Chapter 14
Fingers still a little sticky from the gelato, I wiped them against my dress before swiping the photo booth strip from the machine and waving it at Broderick. Much to my satisfaction, he rolled his eyes before I glanced down to the evidence of our evening on the town. The man actually stuck his tongue out in the last one with me.
“Awe, it’s cute,” I chirped, grinning down at our goofy ass faces. Even clowning around with me, the man was fucking adorable.
…Especially clowning around with me.
There was something so liberating about being away from home—maybe that’s why we loved to travel so much. To go somewhere we could shed our skins covered in labels bestowed by neighbors who still remembered us in diapers and exchange them for suits all our own. Whether they were silly, free and lighthearted, or quiet and reserved after a lifetime of serving, travel brought out…the authentic layers in people they rarely revealed otherwise.
Vegas brought out the version of Broderick few ever saw. And as I watched him march off ahead of me like the photo booth wasn’t his idea in the first place, I canted my head, admiring how that perfect bubble butt filled out his dark slacks. Because nobody here cared. Not a soul was watching the childhood friends gallivanting through the streets, at the mercy of our whims, wondering if it was something more. There weren’t any Mistyvale alumni to make a jab or tell my brothers that Broderick spent the evening with my hand in his, or his arm looped around my shoulder. There was an entire city, entirely barren of fucks to give. And I loved it.
This is why people love Vegas. Not just the gambling or hookers or shows—the freedom of it. The nameless face among the tens of thousands on this condensed strip of endless sin and entertainment.
“Oh, come on!” I teased, feeling like a Chihuahua chasing a Doberman as my stubby legs attempted to keep up with his long stride. “You can’t tell me we’re not cute,” I added as I caught up, lunging forward to wrap around his swinging arm and force him to slow to my pace. At least mild amusement laced his features when he turned my way, begrudgingly accepting the photo strip. I swore I watched him stifle his smile.
“You’re cute,” he said, quirking a brow. Heat rushed my face, and I broke away from his gaze in favor of our feet over the dirty concrete, careful to avoid a suspicious pile of something viscous.
We were quiet until we turned down the over-the-top drive of the resort, great arching palms to either side with twinkling lights everywhere. For the most part, Vegas felt like what would be vomited out if one could eat neon lights and an ashtray. It took getting to the outskirts, the suburbs against that gorgeous expanse of desert, to see the appeal in the enormous metro. But the resort, while over the top for my taste, at least attempted to class up the tacky surroundings of tricks and illusions.
After a beat too long, I said, “Thanks for tonight, Broderick. I had a blast.”
“Good,” he said simply as the splatter of the fountain misted our direction, and we rounded the corner to the grand, domed sunshade. As we entered, smiling at the bellmen to either side of the automatic glass doors, he added a quiet, “I’m glad.”
With his hand at the low of my back, sending jitters through my insides, we made our way through the bustling lobby and down to the elevator bay without speaking again. The longer we stewed in our silence, the thicker the air seemed to get, crackling with some kind of turbulence I didn’t want to acknowledge as the heat of his palm against my dress pulled all of my focus from the cacophony of voices and echos of omnipresent machines around us.
In and up, we moved in contemplative static energy, my heart gradually picking up tempo in anticipation of something—anything—happening. A switch to flip. The way his eyes tracked my movements made the hand on my back seem like a kind of ownership my entire body thrummed to accept. By the time we reached our door, my heart was fluttering in my throat, and my nearly nonexistent oxygen supply halted entirely when he caged me against the busy wallpaper with his exquisite body, chest heaving, determination in his eyes.
Like a dumb fish, my mouth opened and closed twice, but words failed me. Broderick’s shallow breaths were hot on my face, his exhales dancing with my short inhales, the taste of him on the air coasting through my parted lips. God, over the years, I’d fantasized countless times about what it would feel like to finally kiss him again. To taste him and feel those hands on my skin without that measly three-year gap between us damning it all.
