Page 18 of Promised Secret
Panic had my skin feeling too tight. I already had to watch him grind all over Frederick and that asshole. I didn’t want to see him cozy up with someone else.
“Dance with me.”
“Clay…I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” I asked, trying to ignore the sting of rejection. Was I not good enough to dance with him? “You danced with Frederick.”
He sucked in his cheeks. He was looking at me, but something about the way his brown eyes were out of focus told me he wasn’t actually seeing me. He was wrapped up in his own thoughts.
I used the chance to pull him toward me. His body landed against mine, breaking him out of his head as he glared up at me.
I didn’t give him a chance to push himself away and kept him trapped inside my arms. I’d only danced a handful of times in my life, so I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I tried my best to sway my hips in tempo with the music.
“What are you doing?” Dan asked, amusement clear in his eyes.
His chuckle told me I probably looked as stupid as I felt, but I didn’t mind looking stupid in front of him. Dan never judged me.
“Dancing,” I replied. “You’re really not going to dance with me?”
His hand on my chest gripped my shirt as his dark eyes looked into mine. I wanted to know what he was thinking for him to look so serious.
Having been by his side all these years, I thought I knew everything about him. We were best friends. More than that, we were stepbrothers—family. We knew each other better than anyone else.
But there were these moments where Dan would get lost in thought when looking at me, or how he’d go from acting like he usually did to suddenly becomingdistant with me, which made me think I didn’t completely understand him as I thought I had.
Not knowing everything about him irritated me more than I cared to admit.
“You make it so hard,” he told me.
I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant by that when his hand slid up my chest, pulling a shiver out of me. I wanted to feel more, but it didn’t last long as his hands found their way around my neck.
After experiencing my sperm donor hitting me—his own son—with a disturbing smile stretching his face like he was enjoying causing me pain, other people’s touch made me uncomfortable.
I didn’t mind it so much with Mom or the gentle pats on the shoulder Victor did instead of hugs. But with Dan? I enjoyed feeling him close to me. It was probably the comfort his touch gave me, since he was the person I felt safest with.
Dan leaned against me just enough for our chests to brush against each other as he swayed along with me. Our eyes locked, and everything else faded into the background.
We weren’t swaying in tune with the upbeat club music anymore, but moved to a slow rhythm of our own instead. One that belonged only to Dan and me.
All the restlessness I’d been feeling this week washed away. I wasn’t filled with worry that Dan might be pulling away from me or that I wasn’t enough for him, because right at that moment, everything was right.
Nothing else in the world might make sense, but Dan and I did. We were best friends, the closest people to each other, and we shared a bond that was unbreakable. And I knew Dan knew that, too.
He closed his eyes lazily and rested his head against my shoulder. I tightened my hold around him and wished I could keep this feeling forever. The gentle buzz that lit up under my skin and the blissful silence that washed away my torrential thoughts.
Was this what peace felt like?
I swept his hair away from his face and pressed a kiss to his temple. Dan looked up at me. There was awariness in his eyes that I hated seeing. I wanted to take it away from him, to protect him.
So, I did the only thing I knew would comfort him. I leaned down and tried to kiss him, but I was met with something other than his lips.
My eyes popped open to find Dan looking sad.
“We shouldn’t,” he spoke so softly that I more read his lips than heard the words.
His hand blocking my mouth kept me from replying, so I couldn’t question why we shouldn’t.
It wasn’t like it would be the first time we kissed. From our disastrous first kiss when he was nine and me ten, to the first time we kissed each other as adults in college, there had been countless more kisses between us scattered throughout the years.
