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Nervously, I swallowed, but he didn’t stop his appraisal. I could feel every fingertip as they pressed into the soft skin of my cheeks, against my jaw.
“It’s not stupid,” he said again.
“You’re my biggest regret,” I whispered.
He moved to pull back and I grabbed him, curling my hands around his wrists and keeping his hands in place.
“That’s not the compliment you think it is,” he said.
“Not what we did.” I shook my head, eyes falling closed. “Never that.”
“What then?”
“Leaving.”
“This again, Archie?” He let go of my face, straightening his fingers, but I didn’t let go of him. I pulled his wrists together, hauled him half onto my lap.
“Can we just pretend?” I asked. “For the next two days, can we just pretend we’re different people?”
He rolled his eyes. “Why? What good will that do either of us?”
“No past between us, no future that…if we’re other people, the future isn’t out of reach for us,” I rasped, letting go of his hands. “We’re just two people who can be together.”
Owen didn’t pull away. He just let his hands fall half onto my lap, half onto the mess of sheets between us.
“Never mind,” I said quickly, practically shoving him off of me. I grabbed my coffee and climbed out of bed, heading for the window. I yanked the curtains open, casting the room under the unforgiving glare of the sunlight. Maybe that was what I needed. A reminder that no matter how much I wanted to be someone different, I was still Archer Davidson and this was the real world. My ex-girlfriend’s younger brother, the love of my fucking life, was still in my bed, my cum still inside of him.
“Archie.”
“It was a stupid idea.”
Owen crawled out of bed, his soft footfalls growing louder as he closed the space between us. He rested his chin on my shoulder and wrapped one of his arms around my waist. It was new and somehow so familiar. The feeling of a daydream that had haunted me for ten years come to life in my very house. My bedroom, of all places.
“It wasn’t stupid,” he whispered, pressing his lips against the side of my neck. I turned to face him, relishing the way his lips dragged across my skin as I moved. Owen tilted his mouth up and licked his way over my lips, my jaw, and around to my ear. He loosed a quiet moan, then smiled and whispered, “I’m in.”
CHAPTER22
OWEN
It wasnice to play pretend.
Moving around Archie in his giant bathroom like we’d been doing it for years came naturally as breathing. The way he caught my eye in the mirror while we brushed our teeth, and how he passed me a hand towel without even looking when I was finished washing my face. It was easy and comfortable, and the drive into the city felt so much the same.
He held my hand, our fingers twined together on top of his center console as my foot tapped in time with the bass drum beat in the song he had low on the radio. With the windows down, I could smell the concrete and the smog, but hints of the ocean whipped through the air and I knew we were somehow close to the beach. He hadn’t told me where we were going, though, and even as he pulled off the freeway and headed up a narrow winding road into the mountains, I wasn’t sure.
“Did you come to The Getty last time you were here?” he asked when we reached the parking lot kiosk.
“I went to the beach and I went to Rapture,” I said. “I checked out the hotels my sister—”
I snapped my mouth closed, not wanting to talk about my sister when we were supposed to be pretending she wasn’t anyone important to us. Archie threw a sideways glance at me, but didn’t ask any questions.
“I didn’t go to The Getty,” I finished. “Do you come here often?”
“Not as much as I used to,” he said.
I waited for an explanation, but he didn’t offer one so I let the car fall into silence while he drove through the parking garage. It wasn’t until we boarded the tram to take us the rest of the way up the mountain that I asked him to clarify. “I feel like there’s a but.”
“No buts.” He squeezed my hand and turned his attention out the window. “It just feels like a different life sometimes. Back then.”
