44. TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-THREE
LEO
“So, let me get this straight.” Roman pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “You tell her that you want her, fuck her on a washing machine, then you freak out and don’t speak to her for two days? Am I getting that right?”
“I didn’t fuck her. We just…” I trail off, realizing that clarifying the point doesn’t change anything. I am, in fact, still a piece of shit.
I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours doing everything in my power to avoid Eden.
I head to the gym at five a.m. every morning for the sole purpose of being out of the apartment before she wakes up to take Macon to school, and I don’t come home from practice until after she’s asleep.
It’s not even like I’m filling my time with anything.
Last night, I sat in my car in the parking garage for three hours, scrolling on my phone.
The annoying thing is that, despite all that, the ache in my chest hasn’t gone away. I thought it might fuck off if Eden wasn’t around, but no. It’s still there…this tight warmth wrapped around my heart that, if anything, is actively getting worse.
Roman raises an eyebrow. “Why did you freak out, man?”
“I don’t know.” I toe the asphalt with my cleats, head dipped in shame. “I just… I’ve been having this sensation…” Absentmindedly, I run my hand over my heart. “It got really bad after Eden and I were finished, and I didn’t know what it was. It scared me, I guess. It’s still scaring me, actually.”
He smirks, picking up the soccer ball lying on the grass between us and tucking it under his arm.
Practice ended ten minutes ago, and with the way I performed today, I may as well have not shown up at all. When Roman cornered me to ask—in his words—what’s wrong with my bitch-ass today, I folded like a lawn chair and told him everything.
“What is it that’s scaring you exactly?”
“I dunno, that I have heart disease or something.”
“All my friends are idiots.” The dickhead throws his head back and barks a loud laugh. “I can’t believe I’m in this position again.”
“What position?”
“Last year, I had to drop the bomb on Leo that he’d fallen in love with Brynn, and now”—he waves his hand in my direction—“I have to deal with your dumbass too.”
My forehead crinkles. “What are you talking about? The situations aren’t even remotely the same.”
“Really?”
“What are you implying?”
“That you had sex—no, sorry, that you did whatever you did—with Eden, and it made you realize that you’re falling for her, and it freaked you out.”
He’s wrong.
I’m not falling for her.
I can’t be falling for her.
Sure, I think about her all the time, and I can’t keep my damn eyes off her whenever she’s in the room, constantly tracking her like I’m a stalker watching from the shadows, obsessing over every little twitch of her fingers or the wave-like motions of her hair when she walks, but that doesn’t mean I’m falling for her.
Wanting her and loving her are two different things.
Wanting is rooted in attraction, and attraction is safe. I’ve experienced attraction before. Admittedly, never to this extent, but it’s familiar to me. It’s manageable.
Love is…dangerous.
It’s a threat to every wall I’ve built around my heart, every coping mechanism I have, every brick I’ve put in place to protect the little boy inside of me who still grieves for what he lost.
“I’m not falling for her.” Even I can hear how weak those words sound as I squeeze them through my teeth.
Roman tosses the soccer ball into the air and catches it with one hand, his scrutinous gaze never straying from me. “Then what are you doing? Because from where I’m standing, you’ve found yourself in a shit-heap of mess and denial.”
All I know is that what happened at the house showing was pure instinct.
It was like a fireball of impulse burning inside of me that forced me to say the things I did.
The things that came after that, my mouth on her skin, my fingers inside her, the unbeatable craving for more, was no longer within the realms of my control.
“Do you have any plans to make your little fake relationship with Eden real?” Roman asks, the question igniting another small ache in my chest.
A relationship with Eden? A real one…where I can kiss her and hold her as much as I want to.
Where I can trail my fingers down her face or press my lips to her forehead every time I get the urge to.
Where I can touch her without having to check if there are cameras watching just to justify it.
She’d come to my games and wear my jersey, not because it looks good to the investors and the media, but because she simply wants to be there for me.
We could hold hands while walking down the street and keep holding them once we’re inside and away from prying eyes.
Macon could play in the yard of the new house with Ivy and Salem, just like I imagined when I saw it for the first time, and Eden and I could lie together on the couch as we watched them, her head on my chest and her hand on my heart.
