13. Easton
Chapter Thirteen
EASTON
I slammed the front door shut as soon as I entered the apartment. The world was a blur of colors and a mess of sounds, rendered through my banging heartbeats and my teary eyes.
I could still feel the lingering heat on my lips.
I could still feel the tempting call to surrender, to hand over myself to him.
It was too easy. Jace holding me, his arms around my waist, his hands on the small of my back, was all I could think about.
I had never felt so light, so weightless, as when he kissed me back.
But he was not just some guy I could hook up with. The history was so muddled and complicated that we could never be completely free of it.
I hurried into the bathroom, desperately needing to shower again.
As I stepped into the shower cabin, I knocked down the products from the rack.
I picked them up one by one, tossing the old and empty ones out and returning the new ones on the rack.
There, near the small pile of empty shower gel bottles, was the small cabinet.
In its bottom drawer, an item I hadn’t used in weeks. I blocked it out of my mind.
I don’t need that, I thought, but the simmering heat was still rising from the pit of my stomach.
I scrubbed myself clean. Or I thought I did.
The feeling of filth was not filth at all but guilt.
They’d raised us together, then they’d sent him away, and he was here, returning into my life with a force of a thousand brilliant stars.
I never should have opened the goddamn door when he knocked.
I should have known that coming face-to-face with him was going to be devastating.
Jace was precisely what I craved, making it so much riskier to be around him.
Yet I couldn’t get away from him. Every chance I got, I neared him.
I didn’t have to walk to the beach with him; I didn’t have to spend my time late into the night eyeing him and fighting with him.
These things I did gave me a respite from everything else.
He was fucking right. He could make me feel infinitely better if I gave myself to him.
Even now, his steady, unwavering presence made me feel protected.
How much more at ease would I be if I finally broke and handed over all the control?
To be free of having to think, of having to plan, and to let Jace take care of me…
I showered until my skin was raw. Then, I eyed the bottom drawer of the cabinet, my fingers trembling.
What if I was ready?
What if he walked in and I didn’t have that barrier, that one extra step to perform? What if I could let my body decide in the moment?
As I reached for the bulb-like silicone kit, hidden away in the back of the drawer, I knew that I wasn’t just making it easier for myself to make a decision later. I was inching closer to giving in already.
The piano my father and I assembled in the living room under the window where Jace normally sat on the sill and smoked was plugged in but still purely decorative. It had been months since I had last played music. Until now.
Of the few interests I had, hockey occupied ninety percent of my heart. The remaining ten had once upon a time been dedicated to music.
When Dad had left and Jace stepped out of the closet, he ignored the piano.
Almost a week had gone by, and Jace hadn’t mentioned it.
It must have been a painful sight, and I had been thoughtless to go through with it.
I should have told Dad not to bring it once it had become clear to me I couldn’t turn Jace away.
Couldn’t? I wondered. That wasn’t the truth.
I could have done whatever I wanted. The truth was that I wouldn’t turn him away.
Not after I looked into his eyes and felt the same excited fear that I had once known so well.
Not after I scanned his face and saw the broken heart tattoo under the corner of his eye, the bad boy taper fade, the mop of unruly hair, the perfect line of his eyebrows, and the sexy mustache.
My fingers moved along the keys at a slow, mournful, tranquil pace.
Beethoven had always been my favorite, partly because I couldn’t dream of playing Liszt, whose pieces required another ten to fifteen fingers at the very least, and partly because the melancholy in Beethoven’s works had resonated with me throughout my life.
Mom and Dad had picked me over Jace for music lessons soon after they had adopted me. They hadn’t asked him, but the wide-eyed looks he’d cast at the piano once they’d bought it were a clear giveaway. He’d wanted it, too. Being skipped over must have sparked another wildfire of envy.
Why would they do that? I asked myself. I’d skillfully spent years avoiding this question. Why would they drive such a wedge between us?
For most of my life, I was able to tell myself that Jace had been unwelcoming enough from the very day I’d come into that house that it had been his own fault.
