Page 36 of Never Say Yes To Your Brother's Best Friend

For me, home was as cold as the ground we often slept on. As strange and foreign as some of the places we first ventured to. It was unforgiving and lean, and the more wits and walls you had about you, the better.

“I should shower,” I tell her.

She looks up at me and never breaks her stirring stride. She doesn’t flinch or smile or give herself away. “I thought we could do that after breakfast.”

I’m floored. What in the ever-loving crispy yam fries? “I—we?”

“Yes. We.” She stops stirring. Finally. But only to take a step back, lean against the island, and look up at me with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her pupils are fucking huge, and my dick is rock-hard in my jeans. It’s so hard that it almost causes trauma with the seams and zipper again because they can’t get out of the way fast enough. “You were tired last night, and there were things that needed to be said. I appreciate and respect it, and I’m glad it happened. I think you’re feeling better, and your brain is doing better. I’m going to feed you delicious pancakes, and your body will be happy too. I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t honest, though, so I have to say that on a sexy scale of one to ten, I’m about a solid seven, which meansI’m still hot and super bothered. I was thinking a lot about it before last night, and well, basically all night too.”

“What? You were thinking about—”

“Not about that.” She finally goes scarlet. Now. She blushesnow. “About the marriage. I don’t care if it has an expiration date. My body needs you. I thinkImight need you too. Maybe it’s just until two weeks are up, and maybe it’s after. I don’t knowhow it’s going to go. I got a letter, quit my job, upended my whole life, and stumbled into you. I was completely unprepared. I’m basically just winging it, and I know that’s a great recipe for ultra-disaster, but I’ve lived a very careful life up until now, and it was incredibly dissatisfying. So, even if you wreck me, and it hurts my heart a little, I’m a big girl, and I’ll get over it. We can still have sex and be friends. We can look out for each other, even if we’re in separate places. I’m sorry that I found every reason on earth not to like you when we first met. I’m incredibly sorry if you ever felt like what you said last night was true. That I wanted Jace instead of you. I definitely don’t wish I could replace you. Do I want my brother here? Yes. I’ll always want him here. But I don’t want that to be at any cost to you or anyone else.”

Fuck me with the chainsaw we never had to use. I have zero clue what I’m supposed to say to all that.

Zero. Clue.

But my dick knows. He’s allyes please, yes, dear lord, yessssssin my jeans. She’s already picked him for her team. He wants to hear her say dirty things like the word horny again, which sounds so incredibly old school that it’s just so much more taboo and so much hotter. And yes, I know she didn’t actually say it, but hot and bothered is pretty much the same.

I’m so fucking turned on that I feel like a livewire about to burn the place down. At the same time, I can feel my eyes burning again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m normally all about careful observation and strategic planning. That’s how I stay alive. By being careful, not taking unnecessary risks, and not putting myself headlong into bodily harm. But Aspen is different. This double-tree-named woman…she’s different from anyone I’ve ever met. She’s so present and so here in my life that I can’t uproot her. Haha. Tree joke. I’ve never felt this out of control. I’m rushing, alright. Straight into it. Heading for the danger.

So I do the only thing I can do at the moment and sit my ass down at the table. I put distance between us and act broody, so I’m less approachable. I wait, I try to process, and I watch Aspen make magic happen in this kitchen that I normally just ghost through. Food is for sustenance. It’s for staying alive. It’s never tasted…

The first bite I take of the pancakes she sets in front of me when they’re done makes me want to embarrass myself all over again because it fucks with my emotions.Emotions. Yes, good lord, I have them. I admit it. I do. And this? These pancakes don’t taste like sawdust and grit. They taste like heaven. They taste like fluffy, buttery goodness. Like tart and sweet berries. Like a whole lot of the tangy syrup that she’s made by boiling down other berries.

She sits down across from me and smiles at me like she knows. Like she just gets it.

Everything she’s made since she’s been here has been good, but these? I think she just broke me with these.

I think last night broke me too. It broke my brain and wrecked me. The me I thought I knew my entire life. That person is just…he just evaporated. I’m broken up, and there’s this being at the center of me that feels new and innocent and hopeful, and I know how to deal with all that even less than whatever happened last night or this morning so far.

What did she say about being wrecked? Because I think I’m going to be. I think I am. And maybe it’s not horrible.

Aspen takes far longer to eat than I do since I basically scarf everything down at a record pace. And when she’s finished, we both sit there in silence. It feels a little bit strained but not as awkward as it should be. She finally looks up at me, and the intensity of her gaze is like a one-two knockout.

“If you legitimately don’t want this, then please say so. I don’t want to hurt you,” she says.

I want to tell her that the idea of her hurting me is ludicrous, but I can’t say it. I might be a surly asshole at times, but I’ve never been known to lie. If I can’t say something, I just straight up say so or avoid the topic altogether. The fact is, it’s not that ludicrous. I’ve shown her the tiniest of cracks in my armor, and I know she could very well pierce through them if she desired. I know it would be painful in ways my previous injuries have done nothing to prepare me for.

It would hurt a lot, like how it used to hurt when everyone went home for Christmas or Easter or other holidays when I was at boarding school, but not me. It would hurt like being shuffled from one summer camp to another, so I was never around my grandfather either. It was agonizing before I finally learned to stop expecting it to be anything less and then desensitized myself to it. Before I got myself under control and shut myself down. I was doing that long before I ever made it to the military. My childhood was basically a battleground, and sometimes I was just fighting myself, but the shit that went on inside me made the real battles I endured later in life feel like a playground.

At least that enemy could be systematically overcome. Problems could be solved with tangible strategies. But the shit that was going on inside me? That was basically a war with hope, and you can never win one of those. Hope is the deadliest enemy of all.

“It’s not that I don’t want it.” She has no idea how hard it is for me to say those words.

She lets me off easy, smiling at me with real happiness. “Good. Because I’m a grown woman. I’m my own person. I told you that last night, but I want it to sink in. I also want you to know that if I want to please you, or at least try to please you, then it’s our business, and it’s going to be good for both of us if we want it to be good.”

“Aspen…”

“Patrick.”

She looks like a bulldog right now. The cutest, most lovely bulldog. What can I do to fight against her and win? Do I even want to fight against her? Do I want to win? Do I want to keep pushing and shoving and fighting my way away from everything and everyone? She’s in my life for good now. That’s already been established. I do think she means what she says. That if we do this, it doesn’t mean we have to stay married for real. It doesn’t mean we’re dating. It might change things, but she’s mature and emotionally stable enough to handle that.

I’m the unstable one. I’m the one who might not be able to handle it when she leaves. That’s the cold. Hard. Fecking. Truth.

“With those kinds of arguing skills, you should have been a lawyer,” I say with a sigh.

“If by arguing skills you mean, dang it, Aspen, put your mouth to better use, then yes. Yes, I’ll accept that.” If I thought her eyes were wide and lit up before, I was wrong. “If by skills you mean that you would like to take me to the shower now and have me give it my all, then yes. I’ll accept that too. And if you—”

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