“No.” I suck in a long breath through my nose, casting my gaze across the turf to make sure we can't be overheard. “I don’t want a relationship.”
Roman tilts his head to one side. “Would a relationship with her really be so bad? I mean, dude…” he sighs through a smile. “I saw you together at dinner. You looked like that fucking emoji with heart eyes every time you looked at her.”
A relationship with Eden wouldn’t be bad at all. It would be everything.
That’s the problem.
“Dude, I don’t wanna talk about this anymore.”
“You not wanting to talk about it is exactly why you’re in this mess, bro.
Look at yourself. You played like shit today, you look like you’ve had a max of what, like, four hours sleep in the last two days, and you’ve been ignoring Eden since before your fingers were even dry. You’re a better guy than that, man.”
Am I?
Because it doesn’t feel like it.
“Look, Leo’s coming over. He’ll talk some sense into you—or at the very least, beat it into you. He owes you a black eye after the shiner you gave him last year. Maybe I can convince him to cash it in now.”
Exactly what I need. My other best friend to tell me how much I’ve fucked up.
I turn to find Leo slow-jogging up to us, the front strands of his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, his face red from exertion. “What’s up, guys? The tension’s so thick I could feel it back there.” He digs a thumb over his shoulder.
Roman, apparently set on his mission to get Leo to punch me, wastes no time summarizing the shitstorm of my life in a way that makes me out to be an asshole of epic fucking proportions. The worst thing is that he doesn’t even exaggerate. I really am an asshole of epic fucking proportions.
When he’s done, Leo arches a brow and stares at me like I’m a kid who’s just been sent to detention. “What the fuck, dude?”
I open my mouth to defend myself, but nothing comes out.
What could I even say anyway? Yeah, I did fingerbang Eden on a washing machine, and now I’m ghosting her, even though I know she hasn’t had sex with anyone since her ex-husband, and she’s probably feeling really alone and vulnerable right now.
Leo’s follow-up question, though, comes at me straight out of left field. “Did you really come in your pants?”
Fantastic.
I nod my head, and Leo howls, clutching his stomach. “Bloody hell. Were you dry-humping or something? Or did it just, like, spontaneously happen?”
“The second one,” I grit through clenched teeth.
Leo’s eyes balk. “How does that even happen?”
I don’t fucking know. I didn’t know it was possible either, but my fingers were inside her, and she was so warm and tight, and she was making all these little noises that seemed to go straight to my dick, and I don’t know what happened, just that I was so turned on by it all, so desperate for her, that suddenly, I was having one of the most intense orgasms of my life, and she hadn’t even touched me.
Leo must read all of this on my face because he shakes his head and chuckles, “Jesus, dude, you’ve got it bad.”
“That’s the root of the issue,” Roman pipes up again. “Dumbass over here is pretending that he doesn’t.”
“I’m not pretending.” I scowl. “It’s true.”
“Oh, yeah?” He grins. “Then what about how you can’t stop thinking about her? That you want her more than you’ve ever wanted anyone, huh?”
“I mean, look at her.” Seriously, the woman is so blindingly beautiful even the sun would be jealous of her. “But that’s just attraction. It doesn’t mean there’s any, like, feelings or whatever.”
Roman rolls his eyes. “I’m attracted to Simone Ashley, but I don’t spend every minute of every day thinking about her.”
“That’s different.”
“How so?”
“You don’t know her.”
“Not true. I did a shoot with her for Prada in the off season.” He gazes over my head at the gray clouds rolling in, a mystified glaze covering his eyes. “She was incredible.”
Leo shoots him a side-eye and claps me on the shoulder. “Look, man, all we’re saying is this is how it starts. You’ve just gotta ride the wave.”
“I’m not much of a surfer.”
He harrumphs. “Then think of it like a riptide. Take it from me, dude, once you’re in it, there really isn’t a lot you can do about it. Only bad things will happen if you try to fight it. You’ve just gotta let it sweep you away.”
“When did you become such a softie?”
He looks me dead in the eye. “When I started fucking your sister.”
