Chapter Twenty
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A man can’t even crash out in private these days. It’s terrible.
Fox
I am in heaven and hell simultaneously, and it’s all Poem Eloise Devoe’s fault.
I could strangle her.
I could worship her.
I could take this afternoon, put it in a tiny little jar, and wear it around my neck every day for the rest of my life.
Or, I could burn it, erase the itch under my skin that demands the instant gratification of more, and continue on my path of growth until I am actually worthy of an afternoon with Poem’s body beneath me and her mouth on mine.
I groan, banging my head against my desk.
The desk that the unfortunate love of my life was on a mere hour ago.
The desk that I banished her from because, despite her insistence that I wouldn’t be receiving a “full” anything, her pliancy and willingness shifted to such a degree that she began to insist to the contrary.
She’s upstairs cooling off now, and I’m in my office doing work—the very important work of bashing a dent into this wood.
My office door creaks, and I jump, putting my chair between me and the person entering.
Wolfe pauses in the doorway, eyebrows rising. “You okay, buddy?”
I slump over my chairback, groaning. “No,” I answer. “I am not okay.”
He hums. “Is this about your whole proving-you’re-a-good-person thing?” he asks, moving to sit on the corner of my desk.
“Don’t sit there,” I hiss. “Sit somewhere else.”
He pauses, hovering over the wood as he slowly turns his head to take in the significant lack of other seating in the room.
“The floor,” I grunt. “Or stand. I don’t care. You can’t sit there.”
He glances at the floor and, specifically, the desk’s worth of paperwork spread about it. “I guess I’ll stand, then.”
“Great,” I reply, falling into my chair. Which I could have offered to him, I suppose, but… “You’re not supposed to know about my ‘whole proving-I’m-a-good-person thing’,” I grumble. “Isn’t anything private anymore?”
“No,” he answers. “Not when you’re twins. And not when you do absolutely nothing to hide it.”
I scowl. “You should mind your own business.”
“You are my business,” he retorts. “Is that what your current dishevelment is about? You think you aren’t making progress?”
I glare. “No. Well, yes, but no. Kind of.”
“Your clarity is appreciated.” He snorts.
“If it’s worth anything, Almond and I have talked about it, and we both think you’re being ridiculous.
You’ve been home for years, and all you’ve done in those years is be the absolute best version of yourself.
You took on the bar when neither of us wanted it but Mom and Dad wouldn’t sell to anyone but us.
You saved not only your siblings from a life they never wanted but your parents from a life without retirement.
” He levels a severe stare on me, forcing eye contact where I try to evade it.
“You help all of us anytime we ask, and often you help before we even get a chance to. You’re here for me, for Al, for our parents, for Amia.
You volunteer in the community, too, and we all know that most of the donations to Warren and Emerson’s goodwill fund come from you.
You donate food to the homeless shelter.
You donate time to Mrs. Grant when her lousy grandson can’t be bothered to come home for a weekend to change her lightbulbs and clean her gutters.
You do so much good, Fox. You are so much good, and we all wish that you could see it and stop striving for whatever ‘more’ you think there is. ”
My jaw sets. “There’s plenty more I could be,” I reply.
“For one, Mom and Dad don’t trust me yet, even if I did make retirement an option for them.
For two, I spent almost a decade off being a moron on my bike, not a care in the world for what was going on here or how much I was missing—how much I was forcing you guys to experience without me.
Celebrations. Holidays. Birthdays. Illnesses.
I wasn’t even here when Amia was born, Wolfe.
I saw her in person, what, once? When she was a little baby?
” I shake my head, sharp. “I know I’ve been better since I’ve been home.
I know I’ve made up for some of that, but not all.
I have more atoning to do. More good to do. ”
A frustrated huff of air escapes him as his hands land on his hips. “What more is there?” he asks. “How much more before you feel like you can finally rest? Where’s the line between enough and not?”
“I kissed Poem,” I snap, moving us straight to the point instead of dwelling in some vague land where I maybe could be a decent person. Recent, specific events say otherwise.
My brother’s eyes widen, and his jaw drops. “You what?”
“And after, she kissed me,” I continue.
“She what?”
“And then, we kissed each other,” I finish.
He stares at me for several seconds, then rushes, fisting his hands in my shirt and lifting, all but throwing me out of my chair before he sits in it.
“I get the chair,” he says. “That’s sit down type of news, Fox.
