Page 51 of Never Say Yes To Your Brother's Best Friend

“I’m not a bird in a cage. I’m free right now. There’s no setting involved. And anyway, that would be a butthole thing to do.”

I brace my arms on the sink and whirl away from her. “Yes, I’m a butthole. I’m a butthole who’s no good for you. I was a soldier for too long. I can’t stop. I can’t make myself soft. I can’t be what you need. I’m just better off alone. I never had a family, and Idon’t need one now. I’ll sell this house and figure out what I want to do. I’ll be fine, and so will you.”

“You don’t know what I’ll be,” Aspen says.

“I do. You’re not a quitter. You’ll keep at it until you’re good.”

“Good? Until I’m good? I’m not good without you. I want to…to be here for you.”

“That’s exactly the one thing you shouldn’t want.”

“But I do want it,” she says stubbornly.

She throws her arms around my waist and presses her cheek to my back. The bathroom is hella humid, and we’re both damp. I can feel her wet hair soaking through my Henley and the damp towel. I can feel the endless heat of her and her curves pressed tightly to me. I want to spin around and devour her. I want to be inside her again. I want to be inside her over and over and over again. I don’t want to stop, and I don’t want it to expire. Maybe I want her inside me too. Like in my soul and shit, for the love of get-your-mind-off-inappropriate-things.

“Don’t,” I choke. Soul shit isn’t stuff I mess around with. Chest shit and heart shit are a definite no either. “Don’t do that. Don’t hope. Hope makes a mess of everything. It’s an illusion, and it’s the disappointing kind. I’m the magic trick after it’s already been figured out. Simple. A letdown. Not magic at all.”

“That’s mean. Don’t say mean things about yourself.”

“I can say them if they’re true. I’m only going to disappoint you. I’m a solitary man. I’ve been solitary for a long time. I never had a family, so I didn’t get taught how to love, and that’s the shite you probably need to learn from a young age.”

Am I afraid? I’m terrified. I’m terrified that all the things I’ve told myself for so many years are true. That I can’t change. And what I just put out there is my fate for the rest of my life. My own flesh and blood didn’t want me. Why should anyone else? I abandoned Jace to come back here. I abandoned the man whose back I should have had. I know he’s not here, and it’s not becauseof me, but I’ll feel the guilt for the rest of my life. He was more of a family than I ever had, and I just left. I don’t deserve to even lick his sister’s toes. I know how kinky that sounds, and yeah, I totally don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to even get close enough to lick the ground around her.

“I think you’re a little bit scared.” I knew she’d call me out. I’m not afraid to admit it. Being scared only makes you aware of everything around you. It helps you prepare. Fear is a natural response, and it shouldn’t be ignored. It can be transformed and bent to one’s advantage. It can be changed to adrenaline. But this? I know less than shit about all this. “You’re scared of being free from all the things you never wanted to feel in the first place. You want to hang on to that bitterness instead of forgiving.”

Forgive? We’re going there? Fuck no. I wish I could ask for forgiveness from Jace, but I can’t, and who the fuck else deserves it? Anyone who could have begged me for it is gone. “No one has ever asked me to forgive them. Never once.”

“I know,” she whispers as her arms tighten around my waist. “I’m sorry they didn’t. But you can still forgive them without them asking.”

“They’re dead for the most part, so it would be quite difficult for them to do so.”

“Giving forgiveness is what would make you feel better. It’s not for them.”

“Alright.” My hands flex on the sink. I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I can’t look up and see Aspen holding on to me so tight. I can’t look because I’m afraid I’ll see she’s the one doing all the holding. Keeping me upright, keeping me standing. That she’s the one with all the strength right now. “Alright, you win. I’ll work on the forgiveness part. But the violence? That’s ingrained in me. It’s trained into me. The dirt and the blood and all the sins on my hands and soul…that’s a real thing. You don’t need to get near that. I’m not talking about anyone else. I’m notcomparing myself to anyone else. They might not have felt that way, and I’m not saying they lived or died in the same way, and I can’t speak to where they are now, but this is me. I know me, and Icanspeak for myself.”

“I think you’re more than you can ever imagine. You don’t have to work at it. You already have it. You just have to find it,” she says in response.

“Dig deep into the old, unused, unknown parts of me, is that it?”

“Yes. That’s it exactly.”

“Alright. I’ll do that. I’ll do that, and you’ll leave, and you’ll have a lovely life, and we’ll keep in touch like we planned. You can follow up on my progress. I’ll get some self-help books—”

“Stop it.” She swats at me but grasps my arms and makes me turn to face her. She does the face-cupping thing, so I have to be brave enough to look at her dead-on. “You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. If you want to do that, then I’m glad. But I’m not going back to Atlanta. I’ll find my own apartment and a job here. I’ll make my parents understand.”

She’s hinted at this before. Throwing her life away for something she thinks she sees in me. “You can’t do that,” I say.

She cocks a brow. “I’m pretty sure I can do whatever I want. It’s my life, or did you not just say that?”

“I think that’s an argument of semantics again,” I say with a sigh.

“And I think you should leave this house and come back to Atlanta with me. Come and let me find you a place to stay. Come and stay with my parents until you’re settled, or rent one of those long-term stay hotel rooms. Come back with me. We’re family, and we want you. You’re more than what other people have spent years turning you into. Jace knew that, and he wanted us to know it too. He wanted us to know you. He wanted you to be a part of us.”

“No. I was his insurance plan. He knew I had too much of a sense of honor to turn him down when he asked me to protect you because he couldn’t do it. Fair or not, I’m roped into it now. I’m going to be connected to you for life.”

If I was going for hurt, it doesn’t register with Aspen. She dodges the blows I try to stick and land. Ones that Ineedto stick and land. “We tell ourselves stories, Rick. About who we are and where we came from, and then we live that, and it dictates where we’re going.”

“Don’t say we can change the narrative. It’s not that easy.”

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