Page 19 of Forever Always

I scowled at him. “Don’t say shit like that. I’d never hurt you. Not on purpose anyway.”

His lips tipped up in half a smile. “Got you to stop apologizing though.”

“I should be apologizing. You’re fuckin’ horrified. I ruined everything.”

I tried to run again, my legs finally feeling normal, but Becks stopped me with a hand around my bicep. “Stop runnin’ and stop apologizing and give me a fuckin’ second to process.”

“Sorry.” Beckett glared at me, and I bit my lip to stop myself from saying sorry again.

He let go of my arm, but the look he fixed me with let me know he would not be happy if I ran. I wrapped my arms around myself and prepared to face the music.

“You kissed me.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

I scoffed. “Because I like you, dumbass,” Like wasn’t even close to a strong enough word to explain how I was feeling, but I wasn’t gonna scare Becks any more than I already had. “I like you as more than a brother, and I have for a long time. Really fuckin’ long. I showed you that stupid text because I was tryin’ to make you jealous. It was dumb. All of this was. I thought maybe, just maybe you mighta had feelings for me too, not as a brother, and maybe you just didn’t realize it yet or were scared or somethin’. But I was clearly wrong and I fucked everything, and now you’re gonna leave me. Or worse, you won’t leave because of some weird obligation you feel you have to me and just keep takin’ care of me but secretly hate me and resent me, and we’ll eventually grow apart and all the you and me forever bullshit will be just that, bullshit, and—”

“Riley.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

“Shut up.” I opened my mouth to retaliate, but he held up a hand and kept talking. “You keep talkin’ and talkin’ and not givin’ me a chance to think. I-I don’t know how I feel. I’m so fuckin’ confused, and everything I ever thought is being flipped on its head, so ‘scuse me if maybe I’m not keepin’ up. But there is one thing I’m so fuckin’ sure of. I don’t hate you. I’ll never hate you. I’m not disgusted by you either. You ain’t some obligation or whatever else you just said. Jay said somethin’ today that I can’t stop thinkin’ about. He said you and me are two parts of the same person. He’s right. You’re my other half, Ri. What that means exactly, I’m not sure yet. I’m sorry I acted like that when you kissed me. It was not because of you. It’ll never be because of you. I was surprised, and my head went to a lot of different places. There are some things, things you don’t know, and my brain is a fucked-up place to be. It had me thinkin’ about things I wished I never had to remember again.”

The color drained out of my face. I didn’t know what Becks was talking about, but I knew he kept some things from me. There were too many days he’d come back a lifeless shell of the person he was when he’d left. Too many times, he’d come back bruised or bleeding or just holding himself weird. He would never tell me what had happened, and I stopped asking. I’d just cleaned him up and held him until he’d slept. But still, as I’d gotten older, I’d started to suspect. There were only so many ways a kid could get money and . . . Oh God. I was gonna be sick.

“Becks. Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I never. Never meant to— I shoulda asked. I just—”

Becks cupped my cheeks. “Hey, butterfly. It’s okay. I’m okay. Breathe for me, please. I’m not mad or even upset. It just took a second for my brain to catch up. But I’ll never be upset at your touch, even if it was unexpected. You have nothin’ to apologize for.”

“I shoulda asked.”

“Butterfly, look at me.” I didn’t want to, but I owed it to Beckett. I met his eyes and nearly got the breath knocked out of me with all the emotion brewing in those dark blues. “Riley, you did nothin’ wrong. You can’t know how I’m gonna react all the time when I don’t even know. Okay? No matter what, no matter what happens next, that kiss didn’t break us. We’re still good.”

“We are?” I hated how unsure I was.

Becks knocked his head against mine. “Yeah, Ri, we are.”

“And the rest of it?”

He sighed. “I-I don’t know. Before today, I was sure I only thought of you as my little brother. But with the way I reacted before, Jay’s and my talk, and now this, it has me questioning everything. I’m startin’ to see things I never saw before. I just, I need a little time to figure it out. Is that okay, Riley? I’m not sayin’ no, and I’m not pushin’ you away. I just need time.”

I swallowed. Time. I could do that. I knew it had to be a shock to him. Becks deserved to take all the time he needed. I could be patient. As long as he wasn’t leavin’ me, I could wait.

“Okay.”

Beckett grinned and all was right in the world. “Good. Thank you, butterfly. Now, c’mon. It’s been a long as fuck day and we both need sleep.”

I hesitated. “In our bed, right? Or should I go sleep on the couch?”

Beckett rolled his eyes, “Stop bein’ ridiculous. ‘Course in our fuckin’ bed.” And just to make sure I didn’t get any ideas, Becks literally guided me in and tucked me in the covers, like he’d done as a kid. Then I could finally breathe normally as he held me against his body so that my back was against his chest. We knew it was weird, but it was the only way we could sleep, and I thought I’d lost that by kissing him without asking first. The tension in Beckett’s body melted away second by second, and it allowed me to relax too. This was fine. This was perfect. And if Becks decided he could never give me more than this, then I’d learn to live with that because any part of Becks was better than none.

CHAPTER 7

BECKETT

I woke up with something tickling my neck. When I brushed it away, I realized it was Riley’s hair. At some point, we must’ve moved positions and I was now flat on my back with Riley using my chest as a pillow, his face toward me. He was still sound asleep, and I couldn’t help but smile at his soft, little snores.

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