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“I didn’t want them to think less of me,” I admitted.
Never in a million years would I have imagined myself in this conversation, and never would I have thought it would happen on my couch, in my underwear, after a night of the most mind-bending sex I’d ever had since the last time I’d had sex with Owen. There’d been a thousand dreams where I’d been able to use words to repair the damage I’d caused, a hundred more when I’d milked his forgiveness right out of his prostate with the tips of my fingers, but it had never been like this. Raw and honest, and exactly what he deserved from me while being the absolute last thing I wanted to offer.
“Why would they think less of you?” he rasped.
“Are you being serious right now?”
“I seriously want you to answer the question.”
I sighed and leaned back, tucking myself into the corner of the couch and finding myself thankful for the buttery softness of the cushions.
I didn’t know how to answer.
I knew I wanted Owen. I knew what I wanted him to hear. But I worried the truth would only drive him further away from me. After all, my truth was just that. It was mine, colored by my own experiences and my own understanding of what had happened between us and what I’d done. I couldn’t make him agree with any of it or believe it. But he wasn’t asking that of me, either.
All he’d asked for was my honesty.
“Because I’m not a good person, Owen. I mean, maybe I am now, but I wasn’t then. I was…your sister.” I sighed, rubbing at my eyes like the answer would appear somewhere in the dark.
I glanced at him and found him stoic, his expression frozen and giving nothing away. He wasn’t going to grant me an inch; instead he sat there content to watch me wade through the quicksand of my own creation.
“Can I ask you a question first?”
He gave a short nod.
“In a perfect world, Owen, what would you have had happen? When you…when you sat down and wrote that letter. When you left it for me…how did you think that would go? How did youwantit to go?”
His answer would be the piece that had been missing from the puzzle of my life for a decade because, while I’d been left to live with my responses and my actions, I’d never understood the reasons that we’d found ourselves together in his basement. I knew why I’d gone after him, of course. I’d just wanted to make sure my best friend was okay, that he wasn’t in pain. Because he’d told me he loved me, told me he wanted me, and all the while those feelings had been growing, he’d been watching me—hearing me—live out those dreams with his sister. I hadn’t gone down to the basement planning on kissing him, let alone losing my virginity to him, taking his…
“I hadn’t thought that far,” he confessed. “I was eighteen and heartbroken, Arch. I just needed to say what I had to say.”
“I don’t buy that.”
“You don’t believe I was in pain?” He moved quickly, all sharp and angry angles as he set his coffee next to the cheese and slapped his hand against his bare chest. “You don’t think I fucking loved you then?”
“That’s not what I meant.” I set my coffee next to his and angled my body toward him. “I don’t believe that you didn’t think that far.”
“I told you then I used to fantasize it was you and me.” He swallowed, throat working and darkening with every breath.
“So, you got what you wanted,” I whispered.
“I didn’t understand the fucking cost! I didn’t know!”
Owen licked his lips and sucked them between his teeth, stare darting madly around the room, looking at all the furniture that didn’t have anything to do with him or me.
Just a diversion from the truths that were finally coming to light.
We’d both done a great job at pretending, apparently. Living in the shadows of half-truths and a whole lot of fucking lies we told ourselves to sleep at night.
“I didn’t know,” he said again, voice softer. He stared at my knee, at the way my fingers drummed against the bone nervously. “I just knew I couldn’t carry it myself anymore.”
“You wanted me to break up with your sister,” I realized.
“Of course I did,” he snapped, and then groaned, like his answer was as much of a surprise to him as it had been to me. “I didn’t want to hurt her, but I didn’t want to hurt anymore either.”
“Owen, why…”
“It waskillingme.”
