Page 33 of The One Decent Thing

One of the siblings was a psycho politician who cared more about her ambition and image than her own son — or about sending some random teenager who’d never done her any harm to prison for years, for that matter — and the other couldn’t even commit to a continent, let alone a mistress. Yeah, I was betting their childhood had been really fucking idyllic. A lot of people might have thought growing up filthy rich made up for shit like that, but I knew better. All I had to do was look at Sebastian if I wanted to see how that played out.

“I hope I get to,” I said, and meant it. This dude might be a rich playboy douchebag, but he’d been there for Sebastian when his own parents failed horrifically. Been there financially, at least, which wasn’t nothing. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, even if he was only helping Sebastian in order to give a big fat middle finger to his sister and brother-in-law. Which, from my perspective, was a definite feature, not a bug. “Does he visit much?”

“Nah. He emails me sometimes. He only owns this house because he inherited it fromhisuncle. He doesn’t really like Santa Rafaela. No casinos and not enough European bikini models.”

It was my turn to laugh, and then we were pulling into the driveway and starting a new debate about spaghetti versus macaroni and cheese.

Sebastian

Aidan’s first night at work, two days after the interview, went so well that he came home beaming and practically vibrating out of his new clothes. And God, that was a thought. In his tight black jeans and tighter black Henley, he looked like sex on legs — long, long muscular legs that would’ve fit really well in between mine. That was a road I couldn’t go down or I’d go crazy. Thinking about sucking him off again got me hard and aching every time, and I spent a few minutes every night taking care of that on my own. Thinking aboutmorethan sucking him off was a path to madness and crying myself to sleep — after I jerked off.

I’d offered to drive him to work, and to pick him up after, but he turned me down. I hadn’t told him how much I hated driving, but somehow he’d figured it out anyway. Why did he have to be so considerate? It made it so much harder to keep my distance.

Especially when I had an excuse to touch him now. All I had to do was apologize. But would he think I was too eager if I let the words fall out of my mouth? The blow job dealwasworking as a deterrent, only not the way he’d thought it would. It made my mouth water and my hands shake imagining having him like that again — him having me like that again, or in any other way he wanted. If I said those two little words,I’m sorry, he could. And he knew it.

Which meant I couldn’t say them. He’d know how much I wanted him, wanted his cock stuffed in my mouth and my hands on his body, and then…then he wouldn’t let me do it anymore.

The rest of the week Aidan slept during the day, walked to work a little before six, and walked home around three in the morning. During the hours he was awake and home, I hid out in my room as much as I could, or buried myself in books at the kitchen table. My desk was still in Aidan’s room. I’d grabbed my school stuff but not the piece of furniture, and moving it into my room now would seem like such a pointed way to get away from him.

Also, then I’d be away from him.

Every night, I used the excuse of studying to stay up waiting for him, listening for the sound of his quick footsteps on the front walkway. I went to bed right after he got home every night, but I needed to see him. Needed to make sure he came home alone, and that he came home at all. It wasn’t any of my business, but I couldn’t help myself.

Including Saturday night. I could have been out at a bar myself; Chris had asked me to come along. I could even have gone to Aidan’s club to get a drink, dance a little, and pretend I was going home with someone else. The whole idea of it depressed me. Yeah, that would be so much fun. Catching glimpses through the door of Aidan smiling and flirting with every girl whose ID he checked while I tried not to throw up from the stress of being around so many people’s pheromones and loud laughter and exposed skin…I’d go nuts.

Technically, it was Sunday morning, since midnight was hours ago. The glare of the kitchen’s overhead light on my textbook was starting to make my eyes blur, and I sat back and blinked a few times. The equations swirled on the page, meaningless little black marks. I’d done okay on my midterms, but the university was on the quarter system and my finals would be there before I knew it. Those lucky bastards on the semester system got their whole winter break to study for finals, or pretend to, but not me. A new quarter would start in January.

Rhythmic taps pulled me out of my fugue, and my heart skipped a beat before I even consciously recognized Aidan’s footsteps on the concrete out front.

I scrambled to pull my notes into some kind of order, wake up my sleeping laptop, and pick up a pen before Aidan got in and saw me sitting there like a lump, or a fifties housewife, waiting for him to get home.

He opened and shut the front door super quietly, even though he had to know I was still awake. I mean, all the lights were on — and I always stayed up. Hopefully he didn’t know how much coffee I had to drink to keep myself up past eleven. I wasn’t actually that much of a night owl.

I looked up as he came through from the living room, his jacket and shoes off and his chest and hips and thighs just as incredibly cut and hot in his black-on-black as they had been earlier when he left for work.Shouldn’t I be used to the way he looks? Yes, you should, Seb. You moron. With an effort, I kept my tongue in my mouth.

“How was work?”

“Great,” he said, but sounded less enthused than he had the last few nights. He shoved his hands through his hair, blew out a breath, and shot me a half-smile on his way to the fridge. “Good. Long. Jesus fucking Christ, the Saturday night crowds are crazy.”

Aidan opened the fridge and started to rummage, condiment bottles clinking and plastic produce bags rustling. The fridge was behind me, where I sat facing the doorway to the living room, and the chilled air rushing out of it made me shiver, goosebumps rising on my bare arms.

“Sorry, I know it’s cold,” Aidan said off-handedly, and slammed the door shut, passing by me on his way to the counter with his hands full of sandwich stuff. Did he have eyes in the back of his damn head? “Why don’t you have a sweater or something?”

And why couldn’t henot care about me, when I was about to lose it every time he did? “Sorry,mom,” I snapped. “I didn’t do my chores while you were gone, either.”

Heavy silence filled the kitchen, seeping into every corner and wrapping around us. Aidan stood completely still at the counter, his head bowed, his shoulders tensed up into knots.

Dammit. Dammit, dammit… “I’m sorr—” I bit down hard on my lip and tasted blood, cutting the word off before I could get it all the way out. I couldn’t say it. How screwed up was that, that now I was afraid to apologize when I ought to, in case he thought I was looking for a reason to get in his pants?

“You’re allowed to apologize this time without paying for it,” he said quietly, with an undertone of something raw that brought the goosebumps back, even though I wasn’t cold anymore. “You kind of ought to, actually.”

My heart sank. Yeah, he was so mad he didn’t even want to get some out of it. Or maybe he’d really hated being with me so much that he’d been praying for me not to have to be sorry for anything. “Okay. I’m s—sorry. Really. That was a crappy thing to say.”

A long pause, in which Aidan didn’t move a muscle. “No worries.” He grabbed up all the food off the counter, turned back to the fridge, and shoved it in haphazardly. “I’m not actually that hungry. I think I’m just going to shower off the club and hit the sack. You need the bathroom in the next five minutes?”

I shook my head, staring down at my notes strewn across the table. He didn’t reply. I watched his black-socked feet pass through my field of vision, and then a minute later the shower turned on, the decades-old pipes clanking under the floor as the water heated up.

For a minute, it seemed like a panic attack was going to take over. I could feel it brewing in the edges of my consciousness, like a gathering storm.

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