You don’t tell that sort of news to an unsuspecting man when he’s standing. What’s wrong with you?”
From the floor, I grunt. “Exactly.”
He swears. “That’s not what I meant. You’re still a good person. A great person. The best sort of person.”
“I kissed Poem,” I remind him.
“Right,” he says. “That’s… Why did you kiss Poem?
All she wanted was basic kindness and an invitation to feel like she fully belongs with us.
AKA: for you to stop being a jerk to her, the one area where you are maybe not fully good all the time.
Keeping in mind that everyone has at least one area where they are not fully good all the time, and most of us actually have several dozen or so. ”
“You’re not changing my mind about this,” I inform him.
“Because, see, I just made out with Poem on that–” I point.
“–desk for…” I glance at the clock. “Roughly forty-five minutes, and I enjoyed it. Thoroughly. But the way that started? Was me kissing her without consent.” I drop to my back on the floor, the better to bang my head against it.
“So basically I’m horrible and terrible and also awful and I should probably be ejected from the airlock or something. ”
“She made out with you for forty-five minutes after you kissed her without consent?” he asks, then continues before getting an answer.
“Fox, hate to break it to you, but that seems like consent to me. Poem herself said that she’d let you know, in no uncertain terms, if she wasn’t okay with something you were doing.
Sticking your tongue in her mouth doesn’t sound like her being not okay with the situation to me. ”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s definitely at least ninety percent of the point,” he disagrees. “Why are you beating yourself up over kissing a woman who clearly wanted to be kissed by you?”
“Because she didn’t clearly want to be kissed by me,” I groan.
“I kissed her, and she freaking flinched, then I apologized, then she kissed me, then instead of stopping it when she had just said she didn’t want it, I went and put her on my desk and kept kissing her until I had to send her upstairs so I didn’t ignore more of what she said she wanted when she was clearheaded and sober-minded.
Don’t you see how gross that is? All of it?
” I sneer. “It’s revolting, Wolfe. I haven’t done nearly enough good to be worthy of her love or affection, and I just…
I just took it. As if it were mine. As if I deserved it.
As if she should give it to me.” I pull at my hair.
“You’re right to ask. What is wrong with me? ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he says, dropping down to the floor next to me. He slides his hand under my head when I lift it to bang it against the floor again. “Stop hurting yourself,” he orders. “And stop being stupid.”
“I am stupid,” I retort. “And I deserve to be hurt.”
“In the situation you’re describing, the only person who gets to decide if you deserve to be hurt or not is Poem.
If you actually did something against her will, she gets to decide the punishment.
” He snorts. “Apparently her punishment for you was a hot make-out session on your desk. Looking at the full-blown crisis you’re having, I’d say it was a fitting one. ”
I jolt, almost knocking heads with my white-haired twin as I sit. “You think?” I ask, hopeful. “You think she was punishing me?”
He blinks. “Do you want her to be punishing you?”
“Absolutely,” I answer. “If turmoil is my due, then I accept it readily.”
“Okay, Hamlet, calm down. I don’t think she was trying to cause you ‘turmoil.’”
I throw my hands up. “Well, she should have been!”
He considers me. Then, he slaps both hands on my shoulder, sighs, and says, “Men are idiots. I fear for us all.”
I grunt. “You are a man.”
He nods. “I’m an anomaly.” Standing, he pulls me with him. “Get up. We’re going to do a communicate to pull you out of the spiral you’ve thrown yourself headfirst into.”
“What?”
“Communication,” he says. “The cornerstone of every healthy relationship, and you’re going to experience it.”
He grabs my wrist to drag me out of my office, down the hall, and up the stairs.
I allow him, mostly because I believe having to face Poem right now is only fitting.
The dread it evokes is exactly how I should feel.
The desires I can’t fulfill that it brings forth are, also, only fitting.
Turmoil. Desire. Torment. Anxiety. Discomfort.
My body riots with the emotions. My skin threatens to peel itself off.
My stomach threatens to lose itself. My heart…
my heart threatens, full stop, because what have I done and why have I done it and where do I think I’m going, bringing us back into her presence when it hasn’t resettled from the last time we stood in front of her.
“We deserve this,” I mumble. “And you know it.”
“What?” Wolfe asks, pausing in front of my door.
“Nothing,” I huff. “I’m ready.”
Well, I’m not! my heart protests.
I grunt. Then, I push the door open anyway.