Chapter 19 – Lena #2
“Then why?” His voice cracked on it and he didn’t bother hiding it. His eyes were on the road but his hand had come off the wheel to press against his mouth, and I could see the muscle in his forearm straining.
Because I was scared. Because waking up in your arms felt too good and that terrified me. Because if I stayed I’d have to face what we did and what it meant.
“Because I panicked,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he exhaled through his nose and some of the tension left his shoulders. “Okay.”
“Okay?” That was it? Just okay?
“Okay, I hear you. But you can’t do that to me again.” He glanced at me, and his eyes were raw. “I woke up and the whole bed still smelled like you and I thought…” He stopped and swallowed hard. “Doesn’t matter what I thought.”
It mattered. It mattered so much my chest ached.
“I won’t do it again,” I said quietly.
He nodded once. The highway hummed beneath us. Then, without looking at me, “So what are we doing, Lena? Because I had my fingers inside you and you came three times and then snuck out of my bed like it didn’t happen. I need to know what that means.”
For a moment I could only stare at him, my mouth open and nothing coming out. Heat flooded my face and my thighs pressed together on instinct.
“Don’t blush now,” he said. His voice had a teasing edge but underneath it was something darker, something possessive. “It’s a little too late to be shy. I know what you sound like when you come. I know exactly how tight you are.”
“I didn’t know if you’d want to act like it didn’t happen.”
His eyes flicked to me and held. “And for as long as I live, I’m never going to forget the way you look when you let me in. So no, Lena. We’re not going to pretend it didn’t happen.”
Oh God. My core clenched. Just his voice saying those words in the close confines of the car was enough to make my nipples tighten under my dress. I turned my face toward the window, trying to get it together. “That’s not the point,” I muttered, my fingers fiddling with the hem of my dress.
“What is then?” he asked, sounding like he actually wanted to know.
“The point is we crossed a line,” I said, forcing myself to look at him again.
His eyes were on the road, but there was an intensity in his gaze that made my stomach tighten.
“We’re supposed to be…?” my voice trailed off as I tried to find the right word.
“Well, once a long time ago, we were friends before things got messed up. Maybe we start there?”
“Friends?” The word landed like he’d bitten into something rotten. A muscle jumped in his cheek.
“Trace…”
He sighed deeply and finally turned to look at me, the hard set of his jaw softening into something that made him look more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him.
“Lena,” he said, his voice low enough that I felt it in my chest, “I don’t know about you but I don’t finger fuck my friends.
And I’ve spent way too long thinking about being more than your friend to start calling it that now. ”
There it was again,his candor leaving me speechless. He had this way of turning things around on me, of making me feel like I was overreacting when really, this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t how friends acted.
“I didn’t mean…”
“I know what you meant.” He cut me off. “If you’re telling me it was too much, or you don’t want me to touch you again, or you regret it, then I’m sorry.
For pushing.” He paused, and his jaw set.
“But I’m not sorry it happened. That was the most intense shit I’ve ever done in my life, Lena.
And we didn’t even fuck.” He glanced at me, then back at the road.
“I would’ve happily just held you all night if that’s what you wanted.
So no. I don’t regret a single second of it.
And I need to know if you do. Or if you still hate me. ”
I blinked at him, surprised again, and felt something crack open in my chest. “I don’t hate you,” I said, and my voice came out wrecked.
“I never hated you, Trace. I was hurt. You were my best friend. The one person I trusted above everyone else, and I thought you…” My voice broke and I had to look out the window for a second.
The fields blurred past. I forced myself to keep going.
“You want to know something pathetic? Part of the reason I went out with Trevor in the first place was because I couldn’t take it if something happened to our friendship.
You and me. I had feelings for you and I was terrified of ruining what we had, so I picked the safe option.
” I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“And look where that got us. Three years of not talking. Three years I wasted being angry instead of just… talking to you.”
