Chapter 11
I have feelings for Will Davis.
That’s what I’ve realized, between last night’s incident and now, lying in bed, awake, way too early for a Saturday morning, when I don’t have to work until this evening.
I’ve taken a good, hard look at it. The weird thing I feel when we touch, the way I feel when he’s ignoring me, the helpless attraction I feel toward him. I look at it the way any reasonable person would have done a long time ago, and the facts are undeniably there.
Not to mention, I kissed him.
I grabbed his shirt, and I planted a kiss on him and—
My lips are still tingling. Like there was an electric current between us, shocking me into a realization I can’t ignore.
And I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now.
I’ve spent my entire life with Jess. She was my first and only love. I’ve never been with anyone else, not to mention a man. There wasn’t room for it. I was happy with her.
But as uncomfortable as it is to admit, I’ve always found Will attractive. I wish I could say the other day was the first time my eyes ever lingered on him for a moment too long, but it wasn’t. I just chose not to see it until now.
I think I may be the worst person on earth.
I force myself to get up because lying there, thinking about everything wrong with my current situation, isn’t doing me any good. So I go through the motions of the morning. Coffee. Dishes. Breakfast.
Don’t think about him. Don’t think about his lips.
Addie stumbles through the front door around eight, wearing her clothes from yesterday, so she must have spent the night at Emmett’s.
She pours herself a cup of coffee, and I don’t comment on the faint smell of alcohol.
My teenage daughter sneaking beer at her best friend’s house is the least of my worries. I trust him to take care of her.
Ollie comes down twenty minutes later and climbs into his chair, asks for waffles, and I make them because I’m damn lucky the kid didn’t see what happened last night.
Or didn’t know to care.
“Grandma’s picking you up at ten,” I tell them both, sliding the plate in front of Ollie.
“For the farmers market?” he asks, drowning the waffles and everything in the general area in syrup. “Is Uncle Will coming?”
I pause at the name, and it feels like an admission of guilt.
“Not today, bud,” I say, clearing my throat, busying myself tidying up the table.
Joyce picks the kids up at ten on the dot, Ollie running excitedly to greet his grandma while Addie trails behind, sunglasses perched on her head with a groan.
I’m grateful for the alone time after last night.
I need to think.
So I’m going to clean the house, for the first time in way too long, and while I clean, I’m going to come up with some sort of plan for how to handle seeing him again. What I’m going to say. What I’m going to do.
If I’m going to do anything.
I find the duster under the sink after noticing a thick layer of dust on the living room bookshelf. I start in there because it’s the worst, working my way around the furniture while my mind drifts to what happened.
I kissed Will last night.
I’ve been wanting to for longer than I’ve been willing to admit, and last night, with adrenaline coursing through my veins and his breath on my face, I couldn’t hold back. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
I move to the dining room.
Now the complicated part.
I have to see him again. It isn’t avoidable. He’s working at the practice. He’s Frank and Joyce’s son. He’s the kids’ uncle. I’m supposed to be helping him. There’s no version of this where I can avoid him. So I have to figure out what I want. And where things stand between us.
Do I want to kiss him again?
Yes, my brain supplies without a second thought.
And I’ve given up trying to argue with myself.
I should probably be concerned about why I’m all of a sudden attracted to a man, but I’m not.
I drag the duster along the china cabinet full of dishes we’ve never used, and I don’t care about my sexuality one bit.
All I know is I want him more than I’ve wanted anyone in a long time, and if that makes me bisexual or even gay, so be it. But does he want me?
He didn’t push me away last night. In the half a second before Ollie interrupted, he hadn’t moved. And when I pulled back, he was shocked. He didn’t yell at me or cuss me out or any of the other things that may have been a reasonable response to your brother-in-law kissing you.
He didn’t have much of a chance to react either way. I could have kissed anyone for that long, and they wouldn’t have had time to object.
I pause my dusting, more confused than ever.
Will is complicated. He just got out of prison, and I don’t even know the whole story on that. He spent the last, however many years, on drugs. He’s never been nice to me in the twenty years I’ve known him. Never given me any reason to believe he even tolerated my presence.
But last night, he didn’t push me away.
What would have happened if Ollie hadn’t interrupted us? What did I want to happen?
I’m deep in thought, imagining all sorts of scenarios that could have happened last night. Will grabbing me and kissing me harder, him shoving me away, another argument, when there’s a knock at the door.
I head over, assuming it’s someone selling something, and tug the door open without looking through the peephole, to reveal the very man I want to avoid, standing on my porch.
He’s got his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and a determined expression on his face that’s incredibly handsome. Why didn’t I ever notice that before?
“Hi,” I say, the only thing I can think of.
“Hey.” His eyes trail over my frame, down to my hand. “Is that a feather duster?”
“Jess bought it.”
He doesn’t respond to that, looking past me into the house, then back at my face, and I feel like I should be saying something, but I have no idea what the protocol is for this. I thought I would have more time to figure it out.
