Chapter Eight #2
I immediately turn away from him, walking around like I want to explore his home, when really, looking at him is making my body do the kind of shit it shouldn’t be doing when looking at my dead boyfriend’s brother.
I think of Ellis that way most of the time, remind myself he’s gone, which probably shouldn’t be the case after all these years. Or hell, maybe I’m trying to punish myself, to hit the nail in over and over and over again so I can’t forget.
“You have an incredible view,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s what sold me on the place. I like to sit out on the balcony a lot.”
I nod and keep exploring the room. Most everything is done in black, gray, or white—white furniture, black tables, gray sculptures—the only color coming from pretty vases, all things I would never be able to pick out and decorate with on my own, but somehow, I know he did.
The wall space is huge, filled with massive black-and-white photographs, most of different parts of the human body…
a stray hand, a throat, a man’s pec, a silhouette of a woman, an ass, back, shoulders… “Did you take all these?”
“Yes,” Lucas says, flipping food on the stove. “They’re part of the Lust collection.”
I cock a brow. “Lust, huh?”
“I mean, look at them.”
He has a point. There’s something incredibly sexy about all of them, but especially the photos of something seemingly simple, like a pair of shoulders or the curve of a back.
“I’m making breakfast burritos, by the way, but I went out and got you turkey sausage and low-carb tortillas.”
There’s another skip in my pulse that he did that, for me, and that he remembers how I eat.
“But then I saw chocolate cake and couldn’t help but get that too.”
“Cake? We can’t have cake for breakfast.” I come closer, stopping on the other side of the counter.
“We’re adults. I assure you, we can have chocolate cake with breakfast if we want.”
I mean, I wouldn’t complain about a slice of cake, my stomach actually growling at the thought.
“You don’t have to try to be perfect all the time, Hunter.”
“I don’t try to be perfect,” I counter, but we both know that’s a lie.
“My father had a nutritionist give you a meal plan when you were a teenager.”
“I was training. I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for your dad.”
“He’s not the one with the talent, Hunter. You are.” He grabs plates from the cabinet. “Breakfast is ready.”
I’m thankful that part of the conversation is over.
I meet him by the cabinet, taking one of the plates from him. I place the burrito on it, then grab some chopped fruit from a bowl on the counter. The chocolate cake looks so fucking delicious, but I skip it.
“I’ll meet you on the balcony,” he says, and I nod before going out, Lucas following a few moments later with glasses of orange juice. “Sorry. I can be pushy sometimes.” He rubs his hands over his eyes.
“I’m not perfect. I eat out. I drink. I do shit I’m not supposed to.”
“But you feel guilty about it.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Everything.” He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lights one, making sure the smoke doesn’t go in my face as he exhales.
“I remember this one time, we had this trip planned to an amusement park. You were so excited because you’d never been.
Do you remember that? Mom insisted we go, and—”
“My mom was going too. She had to work so hard to get the time off. It was so rare we could afford to do anything together like that as a family.” My mom is the hardest worker you’ll ever meet, but life has never been kind to her.
She got pregnant with me at eighteen, never went to college, and then lost my father…
She’s had to fight for everything in her life until I made it, and now I do my best to spoil her rotten.
“Yes. And then my dad found out about this football program he wanted you to do. It was a good opportunity for you, he said. Once in a lifetime. These are the sacrifices you had to make, and suddenly you weren’t going anymore.”
And it had killed me because I’d wanted to go to the football program, but I’d wanted to go to the amusement park even more. I’d wanted to have that with my mom. With my best friend and the people who had become family to me.
“My mom tried to talk me out of changing my mind. She told me I deserved to be a kid too, and that my whole life didn’t have to be football.
” But I knew Coach Blake had pulled strings to get me in, that he’d been willing to pay to get me in.
That’s what it took to succeed, he always said, and I wanted that, so bad that I would have sacrificed anything.
“It’s okay to go to the amusement park sometimes, Hunt, and it’s okay to eat some fucking chocolate cake. It’s okay to fuck as many girls and guys as you want, and go to a party and stay up on a rooftop all night. Screw my father or anyone else if they make you believe anything different.”
I look at him, my ears echoey, blood rushing through them like river rapids.
Lucas is exactly what I expected and yet nothing like it. Despite how long I’ve known him, I’ve never known him like this, and right now, all I can think is how comfortable it is to be with him, how soothing…and that I want more.