Page 33 of Bear
My jaw shifts to one side as I watch her every movement and listen to every word coming out of her mouth. “Fuck. Do you always talk this much, or am I in some weird alternate universe?”
Her lips twitch, studying me. “Maybe not to you I don’t. Are you going to come out of the closet?”
My brows lift. No man who’s unwilling to admit he likes dick wants to be asked that question. My jaw tightens as our eyes meet. At my disbelieving stare, she appears confused. The moment it hits her, though, her lips part, and a flood of color moves from her chest to her neck and all the way up to her cheeks where it burns a heady shade of pink.
I rest my hands on my hips, narrowing my eyes at her. “Was that some sort of bad joke?”
She picks up on my irritated tone quickly, scraping her teeth over her bottom lip as she points one finger at me. “You’re literally hiding in a closet, and I— You know how I am with that shit, Duke. You’ve witnessed my meltdowns firsthand.” Her eyes close momentarily as she murmurs, “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was going to say are you coming out, or do I have to come in after you, but yeah. We all know that’s not happening. So I didn’t finish my thought, and it sounded like I was teasing you, but I swear I wasn’t. I wouldn’t.” She drags in an exaggerated breath, only—I’m actually unsure if it has more to do with her explanation or simply the closet itself. She gives me my answer two seconds later. “Can we go anywhere else to talk? I—” Covering her trembling lips with one hand, she swallows hard.
It’s official. I’m a fucking dickhead. I have a right to how I feel, but she’s not lying, and having seen her reaction to this shit multiple times, I don’t need to use it against her. I work my jaw to the side, then grab a neat stack of sheets from the shelf. “Yeah. Sorry.” When I step out and pull the door closed behind me, she visibly relaxes. I eye her cautiously. “Someday, you’re going to tell me what the fuck is up with all that. And quit apologizing for something you can’t control.” I let out a sigh. “I shouldn’t have stayed in there. I knew what I was doing.”
She mulls over something in her head but must finally shake it because on an exhale, she says, “Trust me, you don’t want to know more than you already do. It’d just add on to whatever assumptions you have about me, and I don’t need that.”
I can see the wheels ticking in her head, and it’s not like I’ve forgotten that I called her a basket case a mere week ago. Granted, I was simply repeating what I’d been told, but that’s a lame-ass excuse, honestly. And a lot has changed since then. A lot that I still need to sort in my head. Letting my eyes bore into hers, I murmur, “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
She gives a little jerk of her head like she doesn’t believe that, but I gesture that we should head back into my room. She strides quickly away, leaving the closet behind, but I move more slowly. It’d be really fucking helpful if I could unglue my eyeballs from my stepsister’s voluptuous ass and long legs, considering the conversation I’m positive is about to happen about me and where my dick’s been lately.
Stopping at the side of the bed, she holds out a hand. My brows hitch together, and I hesitate as her lips quirk in question. “What? It’s late. Let’s get your bed remade so you can crash.”
I blink, but then throw her the fitted sheet.
“Your hand looks like shit.” She doesn’t say another word about it, though, and begins the job of pulling the sheet over one of the corners at the foot of the bed, so I circle to the other side, and as I do, she tosses the other bottom corner in my direction. We’re both busy wrestling with the sheet when she glances up. “You don’t have to hide it from me, you know.”
“Hide what?”
She rolls her eyes. “Are you telling me all the animosity between you and Mason hasn’t actually been well-contained and tamped-down chemistry?”
I inhale steadily through my nose as I secure the second corner, then reach for the top sheet, flicking it open. My brain is heavy with the idea that she wants to talk about this—that she’s offering me an ear. But I’m not ready to give voice to it, to admit my attraction to Mason. The minute I do, it’s a real, breathing entity. Not something that I can take back. And because he’s the one thing lately that I have no control over, I can’t stop the insanity that roars through my head as mental images take over my mind and remembered sensations of what it was like to be inside him assail me. I’m a ship in a raging storm being pummeled by the crashing swells. They threaten to capsize me and send me to the deep, dark places inside I try so hard to hide.
