Page 11 of Promised Secret
“Jones looks really happy with Ryan,” I said, hoping to switch topics. He didn’t reply, but that was okay. I was good at keeping up conversation even if I was the only one speaking. “I was worried at first, but now I think Ryan and Karla are good for him. He seems more grounded lately, and he’s smiling a lot more frequently, too. Speaking of, have you noticed a certain diner owner has been frowning less? I think Atlas is rubbing off on him, if you know what I?—”
“Dan.”
The way Clay said my name had me clamping my mouth shut and a shiver going down my spine.
Fuck.
Why did he have to say my name all growly like that? Didn’t he know the effect he had on me?
Oh, wait…that was the whole point. He wasn’t supposed to, because I’d hidden it as best as I could.
“Are you… Areweokay?” Clay asked and reached across the table to grab my hand.
I quickly pulled back, then realized I’d made it completely obvious and awkward, and scratched the back of my head so it didn’t seem like I’d intentionally dodged his touch.
Still, that didn’t stop the hurt from flashing across his face. I regretted it instantly and wanted to put my hand back to where it was before I’d avoided him, but I knew it would only make things worse at this point.
“Yeah. Of course we’re okay,” I replied with a chuckle that sounded more forced than anything else. “We’re stepbrothers, so why wouldn’t we be okay?”
I thought the answer would give him peace of mind, but his frown only deepened instead.
“You’ve never called me that before.”
“What? My stepbrother? Sure I have,” I lied. He was correct in saying I’d never intentionally called him my stepbrother before, but I didn’t know he was keeping track, too.
“No,” he said slowly. “If you have, you’re either joking or being sarcastic, and you don’t sound like either right now. What’s going on, Dan? Are you the one who’s caught a fever?”
I hated how he knew me so well because it meant it was that much harder to keep things from him. Honestly, I should win an award for having kept my feelings from him for so long.
“I guess I am feeling a little off recently,” I finally answered with a bit of the truth. “It’s probably just the summer blues. I’m sure I’ll be fine once I get back to the normal routine.”
I had no plans of falling back into the same dangerous tango we’d somehow found ourselves in, but he didn’t need to know that.
My hand clenched into a fist in front of me, and Clay tried again to take it. This time, I didn’t stop him.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said, smiling softly as he gripped my hand.
I stared at our hands in wonder, hating how the slightest touch from him had a fire starting in the pit of my stomach, while he looked completely unaffected.
It was terrible of me, but just once, I wished we could switch places. I wished I could be the perfect son and brother instead of the one who was bound to ruin the family if my feelings ever got out.
I swallowed all the words I wished I could say and smiled. What else could I do?
Step one of learning to love Clay like a stepbrother and nothing more: keep smiling even when the broken shards that made up my heart were tearing me to shreds from the inside out.
I somehow managed to finish lunch without acting weird, or at least normal enough that Clay didn’t bring it up again.
There weren’t many appointments in the afternoon, so I spent time reading an old Traditional Chinese Medicine textbook mylao-bagot me.
When I was younger, I didn’t understand whyLao-bainsisted on continuing my TCM studies when the world was moving to more advanced Western medicine. It was only after going through my residency that I realized there were gaps in Western medicine that TCM could fill. And instead of choosing one method oranother, they could be used in conjunction for a more effective treatment plan.
Like with TCM, I didn’t understand a lot of the things mylao-badid until I was older.
When he and Sandra first told us they’d been dating and wanted to get married, I thought Dad realized I liked men and wanted to punish me. In hindsight, it’d been a ridiculous thought, because Dad didn’t have a spiteful bone in his body. Plus, all he’d ever wanted for me was to be happy and have a good life, and that included loving whoever I wanted.
Lao-bahad made me his entire world for so long that I’d forgotten he was the main character of his own life. It was the unfortunate coincidence that the person he loved just happened to be the mother of the man I loved.
I closed the textbook and sighed. Studying usually put me in a Zen mood, but everything was out of whack today.
