Page 23

Chapter Twenty

LAIKEN

June

I’ve never felt the tightness in my chest over someone that I do right now. I close my eyes, digging my fingers into the dirt, feeling the way the earth beneath my hands gives way.

“Laiken?”

Sitting back on my haunches, I look up at Kellan. “Hey.”

His eyebrows are knitted together. “Are you okay?”

“That obvious, huh?”

He crouches on the ground beside me. “You seem to come here when you need to think. But today, you look like your pet died.”

I sigh. “Sorry. Just… thinking.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes, but I can’t.”

“Oh. Well… I will listen if you want to say anything. And nothing will leave the thin plastic walls of my greenhouse.”

I smile, despite the heaviness on my chest. For a minute, I concentrate on the planter I’ve been working on. “I’ve spent most of my life alone,” I say. “I’ve been happy. I enjoy my life. I’ve never felt like I’ve been missing something. But then this guy walks into my life and everything changes.”

“That’s good.” Kellan smiles.

I nod. “It’s not, though. Literally any other person in the entire world would be better. This isn’t just complicated. It’s going to be the bad kind of explosive when the world learns of it. Which I think makes it sound like I’m having an affair. I’m not.”

He shrugs. “Right now, I’m a vault. It can be a cat, and sure, I’ll silently judge you, but nothing will come out of my mouth.”

I laugh. “Thanks.”

“It’s not a cat, right?”

I shove him. “Ew.”

Kellan grins. “Cool.”

We’re quiet for several minutes.

“You’re worried about the explosion.”

“I’m worried about what life looks like after the explosion.

I think we can endure that. It’s what comes after that I’m worried about.

I keep trying to put myself in the other position and wonder how I’d feel.

How I’d react. But the problem is, I know the outcome I want.

The one we need. And bottom line, I’m not in that position.

I’m in the one I’m in. So, it’s easy to say what I’d do when I don’t know if that’s the truth at all. ”

Kellan nods. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want?”

“Ideally—”

He shakes his head. “No. Just the question. No criterion. What do you want?”

The question hangs in the air for a very long time. “Him,” I whisper. “But…”

I don’t finish the but because that’s not his question. It doesn’t change the fact that there’s a very long but.

Kellan stays with me for a while, even though I don’t say anything more. Eventually, he leaves me, clapping my shoulder with his dirt-covered hand, and leaves me to the silence of the greenhouse.

I spend the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening with my hands in the dirt. I’m not sure I do anything but make a mess and maybe create more work for Kellan tomorrow. When I finally leave, the sun is on the way down. I don’t go home, but head in the opposite direction toward the ferry.

My feet walk past the docks, and I end up on the beach where I wander and think. I walk around Bane Island along the shore, making three entire revolutions as I think about my conversation with Kellan. My loyalty or my heart. Which do I follow? Which do I make right?

It’s difficult to explain my situation without giving it away.

Too many details would blow the whole thing wide open as if I’d dropped names.

Everyone knows that Nason and I have been friends since childhood.

Everyone knows we came here together. Everyone knows I’ve been practically a third parent to Lie as he grew up.

But that little boy is an adult now. I never had inappropriate feelings about him.

Not even when he began flirting with me when he was sixteen.

It was funny. I figured this was a rite of passage, right?

Learning to flirt, and I was someone he knew.

Someone he was comfortable with. Someone not technically family to try out his skills and come into his own.

It wasn’t until he came home from college this last time that I looked at him and thought, wow. As if I’d never seen him before in my entire life.

He wasn’t little Elijah, Nason’s son. He was Elijah Cain, a young man with adult thoughts and passions and an ass that I was quickly obsessed with.

I can’t remember a time I’ve ever looked at Lie’s ass before that day. He was simply assless. He left a twenty-year-old kid last fall and somehow returned as a twenty-year-old adult.

It was all a mistake. I shouldn’t have flirted. I shouldn’t have let him see how fucking enamored I am with him. How completely and totally drooling of his perfect ass.

I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have held his hand. I shouldn’t have put my dick in him.

I shouldn’t have let feelings get involved. At the very least, I should have steeled myself against emotional involvement and let this be nothing but physical.

My eyes roll. I can’t even listen to myself because, right, like that was ever going to happen.

In a way, it feels as if Lie was always meant for me. Nason wasn’t. There was a brief moment in time when I crushed on my best friend. There were times when I thought life would be so easy if we loved each other.

What really happened is I now have a piece of Nason in front of me who is perfect for me. Everything about him, except that he’s Nason’s son.

That’s a big exception, though. Not a small, piddly thing I can just brush off.

The question plaguing me is what I’m supposed to do.

“Maybe that’s the wrong question,” I murmur to myself. Kellan asked me what I want. What do I want? Not in an ideal world. Not if I take one thing out of the equation. What do I want?

When I look up, I find I’m standing in front of Nason’s house. All the lights are off, which isn’t surprising since my phone says it’s almost one in the morning. Oof. I’ve been wandering for hours!

I creep around the side of the house and tap gently on Lie’s window. Silence. Is he even home? I tap again. After a third attempt, his sleepy face pops up. When he meets my eyes, his eyebrows knit together in confusion.

He slides the pane up. “You forget where the door is?” he asks. “Or how to read a clock?”

“Sneak out,” I say. “Come over. I have things to say and I’m going to lose my nerve if I don’t say them now.”

“Laiken—”

“Please, Lie.”

He closes his eyes. I think he’s going to refuse, but his head nods subtly, and he backs away.