Roman’s eyes widen as he finally shakes himself out of whatever trance he was in and steps between me and Leo. “Good god, Leo, are you trying to get him to hit you again?”
Leo grins, white teeth flashing like the spring sun through the clouds. “Nah, Alex would never.” He hooks his arm through mine like we’re schoolgirls and pulls me tight against his side. “We’re brothers now.”
“By marriage only,” I grumble, attempting to wrestle my arm out of his. He only holds me tighter.
He’s lucky I’m terrified of upsetting my sister, because I’m twitching to knock that smug little smile right off his face.
The thunder in my expression doesn’t seem to faze him, though, because he starts the walk back to the locker room with his arm still locked through mine, dragging me along with him. “So, now that we’ve deduced you’ve been a prized dickbag, what are you gonna do about it?”
“Yeah.” Roman jogs along beside us. “Are you gonna talk to her?”
My stomach roils. “Don’t really have a choice, do I?”
“Well, what are you going to say?”
That I’m an asshole for ignoring her? That I don’t like the feeling I get in my chest when she’s around, so I’ve been avoiding her in the hopes that it will fuck off and go away?
That, somehow, the pain is even worse when I’m not with her?
That I just want to see her and touch her all the time, but we can’t have a real relationship because the thought of losing her someday is so terrifying that I don’t want to take the risk at all?
Shit.
I can’t say any of that.
“That I’m sorry for avoiding her, I guess.” My gaze falls to the trodden turf, the blades of grass as flattened as my state of mind. “And make sure she still understands that nothing can ever come of it.”
Leo disentangles himself from my arm and slaps me round the back of my head.
“What the fuck, man?”
Roman stops walking and glares at me with unbridled frustration. “Did you not listen to a word we just said?”
“You are honestly the biggest, most emotionally congested dumbass I have ever met.” Leo tips his head back with a long groan. “You’re, like, the textbook definition of a detached avoidant. It’s exhausting.”
Oh, for the love of God, not this shit again. “Stop spending so much time with my sister.”
“Can’t.” He grins again. “She’s my wife, asshole. And you’re never gonna have one of your own if you don’t pull your head out of your fucking ass.”
Roman shakes his head with a tired laugh. “I don’t get it.”
He wouldn’t. He doesn’t know why I am the way I am, and that’s not his fault.
Maybe if he knew what happened to me when I was ten, he’d see where I’m coming from with a little more clarity.
But I don’t want to talk about that stuff.
Not with him. And not with Eden, despite how much my therapist is trying to force me into it.
I don’t even talk about it with Brynn, and she lived the experience with me.
If I can pretend it never happened, then it can’t hurt me.
Leo sighs, clamping his hand on my shoulder and looking in my eyes.
“I do.” He lowers his voice. “I get it, I mean. I think you’re freaking out because you know that caring about her will make it hurt more if you lose her someday.
And I can’t promise that you won’t, even if you do decide to man the fuck up and give in to what you’re feeling.
But I do know this…if you carry on the way you are, you’ll wind up losing her anyway. ”
A lump the size of a basketball grows in my throat. I try to swallow it down, but it doesn’t budge, and my heart pangs again, a deep, longing ache for something I won’t allow myself to have.
I get what Leo’s saying. I do.
But I know the risks that come with love, and I refuse to be that little boy again. The one standing on the steps of a children’s home with the life he once knew burning into ashes behind him. Happy one minute, orphaned the next.
I can’t be blindsided like that again.
I won’t.
“When did you get so good at talking about your feelings and shit?”
“Brynn,” he says simply.
“Well, on that note,” Roman declares, “I need a shower.”
“Yeah, me too.” Leo steps away from me to walk by Roman’s side.
I fake a smile. “I’ll catch you guys in a bit.”
I need some air. I have the strange urge to run back to the place I grew up, just to see if I can get some of that feeling back from when I was young, before death ripped away my innocence and turned me into the man I am now.
The one who’s afraid all the time. I want to crawl up on the front porch and press my face against the old wood.
See if the thing I used to have is still woven into every grain, as if it’s been waiting there all this time for me to come back and get it.
Leo gives me one final, long look before he walks away. “Stop trying to fight the riptide, man. No one wins against the current.”