His gentle finger tucked my hair behind an ear before his warm, smooth palm slid down to cradle the side of my neck, his focus entirely trained on my mouth. Desperate to touch and feel and taste, a stuttered little breath stalled in my ribs when the flat tip of his straight nose bumped the end of mine. My desperate hands scraped up his arms, settling on his biceps as he nuzzled our cheeks together, burying his face in my hair and inhaling audibly. Like he needed to commit my scent to memory as badly as I needed to anchor myself in his spiced musk.
When his forehead settled against mine, I wet my lips, but as I shifted my chin to meet him in the middle, his gaze snapped to my eyes like I’d shocked him, something like panic flaring in those deep browns. A little pinch formed between his brows a beat before he closed his eyes in something like painful resignation, a tiny shake of his head and flex of his jaw the only warning I got before he turned away. The door beeped as he slid his card free, returning the air to my lungs in a whoosh of disappointment as he rushed inside, running a palm over his short hair before wordlessly vanishing into the ensuite.
My mouth popped open, confusion battling the devastation suddenly making my heart plummet for an entirely different reason as I stood there, dumbfounded and wondering what the hell had just happened.
Was it all in my head? I quietly shut the door, locking the bolt and the top latch before slowly leaning into it, craving the icy metal support to stay upright as my brain whirred through the last several hours. Had I read it wrong? Or had he been weighing our options just as heavily and yet again decided I wasn’t worth it? There was no way I’d just imagined the want dripping off that man. I wasn’t alone in this, so what the fuck was holding him back?
Broderick came back into the room in a rush, frustration tensing his brow as he tongued a molar. His mouth just opened when my cell phone rang. Without glancing to the screen, I declined it. As I made to break the horrendous silence with some pathetic deflection and announcement of bedtime, it rang again. My eyes slid shut, and I chewed my bottom lip.
“You should answer,” he breathed. Swallowing, I pulled my phone up, scowling when Alice’s photo flashed across the screen.
Bringing it to my ear, I answered the call, my eyes back on conflicted deep browns. “Sissy? You okay?”
“I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“Oh boy,” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose as I wandered toward the patio. “Greyson?”
“No. Santa Claus. Of course, Greyson. It’s always Greyson. I fucking. Hate. Him.” The last two words seemed to come through gritted teeth, and I winced. With one last glance over my shoulder, I found Broderick staring at his feet, his hand at the back of his neck. “I finally had a date planned this weekend, but nooooo, the dragon needs me to accompany him out of town to a luncheon where he can’t be bothered to remember a god-damned name, so he needs me there to remind him who’s who. This is fucking insane.”
With a sigh, I pushed open the door and stepped outside into the cool city air. It might’ve been smoggy, but at least it was brisk, and didn’t emanate with that insane energy occupying the space between me and my roommate.
“So quit,” I suggested for the millionth time, already well aware of what her answer would be. It had been the same since the first day he told her a little country bumpkin would never make it in the city, let alone in his company. Little did he know, the fastest way to make a Rhodes double down was to tell us we couldn’t do it. Alice even more than most. She might have been one of the quietest in the bunch, but she was resolute, and only an idiot could mistake her silence for stupidity. The woman missed nothing. Which is why Greyson Hart had been eating his words for the last year and a half as she became his begrudging right-hand woman. Purely out of spite to prove him wrong, of course.
“And let him win?” we both said in unison. Mind you, mine was dripping sarcasm, and hers was more of a pissed off pterodactyl. She choked on something like a laugh, but I let her be the one to finish.
“Never.”
Broderick
Stupid.Selfish. Reckless.
I almost kissed my best friends’ baby sister. It didn’t seem to matter how hard I ran sprints in the gym, or how heavy I lifted, the guilt of that didn’t dissipate. Not even the endless string of pull-ups seemed to help. Hell, any time the two of them wanted to scare off some low life showing a little too much interest in their sisters, they called me in for backup. I was supposed to look out for them, not memorize the outline of her curves in that dress. What the hell had I been thinking? Taking her out. Indulging that idea for any period of time when I’d sworn she was off limits—safe with me—to the only two people that had always had my back.
