17. Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Vi
We did stop kissing eventually, and returned to the gala like nothing happened. He left me with Olivia, who gave us suspicious looks but didn't say anything. He joined the family and I joined them later, keeping them in the dark about the development in our relationship— whatever that was. That was on purpose; in rushed words, we had decided to keep it all private until we knew what to tell them. Aside from playful, heated looks at each other, we did nothing else that night.
The whole group bar Dad and Mom had a slow morning the next day. We grabbed brunch in the first restaurant that we found, then drove to the lake house. I'd ended up in Max and Eva's vehicle; the sleek sports car barely had room for me in the back, and Javier and Jake chose to ride with Gabe and Lina instead.
Entering the property released any tension I harbored, as always. The forest surrounding us welcomed me, while the big log walls and large windows threw foundations into the ground at every one of my steps.
If the exterior made me feel like I could take truly deep breaths, the interior hugged me like it did each time. Mom and I had put a lot of effort together with Dad at designing it, when we had the house built; from the imposing stone fireplace drawing the eye in the middle of the big room, to the large sectional around it, or the modern kitchen and twelve-place dinner table. The house had been made to last, and hold people and memories alike.
After everyone had left their things in their bedrooms, we got together on the deck to settle into the time off. The view of the lake greeted us with a million specks of blue and gold.
"You know what I haven't done in a while?" Max asked. "Go out on the lake in a boat. I would love a chance to show off my rowing to my wife."
Eva gazed at him with eyes that mixed humor and exasperation. "Let me guess. You won't change and you will row in your slacks and waistcoat."
"Of course, darling." He kissed her temple. "How would I properly impress you otherwise?"
"That sounds lovely, actually," I said. "The bigger boat is out for maintenance, but we still have a couple dinghies in the boathouse."
"I'll go with you." Jake took off the sweater he wore and threw it on a nearby outdoor chair. It left him in tan pants and a light blue denim shirt. "Max and Eva can take the other."
Jake rolled his sleeves, and I couldn't help but to admire the gesture, his nimble fingers, and the thick, freckled forearms it revealed.
"Fine, you guys go." Gabe spoke somewhere near me and it took me out of my trance. Mostly. "We'll throw something in the barbeque to pick at through the evening."
Jake stared at me with knowing eyes, like he'd caught my attention on purpose. I wrinkled my nose and hid a smile.
"Thanks, Gabe." I kissed my brother's face. "You can take Lina tomorrow. And Javier, well… one day, right?"
The group as a whole didn't know it, but the tall, white-presenting Latino was the only fully single person in the house. Strangely for him, Javier had been distracted by his phone. At my words, he lifted his dark blue stare my way, and put his phone in his pocket.
Javier rolled his eyes and replied in a half-annoyed, half-humorous tone. "I'm happy being single. I'll row the boat my own damn self, thank you."
"So touchy." I gave him a mock frown, and took to the stairs leading down to the ground, and the path toward the boathouse.
Twenty minutes later, Max and Eva were on a dinghy going toward one end of the lake, and Jake and I going the other way.
I wore a jean jacket and took it off, leaving me in a white cami. My black, jersey skirt was long, and I raised it up my thighs.
"You don't mind, do you?" I asked Jake. "The temperature out here is lovely, and I like the feeling of the sun on my skin."
He worked the oars in several long rows, his eyes roaming over my exposed shoulders, following the line of my bare thighs and calves.
Jake lifted lazy eyes my way. "I definitely don't. As long as you don't mind me admiring the view."
"A big, clear lake, surrounded by forests and a gorgeous blue sky… and you'll be admiring my legs?"
His nod was completely serious, except for the tiny twist at the end of his lips. "You have to understand. For the past decade, I've never had more than a second to glance at you that way. The image of you in my head is a mosaic of stolen glimpses."
I bit my bottom lip. His mouth lost the hint of amusement, and his eyes turned earnest.
"I'm hoping that after last night," he said, "I won't have to hide things so much… and we're finally alone to talk about it."
"Yeah… we didn't talk much last night."
