Chapter Twelve
Elora
We walk around the supermarket like any other couple, looking at items and putting them in our basket.
“Why are you smiling?” Linc asks when we’re halfway around.
I shrug. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what?”
“Shopped with a man. Apart from my brothers, I mean.”
“Yeah, there’s something very comforting, I think, about food shopping.” He gestures at the packets of pasta. “Spirals, shells, or penne?”
“Um… shells.”
“Cool.” He puts a pack in our basket.
I watch him study the tins of tomatoes, thinking how handsome he is. Other women in the supermarket glance at him as they pass by, and I can see why. He’s tall and broad shouldered, and even though his tattoos aren’t visible when he’s wearing his jacket, there’s still something a little naughty about him.
What a shame he thinks of me as a sister.
I’d hoped that now we’re both older, the attraction he must have felt toward me to make him kiss me might have still been there, encouraging him to forget that I’m Fraser and Joel’s kid sister, the young girl who offered him her Twix. But he’s made it very clear that his feelings toward me are platonic. That’s probably not helped by my brothers hovering around us beating their chests like a couple of prehistoric apes. The altercation between Linc and Fraser in the conservation room was just masculine bravado, Linc’s way of teasing the sometimes officious Fraser. There was nothing territorial about it.
I know Linc cared for me back in the day, and he obviously still feels some of that sentiment, because he doesn’t have to spend time with me. I fully expected him to declare he was going off traveling or seeing other friends. But I think he’s doing so because Fraser told him about the assault, and he feels sorry for me. That rankles, but there’s nothing I can do about it except enjoy his company while he’s here, and mope privately as I wish for something much more physical between us.
It’s just a childish crush, because I haven’t dated properly, and because I yearn to experience the kind of passion I hear about and see in the movies. Well, I’ll have to grow up and just enjoy his company as a friend while he’s here. And then maybe when he’s gone, I need to think about what I’m going to do about dating going forward. Ultimately, I’d like marriage and children, but unfortunately you have to go through the awkward process of trying to find Mr. Right first. The thought fills me with dread rather than joy, but it’s a necessary evil I’m going to have to endure if I want the ultimate goal of a family and security.
I don’t have to worry about it yet, though. For now, I can enjoy being with Linc, as long as I keep my raging hormones and torrents of lust under control.
Our shopping complete, we go through the self-service checkouts, Linc scanning the items and me putting them into the bags. There’s something sweetly enjoyable about the process, about the mundane nature of it, the everyday, earthly task of discussing, buying, and preparing food. It’s almost… religious, like the act of breaking bread together, sharing a meaningful connection during one of our most basic human needs—food, the others being drink, air, shelter, clothing, warmth, sleep, and… sex.
And now I’m back to the raging hormones and torrents of lust.
I get out my credit card to pay, but Linc pushes it away, takes out his wallet, and opens it up to take out his card. I glance at it and see tucked in the front a small foil wrapper. Holy shit, is that a condom?
My face burns with the heat of a thousand suns.
Linc pays, picks up both the bags, and glances at me. “Are you ready to…” His eyebrows rise. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I turn and march out of the store. God, Elora! It was just a condom. Most men carry a couple in their wallet—it’s sensible and responsible and shows he has good manners.
It also shows that he thinks he might have sex at the drop of a hat.
Why am I not wearing a hat? I totally need to get into hat wearing, so I can drop it when I need to.
“Hold it,” he says as he catches up to me. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” I start heading off toward my apartment.
“Don’t tell me nothing. You look as if you’ve eaten a huge bowl of your chili in thirty seconds.”
“I saw…” I can’t say it.
He keeps pace with me. “What did you see?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Lora… come on. You can tell me anything.”
“I saw the condom in your wallet.”
His lips curve up. “Oh. I forgot it was in there.” He grins at me. “Why are you blushing?”
“I don’t know. It made me think of sex, and that made me flustered.”
He laughs. “I’m not planning to use it while I’m here. It’s been there for months. A guy doesn’t want to be caught short if the need arises, you know?”
Yeah okay, Linc, rub it in—we’re not going to have sex, I got it . “I don’t want to hear about anything rising, thank you very much. Please, change the subject.”
“What’s wrong with talking about sex?”
“Do you seriously want me to self-combust, right here on the pavement, with everyone watching?”
He chuckles. “I think you need to be desensitized. Maybe if we talk about sex a bit, you won’t get so flustered.”
“Oh my God, stop saying the S word.”
“Sex?”
“Just… shoot me now.”
“I mean it,” he states. “It’s helpful sometimes to talk about things and get it all out in the open.”
Actually, I think he’s right, but I’m not about to admit that to him. Because if we started talking about sex, I think I really would burn up like a haystack subjected to bacterial fermentation.
“I’d be grateful if you kept everything where it’s supposed to be, nicely zipped up,” I tell him. Our eyes meet, and we both laugh. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get home. I’m starving.”
We make our way up to my apartment, and, because we’re both hungry, we get started on dinner. Linc makes a cheesy pasta sauce with butter, flour, milk, and cheese, while I stir fry some bacon and cook the pasta. Then we mix it all together with some fresh thyme and spoon it into two dishes, accompanied with a green salad and buttered thick-cut bread.
We eat up at the breakfast bar, sitting on either side, facing one another.
“You sure I can’t talk you into having a glass of wine?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “Not if you’re not drinking.”
“Honestly, I don’t mind. I don’t expect everyone else to be teetotal.”
He takes a bite of the bread. “You don’t drink because of what happened?”
I trail my fork through the pasta. “Yeah. I don’t like the idea of being out of control.”
“Fraser said they spiked your drink.” He meets my eyes as I stare at him. “What?”
