Chapter 15 #2
Hazel slipped the towel off her shoulder, waving it at the both of us while spinning on her heel. “Come back to the kitchen. You can catch me up on your life while I finish prepping for the week.”
“Actually,” Avery finally spoke. “We’ll join you in a bit. I need to show Brandon something that I’ve been meaning to give to him.”
My stomach churned.
I knew what that was code for: we need to talk.
It had to happen eventually, except now that the time was here, I was freezing up, my instincts telling me to turn around and rip open those doors and run back to my truck. It was the coward’s way out, but at least it would save me from whatever rejection was waiting for me upstairs.
Avery’s hand slipped around my arm, a gentle tug that began to nudge me in the direction of the grand staircase leading up to the second floor. Resisting him was futile, as was trying to make up some excuse to join Hazel in the kitchen instead.
Staving off the inevitable, no matter how painful and embarrassing this was going to be, would only make the fallout over this that much worse.
At least I could wallow on the couch with a cold beer once I was finally home.
With the sound of Hazel’s heels clacking back down the hallway to the kitchen, I was pulled up the stairs and down the hall to Avery’s room—the last door on the left. Upon stepping into the room, I was taken back through time.
Hardly anything had changed over the decades since the room’s use.
The bed set and curtains were still the same brocade fabric, dipped in a dark hue of blues and greens that complimented the rich color of the floor’s carpet.
The room’s wallpaper still had that slight silky sheen to it that always felt smooth against my skin when I’d run my hands along the subtle pattern, barely noticeable until you were up close to it.
Across the way was Avery’s old school desk, the surface cleared completely aside from a small stack of files that looked new in comparison to the school books that were usually sitting on top of it.
The door to the suite’s bathroom was open, the lights shut off, but I knew if I walked in there, that same brassy gold hardware would still shine under the amplified lights with not a single fingerprint to be seen pressed against their surfaces.
Avery let go of my arm to shut the door behind us, leaving my side in order to shrug off the quarter sleeve shirt he’d been wearing when we’d run into each other at the festival.
My eyes darted away quickly to purposefully avoid staring at the defined lines of muscle running along his back. Instead, I focused on the wall next to me as he headed for his walk-in closet.
There was a single photo frame still tacked onto the wall, a familiar one that I remember I used to spend so much time memorizing, waiting for Avery to step out of the shower or for him to come back up after being called away to answer for whatever ridiculous misdeed his father had made up that day
Inside of it was a picture of a young Avery and his mother, Leanne, her arms circled tight around him while they both wore large grins on their faces while facing the camera.
I loved picking out the pieces of her that reflected in Avery, the parts that were now the only living memory that she ever existed.
Back when she’d passed, Avery’s father had all but wiped her from existence, leaving hardly anything behind aside from the surface-level traces that could’ve easily been passed off as the artful eye of an interior decorator.
The day after her funeral, family photos were taken down and shoved into some long forgotten box now left to rot somewhere down in the basement of this mansion, along with trinkets, clothing and anything else that could serve as a stark reminder of her.
And just like that, it was like she’d never stepped foot inside of this house to begin with.
This was one of the only remaining things that were left.
I knew Avery missed her. We all did.
His father would’ve preferred if we all forgot about her. I don’t think he ever accounted for how many people she’d impacted during her short thirty-two years on this Earth. And now he was lying cold in the ground, too, right alongside her.
When I finally turned away from the photo, I noticed Avery was already changed and sitting on his bed, watching me. His face was back to that neutral expression he’d worn when I’d first arrived, the only difference now was his fingers tightly gripping his pant leg.
I pulled in a slow breath. Might as well bite the bullet and get it over with. “We need to talk.”
He merely nodded.
Silence fell over us.
Apparently, neither of us wanted to go first with popping the bubble that was the elephant in the room.
This was the part I hated about being the more upfront one out of the two of us.
I hated confrontation, but when it came to bringing up issues, I was usually the one that had to get the ball rolling.
“So—”
“Were you two out on a date?” he asked.
My brows knitted together. “At the festival?”
He nodded again. “You mentioned before your sister’s friend set you two up. Was that your first date?”
“Uh...” Folding my arms around myself, I let my body weight shift to my right foot, planting it firmly against the carpet. “You could say that.”
He went quiet for a moment, a small crease forming between his brows. “What does that mean? He harassing you for something else?”
“What? No. Nothing like that.”
How did I even go about explaining this without sounding like a total failure in the dating world?
“We were... the friend of my sister’s is actually a matchmaker. That’s how Max and I got connected. My sister is determined to find me the ‘perfect guy’ to bring to her wedding.”
“I see...”
My stomach churned again.
Why the hell was he so hard to read?
I used to be able to predict his every move—the very sentence that would next come barreling out of his mouth. This man in front of me was a book locked tightly with some kind of special key that I didn’t even know the shape of, let alone where to find it.
It made for a confusing scenario, one where I was reading way too much into everything with no context clues to back anything up.
Avery rolled off of the bed and onto his feet. His strides were slow as he headed for me, a predatory sway to him.
I stayed rooted to my spot, too scared to move a single inch and break whatever tension was building between us.
“And is he?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
My heart stuttered in my chest. “Is he what?”
Avery leaned close, his breath fanning across my face. “The perfect guy for you.”
“I...”
How was I supposed to answer that?
I darted my tongue out to wet my bottom lip, a motion that Avery’s gaze darted down to track before leveling with mine again. Something in his eyes shifted then, the uptick in his breathing catching me by surprise.
“I can’t get it out of my head, Bran,” he mumbled.
My throat felt parched. “Get what?”
“This.” He grabbed at my hips, shoving me back against the wall to pin me there. A small gasp left me, my hands coming out to flatten against his chest.
What the hell was happening?
“I know you hated it.” He was still mumbling, burying his face against my neck. “And I’m sorry. But I can’t get it... you, out of my head.”
A shiver raced up my spine. He ground his hips against mine, the hard line of him digging right into my hip. I’d never been this close to him before—not like this. We’d hugged as boys, wrapped an arm around each other’s necks as teenagers.
My teeth hurt from how hard I crushed them together, fighting the urge to draw him even closer so I could sink my teeth into his shoulder, leave a permanent mark there to prove to the both of us that this was real.
But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
“Fuck,” he muttered into my neck.