She fired it right back with a snooty air on top. “Because you never invited me.”
He shook his head and seemed to release her. “In some ways, I didn’t feel like I deserved any of this,” he said, looking around the room, at what she still considered the coziest place on the planet.
“Bullshit,” she said, sinking into another bite and wiping the crumb from the side of her mouth with her thumb.
He shrugged again. “You asked. Not saying it was accurate and absolutely not healthy, but that’s how I felt. Like I needed to prove something before I could come… home.”
“Prove what? You never had anything toprove.”
“I don’t know. That I could pull my own weight. Atone for the shit I put your parents through.”
“They don’t regret a day of it.”
“I do,” he said flatly, studying the last of the cookie in his hand and inhaling slowly. “Of course, I fucked it up, because nothing ever goes according to plan, and I came home, well, like this.” He glanced down at his broken body and sighed.
Grief throbbed in her gut as she imagined how he didn’t have any idea how much this was his home as much as hers. “But you’re here now. And things feel… I don’t know, right when you’re here. You always were supposed to be with us.”
“Thanks,” he said lightly, but she could see he didn’t believe it.
She scooted the beer and cookies out of the way, and slid her butt across the coffee table to reach him. Framing her knees outside his, she plucked the cookie from his hands and shoved it in her mouth.
He irritated-laughed, looking at her with comical distrust as she groaned over the goodness of the cookie.
She licked away the crumbs on her lips and wiped the back of her thumb over the corner of her mouth.
Watching, he seemed to be grasping, guessing at what she was doing.
Taking his jaw, she smoothed the tip of her thumb over the thickening growth of beard and silently demanded he look her in the eye.
“What?” he asked, frozen in her hands, one side of his mouth lifted higher than the other as he relented to a smile and met her look.
“Don’t make me get all serious on you. I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass. You are a son to my parents. If they could have adopted you, they would have. Hands down, they claimed you the second you walked in this door, and it doesn’t matter how many things you do right or mistakes you make, they’re not letting you go.”
Gray-green-blue eyes searching hers, more blue thanks to his shirt, she could see the doubt that wouldn’t relent, but there was a niggling hope, that he wanted her words to be true and was so close to believing them.
She tilted her head and twitched a smile. “But, you are one hundred percent not a brother to me. I don’t know what to call you, because nothing quite describes it. You are one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and I don’t have many people I feel like my complete self around. Weallmissed you like crazy.”
Jaw clenching down tight, he exhaled sharply into a helpless laugh. “Why?” He shook his head lightly, as if to mock himself for even asking, and she framed his face in her palms, holding gently, an ache stirring, rising. Different, louder and ravenous, the ache filled her veins.
Unconsciously, needing to satisfy the stirring in her belly, she traced her thumb over his bottom lip. Only a moment. A nothing. Yet so much more intimate than his penis in her face.
He stilled, his eyes fluttering closed.
Breath caught in her throat, she let her gaze fall to the plump of his bottom lip under her thumb. How his mouth parted, wistfully.
Oh. Shit.
This was one of those moments. More enticing than kissable lip gloss. Quiet and connected and like a crack to the skull, she realized exactly why she couldn’t describe him.
Frozen in time, she silently dared herself to cross the line. To follow her gut and lean in, to listen to that heat in her belly and flutter in her chest and tingling in her lips that told her, without reserve, thatthiskiss, right now, inthismoment, would be phenomenal. That the way he responded, so honestly, subtly seductively without even trying, that he wanted to kiss her more than anyone had ever wanted to kiss her. That she had never been so tempted in her entire existence. Not even by chocolate.
Instead, in true Trace fashion, her brain twisted around and around until doubt smacked her upside the head. If she messed up, if she kissed him and threw off his carefully constructed balance and he fell, it would be her fault.
Safety won out, and she patted his cheeks and sat up straight.
Too terrified to see Cole’s reaction, she looked toward the stairs, tuning in to the music radiating up the stairs from her mom’s latest soaring diva playlist to drown out the pounding in her chest. Without needing to look, to see the look on his face, his disappointment was palpable.
The front door squealed open.