It wouldn’t have stopped at a kiss. I knew it. Hell, the portrait on the wall across from us in that hallway knew it. If I tasted those soft, red lips and let my hands roam up her athletic little frame, that would be the end for me. If she didn’t stop it, I certainly wouldn’t have what it takes to peel myself off her until I’d laid claim to every inch of Elora Rhodes. Fulfilled every forbidden fantasy that had accumulated over the last eighteen painful, albeit entertaining, years.
But some distant part of my brain—probably the one responsible for survival—thought of Jameson’s face, if he knew I had Elora up against a wall, about to claim that pretty little parted pout before shoving her inside my hotel room. A room where she had no escape plan if she felt like I crossed a line. With no spare rooms in the city, we had to survive two more days of this event—preferably without her knowing I was sporting a perpetual chubby and fierce case of blue balls. She had to be focused enough to give a presentation the day after tomorrow, and after all our years together, I owed her at least that much.
Best-case scenario, if she didn’t think I was a creep taking advantage of a shit situation, and still returned the sentiment, I knew her heart enough to know getting involved would be an enormous distraction and compromise her conviction in the competition.
By the time I made it back to the room and showered, El was asleep on her side of the mattress. I hesitated, watching her turn in her sleep, thinking of how sweet her little body felt, safe in my arms. I bowed my head and released the breath holding my lungs captive. Resigned to old vows and guilt-tangled fantasies, I grabbed the spare blanket from the dresser and curled up on the murder sofa.
AvoidingElora was about as easy as circumnavigating viruses in a kindergarten classroom. If my self-preservation instincts were better, I would’ve bailed on the lessons today, except for the fact that two of my favorite speakers in the lineup were scheduled two hours apart from each other. But…she was everywhere. And when I concealed myself in a corner of her absence, attendees were still discussing her talk yesterday. Like a song on the wind, her name seemed to carry, keeping me on edge everywhere I went. Because every time it surfaced, I winced at the image of a pissed off Jameson, who would inevitably react in one of two ways. Option one—and this was the most favorable of the two—is he’d knock my ass out with one right hook. I was tough, but not grew-up-on-the-Bearing-Sea tough. Defending myself wouldn’t have been an option under the circumstances. Option two—and realistically, the more likely of the two—was that he’d go inside that thick skull of his, and let that betrayal deepen until he couldn’t look at me without the fires of hell in his eyes, and that would be the end of our thirty years of friendship. As for Rhyett…I wasn’t sure what to expect of Rhy. But disappointing Rhyett Rhodes was in the same ballpark as murdering a six-year-old girl’s pet rabbit. It likely didn’t help that my neck was kinked from cramming myself onto the loveseat in the corner and failing to sleep for the majority of the night.
Immanuel Kant would tell me that my loyalty to them needed to supersede this gnawing, aching desire in my gut. To slink into the shower for a date with my fist, burn off this tension on my own, and send her on her way on Saturday. On the opposite hand, the fathers of Utilitarianism would argue that if I made Elora happy, her joy would make Max, Mara, and her sisters happy. Maybe—maybe Pax and Finn would side with us? Lord knew my mother would be beside herself, finally having the hope of a daughter-in-law on the horizon. That meant more joy could be derived from me succumbing to my own weaknesses than disappointment. Right?
But the moral reprehensibility of breaking that promise…
My stomach flipped uneasily every time I reached this point of my inane internal debate.
Forty-eight hours. I just needed to endure this for forty-eight hours, and we could go back to our lives. Mine, alone, renovating my townhouse back in Mistyvale, teaching at the college, and hating most of the world. And El could return to… Well… blessing anyone lucky enough to rub shoulders with her on her widespread adventures. Nobody would be any the wiser. It’s not like Taylor Swift and some gelato crossed a line we couldn’t come back from.