But we all knew that it hadn’t only been Jace.
Dad never played catch with him. Mom never showed him how to mix the cookie dough.
Piano lessons were never offered to him.
The new skates were my size, not his. His stubbornness and their disregard had made Jace into the hotheaded man that he now was.
And would I have done any better had I been the parents? How did one raise a child who questioned authority from the start?
I played my sad little tune as I thought about this, my mind drowning out the melody and all the other sounds around me. The open window let the mess of traffic pour into the apartment, but that existed outside my consciousness. I was lost on the vast surface of the sea of my thoughts.
It was as though I had been resisting it just for the sake of it. Just so I could say, once I gave in, that I had tried. It was a sad attempt to hand my guilt over to Jace. He could take the heat. He could live with it so that I wouldn’t have to think about it.
Muscle memory took over my fingers. The Moonlight Sonata was not a challenging piece; its first movement wasn’t, at least. I worked through the mistakes that came with not playing an instrument for a year.
This summer, when I had returned home for a little break, I’d been too drained and worried to even touch it.
I worked through them, emptying my head of thoughts, until the click of the front door pulled me back into the moment.
“You play beautifully,” Jace said after a few moments.
I put my hands in my lap. My shorts had lifted up my thighs in the sitting position. I turned around on the piano stool and looked at him. “Nice of you to lie.”
“Just take the compliment, Easton,” he said, his tone scolding but his lips quirking upward into a smile.
We eyed each other warily in the silence that followed. I couldn’t take my gaze off his lips. They were so sharp, so defined, so wonderfully hot. If he kissed me again, my knees would buckle, and I would be a sprawling mess before his feet. There was little I wanted more than that.
“Play some more,” Jace said.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to play the piano for the boy who hadn’t gotten a chance to learn it himself.
Jace inhaled, held his breath, and exhaled slowly. “I’m clearly doing this wrong,” he said.
“It’s not you, Jace,” I said. I rubbed my hands against my cotton shorts to wipe off the cool sweat breaking over my palms.
He let out a soft chuckle. “It’s not transactional, you know,” he said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you because it’s important to me.”
I still didn’t understand why it was important. Few people had collected as many reasons to hate me through life as Jace had, but he didn’t seem to want that box open.
“Beyond that,” Jace said, leaning against the bookcase by the TV shelf, arms crossed on his chest. He inhaled and hesitated a single heartbeat longer than necessary. “Beyond that, I want you, Easton. I wanted you, back then, and the desire never went away even if I did.”
I was silent for the longest time. His words made my body heat up. It seemed so impossibly simple when he spoke. So long as I didn’t overthink it, the answers were right there in front of me. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t expected him to say this tonight.
I licked my lips and looked up. My breathing was shallow, and my fingers were restless.
I had to hold my knees tightly to hide the tremors that passed through my hands.
I could feel the creeping heat change the color of my cheeks.
I’d always been so easy to read. Even now, I could see Jace’s pupils dilating.
He knew exactly what went through my mind because my body couldn’t hide the truth.
“What would you do to me?” I asked. “If you could.”
Jace was quiet for a moment, as if processing the surprise.
Then, with his typical swagger, he crossed the living room and stood ever so slightly too close to me.
He knew precisely where my line was and stepped on it while looking into my eyes.
He leaned down just enough to take my hand into his.
His gaze was still on my face. “What would I do to you? Easy. I would kiss the back of your hand.” He brought his heated lips down on the skin of the back of my hand.
“I would kiss each finger,” he said softly, his voice low.
As his lips moved from one finger to the other, chills ran down my spine.
“Then, I would bring you to your feet, Easton,” he said, lifting me gently to stand before him.
Looking from ever so slightly above, he reached up with his hand and pinched my chin, tipping my head down.
“I’d kiss your eyelids. If I could.” The whisper washed over my face as he pressed his lips against my closed eyes, each in turn.
“And your nose,” he breathed, doing it as soon as the words left his lips.
“What else?” I asked, fighting with all my might against the shivers that threatened to rock my body. “Tell me.”