The car was silent except for the hum of the highway. I could feel him looking at me but I kept my eyes on the fields.
“You had feelings for me?” His voice was quiet. Careful. Like he was holding something fragile.
“I thought you knew.”
The silence stretched. When I finally looked at him, his eyes were glassy and he was gripping the steering wheel like it was the only thing keeping him together.
“I didn’t know,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Lena, I didn’t know.”
“Well, I guess I know that now.”
“If I had…”
“I know.” I looked down at my hands in my lap.
He didn’t say anything for a while, his throat working. Then, “When you were with Trevor… I wanted you. The whole time. Made me feel like the worst brother alive.”
“I didn’t know,” I said quietly. “There was maybe one time I thought I saw something. The way you looked at me. But then everything fell apart and I figured I’d imagined it.” My fingers twisted in my lap. “Trace. There were times when I was with Trevor that I thought about you.”
His head turned sharp, eyes locking on me like I’d just pulled a pin out of something.
“He’d be right there and I’d be thinking about you and I hated myself for it.”
The car was silent for so long I could hear the tires on the asphalt.
“I almost told you once,” he said, his voice rough.
“Remember that movie night? You and me and Trev, and you fell asleep on the couch and I carried you to the guest room?” He laughed, but there was nothing funny about it.
“I sat on the floor next to that bed for twenty minutes trying to work up the nerve. And then I didn’t.
” His grip shifted on the wheel. “Sometimes I think Trevor saw the way I looked at you that night. And he made his move first because he knew that once he had you, I could never…” He stopped. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“It matters, Trace.” I pushed.
My eyes burned. I dug my nails into my palms because I was not going to cry in this car.
Trevor’s my big brother and I love him. But the moment I caught him going back to his old ways, I told him to break up with you. That’s what you heard that day. Not me interfering because I didn’t like you. Both of you were my business and I was caught in the middle."
I stared at him, the highway blurring past the windows while everything rearranged itself inside my chest. Three years.
Three years I’d hated this man because I thought he’d sabotaged my relationship out of spite.
Three years of cold shoulders and cutting remarks and refusing to be in the same room with him.
And the whole time he’d been trying to protect me.
“You were trying to protect me?”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then puffed out a long breath as he ran his hands through his hair before clutching the steering wheel tight. “Yes. And after that, he made me promise to not touch you.”
“Wait, he did what?” My voice came out sharper than I intended. Something hot twisted in my stomach. Not at Trace, but at Trevor. At the idea that Trevor had staked some kind of claim on me like I was property he’d decided to return but didn’t want anyone else to have.
Trace shifted in his seat. “Yeah. I’m not even sure if he knew how I felt about you, or if he was just invoking bro code after the breakup. I think he meant for me to just be on his side or whatever the fuck that meant. But you never know with my brother. He usually only thinks about himself.”
I sat back in my seat, the plush leather surrounding me, warming me up. Outside, the skyline of Chicago was starting to appear on the horizon, a jagged gray line rising out of the flat farmland. “I don’t even know what to say.”
Everything I thought I knew about the last three years was rearranging itself in my head, and none of the pieces fit where they used to. The anger I’d carried like armor didn’t belong anymore. And underneath it was something I wasn’t ready to look at directly.
He was quiet for a moment, both hands on the wheel. Then he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for three years.
“I do.” His voice was steady now. Not tentative.
Not careful. “I want you, Lena. For myself. Not as a fake girlfriend, not as Trevor’s ex, not as some arrangement.
I want you.” His knuckles went white on the steering wheel, the taped ones and the bare ones alike.
“And fuck Trevor. Fuck bro code. Fuck anyone who has an opinion about it. I don’t care anymore. ”
My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.
“So you can tell me no,” he said, his eyes on the road, his voice rougher now. “You can tell me this was a mistake and we go back to how it was and I’ll deal with it. But I’m done pretending I don’t want this.”
The phone rang and the moment shattered.