I move away, glancing at the side of the house. His bedroom windows are the only ones on the side. His parents’ room is beside his, but the large closet is on the outside wall, so there are no windows. They can’t see me where I stand.

Lie appears a minute later, barefoot, shirtless, and staring at me with his hair sticking up. I grin, nodding toward my house, so he follows.

Inside, I lock all the damn doors and pull him into my bedroom, bringing him into bed and pulling him to my chest. His body is stiff. Tense. Hesitant.

“I’m sorry for how I’ve been treating you this week,” I say. “I’ve been caught in this endless loop, unsure what to do.”

“I figured.”

“Nason walking into the house while I literally had my dick in your guts really freaked me out. I was borderline having a panic attack once you left that night. Losing Nason will be devastating, and I feel like that isn’t just a possibility, Lie.

It’s an inevitability. He’s not going to forgive me.

This isn’t something he’s going to look beyond. ”

“Why did you drag me into your bed for this conversation?” he mutters.

I grip him tightly. “Because losing you will break me, Lie.”

His breathing stops. His heart races against my chest.

“I don’t know what happened here. I keep thinking about all the shit I should have done. How I should have handled this. How much of myself I should have allowed to get close to you, but at the end of the day, we both know the answer.”

“It shouldn’t have happened at all,” he whispers.

“Correct. That’s the right thing. On both of us.” I roll us over so I’m on top of him, so I can stare into his beautiful, dark eyes. “But you know what I really feel? What I’ve been trying to fight for fucking weeks while it just grows and grows?”

He swallows, shaking his head.

“I have this overwhelming feeling that you were always made for me. As stupid as it is, I have this irrational, stupid feeling that Nason knew that, and he made you for me. He even branded you as such by giving my middle name as yours.”

“I’m not sure he’d agree with that logic,” Lie says, amused.

“I know, right? I’m standing by that logic.

” He snorts. “But the point isn’t that exactly.

The point is, there are a lot of things I can say I can’t do with you, but they’re all lies.

The only thing I can’t do is walk away from you.

I can’t let this end. I can’t stop being with you.

I can’t stop myself from falling in love with you. ”

Lie takes a deep breath, eyes wide and shining. He doesn’t speak for so long that I’m shaking.

“Say something,” I demand.

“I… I thought you were, uh… breaking up with me.”

I rest my forehead on his and close my eyes.

“I’m sorry. That’s the right thing to do here.

We both know that.” He nods. “There’s no way in hell I’m doing that.

I’m not letting you go. I can’t spend the rest of my life watching you with someone else.

You belong to me. I’ve never found my person because I was waiting for you. ”

“Waiting for me to become legal?” he teases.

I cringe. “Ugh. Don’t ever bring that part up. I’m struggling with two things. One is that you’re Nason’s son, which you know. But the other is your age, and the fact I’ve been in your life since the day you were born. It’s fucking creepy, Elijah.”

He laughs. “When you put it like that, yeah, it is. Let’s never speak of that weirdness again.”

“So you know, I never preyed on you. You were a child to me right up until the day you stepped off the plane from college this last time. You left Kala a child in my eyes, but the person who walked off that plane wasn’t a child anymore.

You looked the same, sounded the same, and yet my entire world shifted as soon as I looked at you. ”

“That’s kind of romantic.”

I press my lips to his, and then along his jaw, down his neck. I suck on his collarbone. Lie sighs. “You didn’t tell me how you feel about this. I’ve done a lot of talking. I need you to talk now.” I press my face into his neck and mentally brace myself for his words.

“I’m scared of what my dad is going to say,” he says quietly. “He’s going to be so… angry. Isn’t he?”

“With me, yes.”

“Why don’t you think with me too? I’m just as much a part of this.”

“Because you’re his baby. You’re everything to Nason. He’ll forgive you. He’s not going to forgive me.”

“So… then what? What do we do then?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, Lie,” I whisper.

“I feel as if I’m truly making a choice right now, choosing between you and Nason.

There isn’t a good choice that will make things right.

There are only choices where someone hurts.

I have to believe that Nason loves us both, so when he’s worked through his anger, he’ll hear us out and he’ll support us. ”

“Do you truly think that’s what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know. I have to believe that because I can’t make a different decision.” I raise my head so I can look at him. “You, Elijah. It’s always been you, and it’s always going to be you.”

Lie nods. He grips my hair and brings my mouth to his.

There’s a desperate taste to our kisses.

Frantic touching and pulling at clothes.

I feel as if I’m in this moment from a distance.

Through a fog. I’m hyper aware of every touch as we roll, rub against each other, lube everywhere.

Our mouths don’t disconnect, so we’re swallowing each other’s moans and grunts.

It’s sexy. Hypnotic. But more than anything, there’s something deep and intense about what’s happening right now.

This isn’t about my dick entering his body, which it is.

It isn’t about the way he clings to me as I move inside him or how I feel like I’m in his throat. I’m so deep. I’m going to come undone.

This isn’t about the act of sex at all.

It’s about acknowledging and submitting to something we’ve both been fighting. All the resistance, all the hesitation, fall away with every deep thrust, every low moan, every arch of his body against mine, every mark I leave with my teeth on his shoulders.

This is about committing to each other. Following our hearts. Moving forward with intent. Making a life together. Understanding that from this moment, no matter the fallout that comes of this, we’re doing this together. We’re together.

Elijah is mine. I’ll fight for him when that day comes. The countdown is on, even if the number isn’t visible. When we reach the end, I’ll fight to make sure that he’s mine when the dust clears.