But fuck, I wanted to. That was the problem.
Pursuing Elora would likely end my two closest friendships. But avoiding her after leading her on would be the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. Which was a much more agonizing thought than it had a right to be.
I spentThursday tucked away in men’s bathrooms, and fleeing the lectures before they wrapped up so that I could exit the building and hide somewhere off campus to eat during the breaks. But I’d successfully avoided a direct confrontation with the world’s most glaring distraction. I went out with a few professors from mainland universities, and nursed a beer late into the night, hoping to return after she’d fallen asleep. It was the subtle vibration of my cell that had me pulling the cursed thing from a back pocket and swiping it open.
Jameson
Good luck tomorrow, man. How you feeling?
Fuck, wouldn’t you like to know? No, actually, you probably wouldn’t like to know that the prospect of winning the grant now soured my stomach, because those funds could go to Elora. Could go to her school. Could back up a mission she’d put her whole heart into. And you really wouldn’t like to know that if the only thing I accomplished in life was making your little sister smile, it would be enough.
Broderick
Prepared. Competition is tough. Did you know El was entering? She’s in the top three with me.
Three dots appearedand vanished twice before my screen lit up with a picture of Jameson and Noel with beanies tugged tight over their heads, and noses red with cold. Cursing, I swigged the last of my beer before swiping to answer. There was no hello. Not that I expected one with James. Just a curt demand for more information.
“Hold up. My El?” No, fucker. My El. I just don’t have the balls to tell you that. “She’s at the conference?”
“She gave an entire speech yesterday about women in leadership. Do you ever check the family text thread?”
An irritable scoff came through the speaker. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are twelve of us, plus Skittles and Brex. By the time I get back into cell service, they’ve rattled off hundreds of updates about lunch plans and who’s going to visit who. I’m not about to sit and scroll for hours to catch up. Kinda figure if it’s important, I’ll hear about it.”
“Well, you didn’t hear about this.”
“Apparently not. That’s sick. I mean, she speaks all over the country these days, so I guess I’m not surprised. What the hell is she competing for?”
“Her and Mara Correa are working to secure funding for their women’s business school.”
There was the subtle scratch of a rough palm over unmanaged stubble. “I thought Pax bought into that.”
“He’s a silent investor, but he’s not bootstrapping the whole thing. El says they need a few million just for the building. She’s got a five-year plan for moving the project into the green, but she needs the five years funded first.”
“Tracks. Damn.” His dark chuckle made me bristle, irritation staying my hand where I rocked my beer glass on its rim.
“What?” I bit out before adding, “If you say it feels like old times, so help me…”
His chuckle turned into a full laugh before he pointed out, “You said it. Not me.”
“This shit sucks.”
“Oh please, you two seemed to love wiping the floor with each other as kids.”
“This is different.”
“Why?” he asked flatly.
Because I’ve been pining for her since I was sixteen, asshole. Killing time with poison like Sarah when everyone knew she was trouble the moment she came into my life. Instead, I said, “I never would’ve entered if I knew she was vying for it. She’d wipe the floor with anybody else on the lineup. Frankly, it feels like I’m the only other contender. At least according to Johanna King.”
“Johanna who?”
“Never mind. Not important. I just…wish I’d known, you know?”
“I guess. Look, man, I love my sister. But if I can tell you anything, it’s once she decides to do something she’ll make it happen. I know you. Which means you’re digging yourself into a hole over there, overthinking the morality of winning when she wants it. And that’s bullshit. If El loses, she’ll find her money some other way. Just…”
“Just what?” I bit out when his words drifted off into the air.
He released a low, prolonged sigh. “You deserve this, man. Don’t wig yourself out before tomorrow.”
“If you were a half-decent brother, you’d tell me to bow out.”