“You gonna invite me in, or…”
“Right. Yes.” I step back, opening the door wider, gripping Jess’s feather duster like a weapon. “Sorry. Come in. Please.”
He steps past me into the house, and I close the door, following him until he stops in the living room, and then it’s just us, staring at each other, everything unsaid between us, so much of something that it could choke you.
I look down at the floor, his stare too much when I know what his lips feel like.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I repeat, and that must be the wrong thing to say because his eyebrows climb to his forehead.
“Dude. Are you gonna make me drag it out of you? You kissed me. I feel like I’m owed some sort of explanation for that because what the fuck?”
That’s true. He is owed an explanation. And I have one that makes sense, somewhere in my head. An apology, a lapse in judgment, an excuse that will make everything okay and normal, and we’ll laugh about it someday.
But everything in my brain disappears in the face of what I’ve done, and all I can do is blurt out, “I have feelings for you.” His stare stays on me, his eyes widening slightly, and I want to hide in a corner somewhere, but apparently, I’ve lost control of my mouth. “Romantic feelings. I like you.”
The staring continues for what feels like forever. Until he does something I’m not expecting in the slightest.
He laughs.
A genuine sound startled out of him, like I’ve told him my best joke. And I’m realizing I don’t think I’ve ever seen him laugh with his full body, head tilted back, tears in his eyes. It’s a nice thing to see, if only it weren’t at my expense.
I set the duster down on the coffee table and cross my arms.
“Jesus, man, I didn’t realize you were this funny,” he says, clutching his chest. “All these years, I thought you were an uptight dick, but that’s actually a good one.”
“It’s not a joke.” I hold his gaze even though, as I’m saying the words, I’m realizing that maybe I should have taken the out. “I wish it were.”
My serious tone must strike a nerve because his smile fades and his laughter dies down as he begins to understand. I can see it in his eyes. He’s looking at me differently now.
“You have feelings for me,” he says slowly, testing out the words that shouldn’t exist. “Like, what, you wanna bang me, or—”
Of course, that’s the first place he would go.
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s what that means, though.”
“No, it means I—” I look away, my face heating up as I embarrass myself even more than I already have. “I like you. I want to, I don’t know, spend time with you. Go out with you, maybe. I haven’t exactly worked out the details. This is new information to me too.”
“So let me get this straight,” he says after a long moment of silence. “First you married my sister, and now you’re saying you have a crush on me.”
“I—” I start, knowing how bad it sounds, but he beats me to it, shaking his head with another mean laugh.
“Man, this is rich. Do you have a Davis family kink or something? You gonna go after Joyce next? Or maybe Frank, since apparently you swing both ways?”
I don’t justify that with a response, even as my stomach twists at his words. “Because I think Dad might be down, he’s always liked you—”
“Will.” I interrupt, pinching the bridge of my nose, my patience draining fast. I look up briefly, praying even though I’m not religious, that whatever god is out there will give me the strength to deal with this infuriating man.
Why did it have to be him?
“I understand that this is a lot. And I’m not asking you for anything. Last night was a mistake, and I’m so sorry that it happened. It won’t again. I know you’re not interested in men—”
“It’s not that I’m not interested in men.”
I stop at that, meeting his suddenly steady gaze. “Always been pretty equal opportunity,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t really care who’s sucking my dick as long as it’s getting sucked, you know?”
Something like hope begins to bloom where his reaction had snuffed it out. But before I can say anything else, he cuts me off with a snap of his fingers, like he remembered the most important part. “Except for you. That ain’t happening.”
His words shouldn’t affect me. I know, deep inside, that Will isn’t a nice person, and I shouldn’t want him. I don’t even know if I want to do that. I hadn’t gotten that far before he showed up.
But there’s something about his words that hurt in a cutting way that I can’t ignore. Equal opportunity, except for me.
Just me.
“Okay,” I say, uncrossing my arms even though I’m starting to feel naked under those eyes. “Let’s pretend it didn’t happen.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“The kiss,” I clarify. “This conversation.”
I wait for him to agree and to leave so I can spend the rest of the day alone, to figure out how I’m supposed to coexist with someone who knows how I feel and flat-out rejected me. But he shakes his head.
“Mm, no. I don’t think I can do that,” he says with a smile I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s not one he uses with the kids or his parents, only me. One side lifted up, a dark quality to it that makes me want to squirm.
He strolls past me, brushing his arm against mine, calling behind him, “I’ll see you Monday, Doc.”
I turn, my heart hoping he might come back and say he’s changed his mind while my head berates me for wanting that in the first place. And when the door shuts, with my skin still covered in goosebumps from where he brushed past me, I walk toward it and peer out the window.
He’s gone.
I lock both of the locks before I turn and lean back against the door, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. I’m not going to cry about this. There’s no way in hell I’m crying because my brother-in-law doesn’t want me.
And as much as I want to be angry with him, he did nothing wrong, saying what he said. It was a completely fair response to the absurd notion that I want him. I’m the one who did something wrong.
I have no right to feel this way.
“So stupid,” I say out loud, wiping a tear from my cheek.