing Dan had stopped his tears when the alcohol hadn’t.

We didn’t talk about the kiss the next day.

I chalked it up to a drunken accident, but after Dan’s next breakup, we kissed again.

We were drunk the first few times it happened, but over the years, kissing, even without the alcohol clogging our brains, wasn’t uncommon, though it was always as a form of comfort whenever Dan’s dates didn’t go well.

Which made me wonder why he didn’t want me to comfort him with a kiss now? Was it because we were out in public?

Stepbrothers probably shouldn’t be going around kissing, but I didn’t dive too deeply into that thought. I didn’t want to.

All I knew was that it was what Dan had needed at the time, and there wasn’t a whole lot I wouldn’t give him.

Plus, Dan was a good kisser, probably from all the practice he got from all his dates, but that was something else I chose not to think about.

I was disappointed not to get the comfort of his kiss right now, but I’d take holding him close for now.

It probably should have alarmed me that I’d started relying on the comfort of his kisses, too, but that thought was shoved into the back with everything else I chose not to think too deeply into.

Our dynamic couldn’t fall apart if I didn’t pick at the loose threads.

Dan’s hand fell away, landing back over my shoulder. We continued holding each other as we rocked to our own beat and pretended that nothing was wrong.