Chapter 6
SIX
ROMAN
The sky has turned gray by the time we’re done with breakfast.
All traces of the earlier sun have long disappeared behind thick clouds, the heavy scent of impending rain slipping through my open window.
I steal a glance over my shoulder at Jesse who’s lying on his stomach on my bed reading his book, while I’m sketching at my desk.
I can’t really focus on what I’m doing, the rough lines of the sketch barely making any sense as my mind wanders to Jesse’s distraught expression when he realized he’d been sleepwalking.
It’s an expression I don’t want to see on his face ever again, just as I don’t want him to hide what he’s truly thinking and feeling from me.
I don’t know why it matters so much to me, but I want him to show me everything—his light and his darkness.
He looks so calm right now, in his long-sleeved, pink T-shirt and gray sweatpants, his chin resting casually on his hand as he flips the pages with the other, his feet swinging lazily behind him.
He’s damn adorable, which is why I can’t resist teasing him.
“So, ‘Bug,’ huh?”
He groans, letting his head drop on his book face-first, before he turns my way, giving me the cutest fucking glare.
“You promised you wouldn’t bring it up.”
The fact that his mom called him Bug earlier when he gave her a call so she wouldn’t worry?
Yeah, no chance in hell. Precisely for the look he’s giving me at the moment.
“Did I? I don’t remember it.”
He crawls to the edge of the bed until he can swing his legs down and come over to my desk, plopping down on it until our legs are inches from touching. His blue eyes look almost gray in the gloominess of the weather as they peer at me.
“Please let it go,” he mumbles, nudging my knee with his socked foot. “She likes it and that’s good enough for me.” His gaze grows distant. “She can call me whatever she wants. She’s been through a lot.”
There is so much love in that statement, in his voice full of wistfulness, in the softness of his expression, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more beautiful than him in this moment.
Something pulses in my chest, an ache that keeps growing with each passing day, that has no name and no limit. That feels bottomless and consuming.
I wonder what it’s like to be loved by him like this.
“Hey,” I say quietly, wrapping my hand around his ankle where it’s still brushing against my knee.
The touch brings Jesse back to me, a hint of melancholy still swimming in his eyes.
“She can call you whatever she likes.”
The room has grown darker from the thick clouds outside, a breeze that is chillier than usual sweeping through the window, and I feel Jesse shiver from where I’m still holding him. But he never drops his gaze from mine, even as the first crackles of lightning light up the sky.
“What would you call me?” he whispers, and the way he smiles in an almost intimate way makes every muscle in my body tighten.
Because that smile only feeds that bottomless ache until I’m not sure there will be room for anything else soon.
Until I’m not sure I’d even want there to be.
“Want me to show you?” I rasp, my voice barely recognizable.
“How?” he asks, his eyes losing all their sadness, now sparkling with curiosity and interest.
“I can draw it for you.” And fuck, since when have I smiled this much in my life?
Pure excitement spills from him as he grins, and it’s intoxicating, being able to make him look at me like this.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Does that mean you’ll also show me what you’ve drawn so far?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
He laughs and then shivers again, the cool air much stronger now.
Getting up, I grab the hoodie that’s hanging outside my closet, and bring it to Jesse, leaving it on his lap.
“Put it on. I don’t want you to get cold.”
His eyes flick down, his hands tightening on the hoodie, before he looks up at me again.
And I’m fucking rooted to the spot.
Because if his earlier smile fed the ache inside me, the way he’s looking at me right now only manages to turn it into an abyss, a vast pit of longing.
Longing for flushed, rosy cheeks, light blue eyes framed by whisps of golden hair, and a smile of pure happiness.
I don’t know when it happened.
I don’t know if it was when his face lit up at the sight of me for the first time, or when he looked at me with eyes brimming with honesty and vulnerability, or even when he sought comfort in me.
I don’t know how, or why.
All I know is that at some point, I stopped thinking of him as my stepbrother or just my friend, and he simply became mine.
***
JESSE
I pull Roman’s hoodie over my head while he leaves to get some water.
The smell of soap, peppermint and something that is uniquely him immediately surrounds me, and I smile as I make myself comfortable on his bed.
I love Roman’s room.
I can’t explain it, but there’s just something about it that makes me feel at home.