“If I were a half-decent brother, I’d tell you to swing harder because it will push her to win,” he challenged. “As it is, I’m betting on El crossing the finish line with or without this one endorsement.”
Something like pride battled the anxiety in my chest a beat before irritation swallowed them both. “That a backhanded compliment, Cap?”
“Nothing backhanded about it.”
“Are you saying she’ll find a way, but I won’t?”
“I’m saying…El has made it her business to do whatever it takes to make her dreams a reality. It’s like…a game for her. And I’m just…proud of you, I guess, for taking a chance, getting off island. Don’t wig yourself out worrying over her. She’ll figure it out. She always does.”
I sat for a moment, studying the warm glass in my hand before catching the bartender’s eye and holding it up. Talking to him about the genuine source of anxiety would be the adult thing to do. Just. Broach the subject. Be honest with him. That’s what a proper friend would do, right? According to Brex, the guys probably didn’t even remember that old pact, and would want me to be happy.
But right as I opened my mouth to ask if we could talk about something, he muttered, “Damn.”
“What?” I asked softly, nodding as the bartender set down a fresh glass and swiped my old one. I ran a thumb over the rapidly gathering condensation on the chilled edges.
“Skittles just served dinner.” His nickname for Noel had originated from her explosion of color in a climate made entirely of shades of gray. But there was an underlying insinuation in his tone that made me shake my head.
“Why does that sound like a euphemism?” I sighed.
“Didn’t say what she was wearing.”
“TMI, man. That woman is like a sister to me.”
“Good, cause that means I don’t have to kill you.”
I laughed, glancing up to the television as the bartender flicked between channels, landing on recaps of the games this weekend, and predictions for the following. Hoping a change in subject could absolve the guilt unsettling my dinner, I said, “Looks like Pax is favored by two touchdowns on Sunday.”
“Can’t underestimate the underdog.”
“Good point. He won’t.”
“Never does.”
“Alright, I’ll let you go. Say hi to Noel for me.”
“Will do. And Broderick?”
“Yeah?”
“I mean it, man. Don’t hold back. You finally found what lights your soul on fire. You told me only idiots don’t chase that.” Of course, logically, I knew he loved my enthusiasm for the youth center, but all I could picture was Elora’s face, arms painfully aware of the memory of her frame against mine. I’d told him that when he wasn’t letting himself pursue Noel for his own concocted excuses for hesitating, and couldn’t help but shift in my seat as the irony set in. “Set your sights and no matter what happens, don’t let go.”
Like a coward, I just said, “Thanks, buddy. Talk soon.”
“Call me after the awards tomorrow.”
“Yeah, alright.”
“Noel says she loves you.”
That earned a little smile as I said, “Love her, too. Kinda even love you, but you’re a pain in my ass.”
His laugh made me smile for a beat before he said, “Love ya, fucker. Have a good night.”
The call disconnected a beat after Noel’s laughter filled the line, and slowly, feeling like a coward, I set the phone on the bar and wiped a window clear on the glass, watching beads of water slide down its slick surface. My heart felt heavy, and I kicked myself for not saying something while I had his attention.
To my relief, El was asleep when I finally slipped into the hotel room. But the solace halted when I took in the tempting silky pajamas draped heavily over her strong frame. Pix might’ve earned the pet name because she was petite, but these days she looked more gymnast than starving ballerina figurine. Strong. Disciplined. You had to be to build that definition. My palms buzzed with the need to trace her edges, cementing the subtle feel of them in my mind.
As I watched her sleep like some psychopath, I thought about what it felt like to have her smile for me…because of me, and anxiety ate me from the inside out like a five-course meal. Because if I took the Utilitarian path, and risked it all—my friendships, my bonus parents and home away from home, not to mention my at least moderately attractive face as I knew it—I couldn’t very well look her in the eye while professing my feelings if this grant money lined my pockets when it could have been in hers. Beneath the war in my mind, a little voice spoke up, and I knew exactly what I had to do. And it started with paying a visit to Johanna King.