Page 39 of Privilege
I Come. Fucking. Everywhere.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rich
God I missed thissmell.
Dane slumps against the couch, cock still twitching in hand. I close my eyes, keep them squeezed tightly shut because I’m not quite ready to open them. Not ready to face this. I want to stay here for a while, in this hazy post-orgasm bliss that smells like my brother.
He’s been stripped down to nothing, ego and attitude conspicuously absent for the firsttime I can remember. All that’s pouring out of him isneed,pure and electric, so thick I can fucking taste it.
And it’s for me.
His eyes, heavy and raw and darker than I’ve ever seen them, drop to my mouth and my heart stutters to a stop.
“Dane…” I say.
It comes out soft, but he looks like he’s been punched, knocked out of whatever perfect fantasy we got to live in for half a fucking second. He blinks and scrambles backwards, horror and fear and shame bitch-slapping him in the face all at once. Ashen, he books it out of the room.
“You need to go after him, Rich,” Cara says gently.
I clear my throat, emotion choking my windpipe. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, then. Show him.”
I look at her, the girl I love, and I fuckingmelt.Not an ounce of judgment. No confusion. Only concern, and I know it’s for him as much as it is for me. If that’s supposed to bother me, it doesn’t.
“Show him that you love him, too,” she says.
I gulp, try to get my saliva down past the golf ball sized lump in my larynx. I feel like I’m on a carnival ride as I stand on shaking legs and watch Cara flopbackwards on the floor. She has a big smile on her face, and waves in his general direction.
“Go fix it, Rich.”
God you’re fucking perfect.“I love you, you know that?”
She sits up on her elbows and beams at me. “I love you too. Now go.”
I leave her on the floor and take off after my brother. I can still smell him, and it gives me courage.He’ll be by the pool.
A thousand and one images of him flood my brain: fifteen years of summers together. Years of him glistening in the sun and smirking over his Ray Bans, like he was born with sunglasses on. Of him looking over his shoulder at me from a lounger and telling me to stop waxing my chest or he’d use me as a surfboard.
I smile to myself as I push open the glass door.
I don’t play water polo anymore, Dane. I have chest hair now.
So much has changed. He missed so many things in the past two years. And so did I. What has he been doing? Where has he been?Why did he leave me the first time?They’re questions I want answers to.
But as I step up beside him, take in the roiling tension in his body standing at the edge, I know today isn’t the day to ask.
“Hey,” I say.
He doesn’t respond for a long time. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Just stares down at the water in silence.
After an eternity, he finally says, “Now don’t go thinking you can be pulling this horn whenever you feel like it. I’m in demand, you know. You’ll have to keep Cara in check.”
I choke so hard I get air up my nose, and bump him with my upper arm. “You overestimate how bad we want you.”
But as the words fall out of my mouth, my tone sobers. We stand side by side, our reflections in the pool rippled and distorted, lit up from underneath by the underwater lights. A tidal wave of emotion comes crashing down on two years of confusion, anger, and devastation.
