Page 60 of The Sun & Her Burn

“I’ll clean up at home,” he said in a voice that seemed crushed somehow, chopped chewed up. Like it hurt to speak. “I need to leave.”

His yellow gaze found mine over the top of her head, but I looked away before we could make eye contact like the fucking bastard that I was.

“Right,” Linnea said. “Call me later, okay?”

He kissed her head without another word and carefully walked past me so that we didn’t touch in the close space.

I watched him go with my heart in my throat.

“Adam,” Linnea said, jerking my attention away from the empty doorway.

She was smiling, just a soft flex at the edge of her wide mouth.

I watched as she extended her hand to me and wiggled her ringed fingers.

“C’mon,” she said. “Let me sort you out, okay?”

I swallowed the razor blades on the back of my tongue and tasted blood.

So I nodded instead of speaking and let Linnea thread her fingers through my uninjured hand and tug me forward into the light.

14

LINNEA

Of course, it wasn’t a surprise.

Not really.

To be around Sebastian and Adam was to be torn asunder between the gravitational pull of two planets that were meant to merge as one. Their tragic love story was written in every line of their bodies and every truncated gaze.

But to have actually stood in that small pantry with those two big, handsome men in the throes of animalistic passion had been electrifying. Almost terrifying.

What might they do to a girl if she tried to step between them?

Not to stop that rampant desire, though I had a feeling they might both be grateful for someone to tell them to cease and desist.

But to stoke that fire.

To watch as Adam’s square palms skate down Sebastian’s v-shaped torso to the taut muscles arrowing into his groin. To witness the kiss they must have shared, a mouth-eating, tongue sucking extravaganza that would have made me wet in seconds.

Far from shameful, their sexual chemistry was intoxicating.

I could understand that even after ten years, it was not something that could be diminished or changed.

It was a part of this world just like the green grass and the sun above.

So why was Adam acting as if it was only a matter of time before I condemned him to slaughter?

I had cleaned up his hand, happy to find the cuts shallow and easily tended to, and then pushed him toward the shower while I took the one down the hall to get ready for our lunch date at Nobu.

I thought about the expression on his face as I rinsed off and applied my makeup, going heavier than usual because I knew we’d be in the press the moment we pulled up to the restaurant.

He’d looked so frightened as he watched Sebastian walk out.

As if he were both afraid Seb would never come back and afraid that he would.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out there was some internalized homophobia there, and it made my heart break for him.