Page 16 of A Wedding in a Week

Then he speaks, his voice quiet, no more than a murmur, but we’re so close that I don’t have trouble hearing. “Really thought I got you out of my system, Stef. Before my interview, I mean. You know, when we…”

Kissed.

That word hangs in the air like a promise. It hangs over my head too, a sword threatening to hurt my brother’s best friend all over again if I make a wrong move.

“Remember?” he asks as if I’ll ever forget his mouth on mine behind the feed store, his lips both soft and hard at the same time. Like I could ever forget his chest against mine either, bare and hard and dusted with more hair than the last time he’d tried to kiss me.

Now, with less than a foot between us, the last few years apart might as well not have happened. We’re almost in the same spot, both sitting on a picnic blanket above an amazing view, our eyes locked on each other, and I daren’t move and ruin this.

Not again.

Staying still is so hard.

He wets his lips, the tip of his tongue there and gone in an instant. I can’t look away from where it’s left them glistening—can’t process anything but the effort of forcing myself to stay still. I hardly breathe, stopping entirely at his whisper.

“Think I should try to get you out of my system again, Stef?”

“Yes.”

Yet again, it’s that easy and that complex. I want to kiss him, even if it costs me. “Yes,” I repeat, every single gull inside me taking off in a frantic spiral, and he responds like I’ve fired a starting pistol.

Marc scrambles closer and straddles me, snug in my lap like he was made to fit it, and I’m instantly grounded. That spiralling inside me settles although I’m not sure if his switch in position has the same effect on him. He’s restless, or his gaze is at least, darting from my mouth to my eyes and back to my mouth. His own lips part, the tip of his tongue visible again, and that’s what I want, only in my mouth not his.

In truth, I want more than another kiss with him in my lap and my bruised arm caught between us. I’ve never wished quite so much that I didn’t still need my sling. I could hold him properly without it, but at least wearing it means my elbow is supported enough that it doesn’t throb now. Something else does instead, my cock trying to swell like my heart does the moment Marc squares his jaw before doing what scares him.

He doesn’t have to be frightened of me.

I won’t hurt him again.

His arms wind around my neck like he’s already committed to facing that fear. His hold brings us even closer here where a sea breeze buffets his hair into molten chaos, sparks glowing like embers from the bonfire that smouldered between us that last summer together. Because it wasn’t only Marc who’d been attracted back then, was it? I’d walked through a fog of loss with him as more than a beacon, as my reason not to break down daily in a world turned upside down by one heart-stopping moment.

After Dad, he’d been there for me. For us. For every single surviving Luxton—and I’ll never forget how Marc stepping up changed all my perceptions of him until that bomb ticking in my brother’s chest took up all my headspace.

But he’s fully recovered. He keeps telling me so.

I need to believe Lukas. Like maybe I need to believe that Marc coming home this year is a second chance I won’t fuck up by tipping him off my lap again because this time I’d be doing it for different reasons.

This evening, if I wasn’t worried it would send us backward, I’d roll him onto his back and cover him with my body instead of telling him no.

I still want him under me so badly. Still want to be his shelter against more than the breeze buffeting us up here. I want to shelter him from a family that shoved him away, even though he doesn’t need that now he’s an adult.

I also want to feel if he’s as hard as I am.

I want that so much, but again, I daren’t move, so I watch and wait until he leans in a fraction, our mouths almost meeting before he leans back, and that hesitation slays me.

He really doesn’t trust me. That’s why he’s been looking elsewhere.

Or maybe I’m wrong.

Marc closes in again, fraction by fraction, his lips so much closer that all I’d have to do is move less than an inch and I’d get to kiss him. His breath coasts my mouth in a warm gust, and I’ve never wanted to take more in my life—to go for it now and pay the piper later, or at least face Lukas later, because that’s what stopped me last time.

This time, something else does.

Marc’s lips brush mine, barely touching, before his phone vibrates between us. I’m tempted to wrench it out of his pocket and fling it down the hillside so he can’t read another come-to-dinner message from a stranger who can’t be the right man for him.

At least this time it isn’t a message from that dating app making his phone ping. “That’s my email.” he says, breathless, and yes, his back is to the sun, his face in shadow, but I still see a flash of pure joy as he reads. “It’s from the Penzance practice. I made the second stage.” He meets my gaze, his own wide with amazement. “I made it,” he repeats as if he can’t believe it, and he sits back, still on my lap but nowhere near as close to me, and I guess that’s my second chance gone.

I shouldn’t be sad about it, not when he’s getting what he wanted, or is closer to getting it, at least.

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