Page 53 of All Roads Lead to You

“God, everything makes so much sense now,” he said.

I sat up, crossed my legs, and picked at some grass, just needing to lean away from him. When he rested a hand on my back, I jumped, but he didn’t remove it.

“Thanks for telling me. It’s okay, Logan.”

I suddenly scowled at him. “It’s not fucking okay. Nothing about this is okay! I shouldn’t be having these feelings for my stepbrother.”

“I… don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing to say. There’s nothing to do.” I stood and brushed off my ass. “Once I’m in Berkeley and you’re in Stanford, you won’t be around me day in and day out. I can find someone to fuck around with, I guess. That’s going to be my life unless a miracle happens, and people grow more tolerant of gays and allow us to marry and have kids. But I’m not fucking holding my breath.”

I started to walk off but stopped.

“Can we just… start over and pretend I never felt this way about you?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He sounded sad, but I didn’t know why or what to do about it. Hell, I felt the same.

“I’m going to sleep. Night, Nick,” I said, heading toward the tent.

“Night, Logan.”

Day 6

The following morning, everything appeared to be as it was before. Nick acted as if I hadn’t bared my soul to him once again, laughing and joking around with me.

He sure was taking my confession of my crush on him lightly. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed. It was nice to move past everything, but at the same time, I had a sliver of hope that Nick felt the same way. It was fucking ridiculous, but I couldn’t help it.

It was hard to be as relaxed as he was, but I did my best. I was over hating him and being angry all the time. It’d never been his fault, but mine. All I could do was try to remedy that and be his friend and brother.

And no more ‘practice kissing.’

That last kiss in the lake… Jesus. Our first kiss had been drunk and awkward. But the second one? No drinking was involved. I felt everything, inside and out. And for a moment, I thought he felt that, too, though I was probably just projecting as always.

No more.

If we kissed again, I may not be able to turn back. Those couple moments had been perfect, and it would just have to sustain me.

I swallowed my pride, shame, and growing sadness and plastered a smile on my face. “I’m fucking looking forward to seeing Graceland,” I said.

“Hell, yeah! Do you have any Elvis music we can listen to?”

My mom had a couple of albums, and I’d recently recorded them on tape for this trip. “Yep. I got a few choice songs I picked out.”

“Hey, before we reach Graceland, can we drop off some film? It should be ready by the time we wrap up the tour.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Thirty minutes later, we were at a photo-developing shop. We dropped off the film and made our way to Graceland.

As we stood in line for the tour, Nick stood close enough to me that I could feel the heat from his skin, and his arm brushed mine. It wouldn’t take but a fraction of an inch to snag his hand and curl our fingers together. I desperately tried not to react to him.

We’re just brothers. That’s it.

He looked at me with those dark brown eyes, the color of coffee untouched by cream, and smiled. My heart always beat faster when he did that or was close… hell, it did that whenever I thought or fantasized about him.

“What?” I asked.

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