I love the dark blue wall behind the headboard, and the many posters of metal and rock bands hanging here and there. But my favorite is the window above his desk that opens to the wide sky, catching just the peak of the trees outside.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs reaches me only moments before Roman appears, his eyes zeroing in on me. They fall to the hoodie, something unreadable passing through them, and I follow his gaze with a frown.
“What?”
His lips curl into a sideways smile as he rounds the bed to hand me a bottle of water before going to his desk to grab his stuff.
“Nothing,” he says, settling in next to me. “Black looks good on you.”
I chuckle because, what did I expect from someone who I’ve never seen wear anything besides black, gray, and dark blue?
“You think I should adopt the look?”
We’re both leaning with our backs against the headboard, Roman balancing his sketchbook on his bent knee.
“You could.” He glances my way, eyes twinkling. “Though I don’t know if I’d recognize you without color on you.”
I bump my arm with his as a grin slips out, remembering how I told him the exact same thing about his color choices a few days ago.
Rain begins to fall heavily outside, drumming against the roof, while the sharp scent of petrichor invades Roman’s room.
His hand flies on the paper, but I’m more caught up in watching him instead of what he’s drawing. He looks so at ease right now, like he’s doing something so familiar it’s simply an extension of who he is.
I… I can’t look away from him.
“Little jay bird.”
I blink at the sound of his voice, his words barely audible over the rain roaring outside the window.
“What?” I ask, mildly confused.
But then, my gaze falls on the sketch in his hands of a little bird sitting on a branch, frozen at the moment its wings have barely unfurled, as if it’s mere seconds away from taking flight.
“When I was little and my—” he pauses and I notice him swallow hard, “And my mom was still here, we used to watch documentaries on TV all together on weekends. Back when she hadn’t left me, and my dad still pretended to give a shit about me.”
Everything stills inside me at his seemingly casual words.
What is he talking about? My mom never told me anything about this. She just mentioned that their family situation was complicated, but nothing about his mother leaving him, or his father—
Unless she doesn’t know any details either.
I try to rack my brains for instances of any sort of interaction between Andrew and Roman since my mom and I started living here, and I come up empty. In fact, all I can think of is Andrew mentioning his son in passing about something but never talking about him in any kind of way.
Like he barely exists on his radar.
God, is it true? Have I been so caught up in my own thoughts and emotions about all these changes that I didn’t actually notice it?
“Roman,” I whisper, my fingers tangling in the material of his sleeve, my heart aching for him.
He shakes his head, shooting me a small smile, cutting off anything I was about to say.
“One of them was about blue jays. About how intelligent and extremely adaptable they are, how loyal, protective and even aggressive against anything that threatens their family despite being so small.”
I don’t think I’m breathing when his eyes find mine.
“You remind me of them.”
He lifts his hand, brushing a knuckle against my cheekbone under my eye, the touch so soft it makes me tremble.
“Blue jay,” he says simply. “Blue,” he murmurs, and I feel it.
I feel the shift in this rainy, late morning of October. It’s in the look we share, like we’re talking without saying anything. Like all we need right now is this look of our shared secret that is only ours.
“Is that what you’re going to call me from now on?”
His gaze is piercing, even as his mouth tips up into a smile that makes my heart skip a beat.
“If you want.”
“I do.” More than anything. Something only he’ll ever call me.
“Then I will,” he promises.
“Okay,” I whisper, glancing again at the beautiful sketch he made. He’s still watching me when I give him my best innocent look. “Can I have it?”
He shakes his head, his face doing nothing to hide his amusement as he tears the paper and offers it to me.
“It’s yours.”
I beam as I stare at it, before I clutch it to my chest like it’s my most precious possession.
It probably is.
“Does that mean you will now show me what else you have drawn?”
His arm shoots out so fast I only have time to yelp before it’s wrapping around my waist and pulling me even closer, so that I’m almost plastered to his side.
“I swear you’re a fucking menace,” he grumbles, flipping his sketchbook to the beginning.
My heart beats so hard and so fast, I’m sure he’d be able to hear it if it weren’t for the rain.
But I let every loud thought and every overwhelming emotion wreak their havoc on me, because I wouldn’t change this day for anything in the world.
“Thank you for staying with me today,” I mutter softly, resting my head on Roman’s shoulder.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
He just tightens his hold on me and we stay like that until he’s shown me everything he’s ever drawn.