"Priorities, Vi." He shrugged and focused on rowing for the next few beats. "Except for that one unplanned kiss at the gala a couple years ago, I've been wanting to kiss you for too long."
"I'm not complaining. I thoroughly enjoyed making out with you last night."
He squinted my way. "Careful, or I'll jump you right here, and I don't know if this tiny boat can take the motion."
I laughed. "Don't sass me with a big attitude. You're Mister Restraint, and we're in public."
"And is that a problem? Being in public? We said last night we wouldn't tell anyone anything yet, but…"
We gazed at each other for a moment. It was hard to make sense of everything. The kiss and the few words we'd exchanged flipped things upside down. As much as I had wanted it, there was some adjustment needed to step into something so new. Especially after holding back for so long and denying what I felt for Jake.
I put a hand down into the water; the cold helped me recenter. Messing this up wasn't an option.
"I'm not sure how we're going to do this," I sighed. "I spent a lot of time thinking about it when I finally got into bed."
"I've been thinking about that, too." He pulled the oars into the boat, and rested the handles on his lap.
Max and Eva were far away, near the opposite shore to the house. Jake and I stayed in our place in the middle of the lake, only the breeze and water currents pushing us into a slow drift. Until we went back home, this was likely to be the only privacy we would have.
"I'm worried, yeah," he admitted after a while.
It didn't surprise me. Jake hadn't told me much about what his life with his birth family had been like, except for that time in the car not that long ago. Still, I knew it made him cautious. That those experiences would be with him forever, and might always tint the way he saw the world to some degree.
"Are you still anxious about how my parents may react?" I caught his slow nod and twisted my lips to the side. "Not enough not to try, I hope?"
"I wouldn't have kissed you last night if I didn't plan to be brave about it."
His eyes were serious on mine. The gravity anchoring his words settled into me with a warm feeling. He meant his words, and it meant the world.
I borrowed some of his courage. "What would you say if I confessed I'm nervous, too?"
He frowned and didn't answer for several seconds; he put the oars back in the water and rowed in silence, eyes on me.
His concentration prickled on my skin. I rearranged the skirt of my dress to release some of my nervous energy through a random task.
His eyes landed on my thighs again. "Why?" was all he said.
I let him check me out, and I stared at the shore across from the house. "I don't think my parents would react poorly to us being together. They're too awesome for that. But I do think it might be a thing , you know? It might be a shock, if nothing else. And Max and Javier are going to tease us because for sure they will, and Gabe? I don't know. I think he'll be in shock. Confused. I don't know."
Repeating myself wasn't my style, but that was the level of bewilderment I carried since Jake and I stopped kissing.
I sighed. "Like we said last night— I think we should figure out what we are before we tell anyone else. See if this is going to work out. I don't want anyone's first thought to be, oh, I guess Vi is sleeping with her brother's best friend now—"
A groan from him interrupted my thought. When I gazed at him again, he'd pulled the oars back to his lap and scrubbed a hand down his face.
"Please," he said, "give me a minute before we start talking about sex, or I'm not going to make it."
Mirth built instantly at his words. "Why? Are you having a hard time with all this skin displayed in front of you?"
I ran my fingers up my thigh, and Jake followed their path with an anguished frown.
"Yes." The word came out gravelly. "Yes, because I can look, and I'm desperate to touch."
"I'll let you touch, big guy, but you can suffer for the next few minutes."
"I can. I won't enjoy it, but I can. They don't call me Mister Restraint for no reason."
I laughed. "Now all I want to do is torment you."
"Don't. We should finish this conversation. I didn't know you were worried about everyone's reaction, too."
"Yes… and no." I pressed my lips together and gazed at Max and Eva in the distance.
I really didn't think the family would be against us exploring what we had, but maybe they would have second thoughts about it. I didn't have the best record at making relationships work and, as much as I felt for Jake, I didn't know if that was love-love. Lust-affection for sure, but love? Like the one my parents shared? I couldn't know beforehand. And if it went by the wayside as fast as the rest of them…
Pursuing a verdict on us pushed me forward; I couldn't keep scrutinizing the fantasy of it with no evidence. Yet throwing ourselves into it rattled the foundations on which our family was built. The role each of us played to each other and the people we loved.