I blow out a hard breath as we pull the sheet into place, then tuck the end under the mattress. I take all that time to gather my wits about me so I can finally answer. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. But I can’t think about it right now.”
“Was that the first time?” Her inquisitive gaze sneaks right past my barriers, and for a split second, I allow her to see all my confusion, my desire, my unending agony. Her eyes widen.“No.Okay. Well, you could do worse than Mason, you know.”
Frustrated, my eyes find hers, and I pound a fist to my chest. “Even if I wanted to have this discussion… even if I wanted to have it withyou—which I don’t—I couldn’t, because I don’t fucking know how I feel.” The anger inside me battles with my confusion and my desires, and the result is downright explosive. Frustrated, I lash out. “What’s right? What’s wrong? What am I supposed to feel?” I clamp my teeth down on my lip to stop it from shaking, because she doesn’t get to see that.Nope.I take a few heavy breaths as our gazes lock together. “Stella, I have too much other shit on my mind today to examine what happened, so if we could just fuckingnot.”My body bristles, and my fists clench at my sides.
She stands there, hands on her full hips and shrugs. It’s like she can see right inside my fucking head with every word that leaves her lips. “First, if it’s easier for you, you could let the brotherhood think it was me. I don’t fucking care.”
“That’s what we need; rumors flying around the brotherhood that I’m banging my sister. Because that’s how they’d put it. That’s how they’d see us. No matter that we didn’t grow up together. Just— Fuck. No. Don’t tell them that.” My teeth grind with frustration. Something that feels a whole lot like jealousy moves swiftly through me, but I will never fucking tell her how much it messes with me to see her look at Bear and Mason the way she does. She’s given them her body, and to a certain extent, her trust. Bear has been all-in almost from the goddamn start, and she sees him as her protector. And Mason, he’s the one whogetsher and her tormented dreams, even if he’s so fucked in the head himself that he’s ended up hurting her. More than once.
Then there’s me.I’m her asshole stepbrother.
“Fine. I won’t say anything. It’s your business. I just thought I’d offer myself up as an option if it would make anything easier for you.” She lifts her hands, tucking her hair behind her ears. She waits a beat before expelling a harsh breath. “Then second… Juliette. If I’m not mistaken, today’s date has set half of what’s bothering you in motion. Actually, probably all of it. I—” She hesitates while my chest clenches, heart twisting, a wave of emotion crashing down on me. “I wanted to say how sorry I am. I didn’t get to tell you then. Losing her like that devastated me. I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”
I rake my hands through my hair, staring at her. The backs of my eyes sting with the untold pain that is about to leak out and fall down my cheeks. “Every. Fucking. Time,” I groan, walking back to the side of the bed where Lennon stands. A muscle in my jaw twitches hard. “I can’t fucking talk to you about her, Stella. I remember seeing the two of you together, and it just— It hurts too fucking much right now.” My lungs constrict, suddenly overwhelmed as sadness swamps me. I can’t fucking breathe.
Over on my nightstand, my phone vibrates in the charging stand. My eyes shift toward the ceiling, though I’m not really seeing it. I don’t want to fucking answer.
“That’s a phone call. I hate calls in the middle of the night.”
I shake off the memories that put my emotional state at risk and bring my gaze back to hers. “It’s my dad.” No doubt the security company has called him to report the alarm being triggered.
“How do you—?” Her brow furrows, but I see it the moment understanding dawns. “Oh, fuck. I’m sorry.”
I exhale sharply, holding up a hand. “I told you to stop apologizing for it.” It’s fucking messing with me to have her saying she’s sorry for something that’s caused by god knows what. “You aren’t setting off the alarm on purpose. Are you?”
“Well, no, but Bear offered to stay with me because he was worried that something would happen.” Her eyes flick to mine. “I do some weird shit when I’m stressed out, and yesterday was one thing—”
“After another. I know. Still not your fault.” Of course he offered to stay with her.