“Sorry, you took me by surprise. I never talk about it because nobody mentions it. At the time, the thought of it was too painful for everyone. Even Mum found it upsetting, so I learned to talk only to my therapist.”
Linc shrugs. “I believe in getting things out in the open.”
“I’m beginning to realize that.”
“It frustrates me when people skirt around delicate topics. I end up saying the wrong thing and put my foot in it. But I accept that most people aren’t like me, so if you’d rather not discuss it, just say so.”
I remember what he told me in the conservation room, when I said I didn’t like people knowing because they treat me differently: It hasn’t changed how I look at you. You’re still beautiful to me.
“I don’t mind,” I say. “But I’d rather you didn’t do the whole ‘I’m going to hunt them down and kill them’ bravado thing. I had that from both Fraser and Joel at the time, and it’s not very helpful.”
“I won’t. They don’t deserve my thought or attention. They are non-people as far as I’m concerned.” He speaks calmly, although his hooded eyes suggest a stronger emotion hides beneath his mild tone.
“That’s how I feel, too,” I say, glad he understands. “Getting angry about it gives them power over me. And I’m done with giving other people power over me.”
He chews a forkful of pasta as he studies me thoughtfully. “How’s your relationship with your dad?”
My lips curve up. “You’re very astute, aren’t you?”
“I can read between the lines.”
I spear a piece of bacon. “It’s not been the same since. He feels he let me down because he couldn’t protect me, but you can’t wrap kids in cotton wool. It wasn’t his fault that I was attacked, it was my fault.”
Linc stops eating and points his fork at me. “No, it wasn’t your fault either. It was the fault of the men who assaulted you.”
“Yeah, yeah, blah blah, I know. But Dad feels responsible. I get that, of course. I’ll always be his little girl. But we were a religious family, and an event like that was always going to cause problems.”
“Were? You’re not religious anymore?”
I eat the bacon. “It’s complicated.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I sigh. “I don’t have the unwavering faith that I had before. I have questions now. Dad tries to answer them, but I don’t like the answers, and that’s caused a bit of a rift between us.”
“Questions like…”
“Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Before, I thought that if I was a good girl and didn’t do anything wrong, nothing bad would happen to me. It sounds ridiculous to my ears now, but I accept that I was a child then, so it was bound to be simplistic. But after the assault, I realized how incredibly na?ve I was. Embarrassingly so. Humiliatingly so. And it made me angry that Dad had raised me to believe in this all-powerful, omnipotent being who then chose not to help me in my hour of need. And I’m sorry but saying ‘you experienced that in order to learn a spiritual lesson’ doesn’t work for me.”
“Nor me, but you knew that.”
That makes me smile. Linc came to Dad’s church a few times, more out of curiosity than anything, and on Sundays he was sometimes there in the mornings when we had Bible study. He never spoke up or interrupted, and he never ridiculed me for my beliefs, but I knew him well enough to almost hear his thoughts occasionally, the WTFs that made his brows draw together when he didn’t understand or agree with something.
“It’s Epicurus’ trilemma, isn’t it?” he says. “Is God unable to prevent evil? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He unwilling to prevent evil? Then He is not all-good. And if He is both willing and able to prevent evil, why does evil exist?”
“Exactly.”
“You’ve taken the red pill,” he says, “according to The Matrix . Personally, I think it’s a good thing. But it also makes me sad that you had to wake up. There’s something to be said for the blue pill. It’s a lot less unsettling.”
“It is.” I poke my pasta.
“Come on,” he says softly, “I didn’t come here to make you sad. Let’s finish our dinner, and then we should watch a movie or something.”
“Okay,” I say, cheering up. “What kind of thing do you fancy watching?”
“It’s got to be Raiders of the Lost Ark , hasn’t it?”
That makes me laugh. “I haven’t seen that in years.”
“Perfect. We can say all the lines together.”
So we finish eating, rinse the dishes and stack the dishwasher, then bring the two mini tubs of Ben he’s so gentle, tempting, not forcing, teasing, not thrusting. It’s clear that he’s trying to take it slow, and I know it’s important to him to not frighten me, but all of a sudden, it’s not enough. I want more.
I lift my arms around his neck, rising up onto my tiptoes as I press against him, and his arms tighten, pulling me flush to him. Ooh… he has an erection. This must be like the sensation of drinking whisky, feeling it sear down to your stomach and shoot through your veins at a million miles an hour. I slide my fingers into his hair, open my mouth further, and thrust my tongue against his. In return, he gives a husky groan that sets me alight, and he pushes me back to the kitchen counter…
But it’s further away than we realize, and I stumble back and then meet it with a bump that breaks us apart in shock.
“Oh!” I gasp.
He moves back immediately and runs a hand through his hair. “Shit,” he says. “Sorry.”
I moisten my lips with the tip of my tongue. “It’s okay.”
“No, I didn’t mean to take it that far.” He looks worried—he thinks he’s upset me.
“Linc,” I say softly, “it’s okay. It was…” I can’t think of an adjective that even comes close to describing how wonderful it was, and so I just let my lips curve up.
His smile matches mine, and we both give wry laughs.
“I’d better go,” he says.
My heart sinks a little. He’s regretting kissing me. I clear my throat and nod, and I follow him to the door. “Okay. Meet me here tomorrow at nine?”
“Will do.” He goes out, then stops and turns to face me. “Not even close to being my sister,” he says.
I give a short laugh. “Bye.”
He winks at me. “See you tomorrow.” And he walks away, heading for the elevator.
I go back in and lock the door. I don’t even think to check it. I wander into the living room in a dream and collapse on the sofa.
Would I kiss a sister like this?
He got his wings for me. The thought makes my heart lift.
I flop back onto the sofa and look up at the ceiling, and I lie there for a long time, while stars begin to pop out on the night sky.