As much as I wanted to, I didn't trust myself to make all the right moves. Making it work had never mattered as much as it did now, when trying to build something real that involved Jake.
I set my eyes on him. He studied me with furrowed brows.
"I have to do this," I said. "I need to know what we can make out of wanting each other for so long. But I also don't want to ruin our chance at this somehow, and have to deal with a broken heart and their reaction to it at the same time."
He nodded. "So we tell them we want privacy? That we don't want their opinion?"
I dipped my hand in the cool water again, and wet the back of my neck. A friendly gust of wind had a chill running down my spine.
"Or maybe…" I licked my lips. "Maybe we don't tell them anything."
His eyes shifted between mine. "What are you saying, Vi? That we hide it altogether?"
His nostrils flared, and worry sprouted in my gut. Again we stayed still in the water, too focused on the conversation to take any direction.
"Not quite— Maybe— What I'm trying to say is that we keep it private." I firmed up my voice. "We agreed to it last night; we can do it for a bit longer. Everyone will have some sort of opinion or expectation. Even if they don't say anything, we'll know they're thinking it. Watching us. I don't want that to affect us in any way."
"I don't want to hide it."
"I don't want to either! But wouldn't it be a good idea to protect what we have at the start? Only until we settle into it. Just you and me, no one else to have a thought about it. No influence of any kind, but what it feels like to be with each other."
"You live with your parents. I share a floor with Gabe! How would we keep it private?"
"We're smart people and this isn't forever. We can make it happen. And it's kind of fun, right? I bet this is what it would have been like if we'd gotten together years ago, maybe back when I first thought of you this way in high school."
"High school?" he groaned. "Fuck me."
"I plan to."
"Fuck. Fuck, Vi. You are tormenting me."
"I want to give us the best shot at this. This matters to me, Jake. We're finally doing something about what we've felt for years— and I'll go to great lengths to shield it. To make sure I'm giving it my best. All I ask is that you give yourself to it, too. That this is really you and me. No restraint."
He pressed his lips together and shrugged away the discomfort on his shoulders. "I see your point. It's not that I don't. As long as you don't want this out of shame…"
"Shame? Of course not!" I leaned forward and reached for his hand. No one would be able to see the gesture, and I needed the contact. "Please, believe me. The way my heart feels when I'm around you— hell, the way it all flips when we're apart. It's the seed of something important, something I thought I would never get to see to the end. I don't want to hide it. What I want is all my attention on you, and for you to have all your attention on me. So we give it what it needs, to take roots deep in the soil. So that what grows is fucking epic ."
He snorted. His gaze stayed on me, searching.
"I'm excited about us." I gave him a tremulous smile. "I can't wait for their reaction… when we're ready for it, because we proved this is it, and we're going for the long haul."
My free hand shook, and I curled it into a fist to conceal it. Taking this position in the conversation forced me to push all my chips to the center of the table; a gamble for all I possessed. High risk, high reward, and I planned to go all in.
I had never invested as much in past relationships— because I never cared as much. But if that's why they had failed, I would not risk it again.
This time, my smile was fueled by resolve. "To be honest I thought you'd be relieved by my idea."
He sighed and interlocked fingers with mine. "Not going to lie, I am a little relieved. It gives us time to decide how we're going to tell people. Prepare for your parents' reaction. Gabe's."
"It will also look better since you'll have been a VP for a bit longer than three business days. And we'll get to develop the kind of thick skin that will protect us from everyone's teasing."
"I'll survive the teasing— that's the least of my worries. I've been waiting for too long to let any of that stop me. But having time to just focus on you… on us. To figure out what the hell we're going to tell them. Yeah… I can get behind that.'"
"So we'll keep it private? Exclusive? Real?"
"We will."
I squeezed his hand, and his thumb rubbed my skin. We smiled at each other.
"I'll row us back," he said, "or we'll get in trouble even before we start."
And he did, and we continued with our epic restraint in this one big way… but it felt free, anyway.