Page 79 of Unlocked Dive
“Both,” he admits, after enough time has passed that I’m seriously considering abandoning him here while we sit at a stoplight. “You were Gabriel’s brother, and then you were Echo. And then you were everything.” He rests his forehead on the steering wheel as we wait for the light to change. “I was going to tell you.”
“Sure. When? I wanted to think maybe you didn’t know I was his brother, at first. But Wash isn’t that common of a last name, and I talked about him the first night while youwere making puttanesca…” And a dozen times after. So many chances to tell me the truth.If I’m really your everything.
“Yesterday. This afternoon. I meant to come clean a hundred times over the last few months.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Because I’m leaving in three weeks anyway.” The last time I broke, it was blurred, drugged edges. Denial and the ache of loss and slow-mending bones. This breaking is sharp with the glass edge of betrayal. Agony rushing in after the smooth parting of skin.
He turns his head without raising it from the wheel, and a lock of hair that’s escaped from his topknot falls over his cheek. My fingers twitch with the urge to brush it away, but I refuse to let myself be lured.
“At first, I told myself it didn’t matter,” he says. “Because I wasn’t going to let myself keep you. And then I didn’t say anything because I’m a coward, and I didn’t want you to leave.”
“How uncharacteristically selfish of you.”
He’s no less beautiful, but it hurts to look at him, and I still can’t help wondering how much of Gabe he sees when he looks back. I lean my head against the cold window and watch the moon rise over the skyscrapers like a ghost in the lavender sky.
I taught Byrd to be selfish, and he taught me to be afraid of being in love.
What an ironic fucking coup.
It doesn’t make it stop, though—the loving part. After ten minutes of pretending I don’t notice him shifting miserably in his seat as he navigates the early evening traffic, my runaway mouth can’t take it anymore.
“You better be squirming like a guilty toddler because you kept the mother of all secrets from me and not because you punched my asshole brother.”
He throws me a startled look, and even in the halogen glow of the city sunset, I can see the flush creep up his neck.
“That’s not—umm…neither. I…” He shifts again. “I’m wearing a plug.” The last comes out a rushed and almost apologetic whisper, and all of my tortured thoughts stutter to a halt beneath the onslaught of blood racing south. My stupid dick doesn’t care that he fucked Gabe or that my heart is in shreds. It wants me to tug that toy out of Byrd’s virgin ass with my teeth.
This is not a healthy way to handle my shit.
Byrd’s called me out a million times for chasing my body’s distraction when I don’t want to face the cracks it hides, and even I can’t fool myself into thinking sex is gonna fix anything this time.
But he’s supposed to be the fucking grown-up, and he’s been keeping secrets the whole time. Why should I try to be mature when it would be so much easier—and feel so much better—to punish him with my cock?
Because that’s the whole point of a relationship, asshole. You’re supposed to be making each other stronger, not enabling the same old crap.
We’ve almost reached the hotel, and the silence is thick with edgy tension and laced with treacherous lust.
Maybe for a little while, we can pretend the rest of this day never happened—that I never went to lunch with my dad or stumbled onto the mother-of-all-assholes on the lot.
Fuck all these revelations. Fuck being strong.
I’ll take denial and Byrd’s perfect ass, please.
“I can’t believe you hit Gabe while wearing a plug to prep your ass to take my dick,” I say as we climb from the truck in the shadowed parking garage. “Have you been wearing it all night?”
“Only since intermission. And I wasn’t planning on punching anyone tonight.”
“The punching part was actually really hot,” I confess. “Assuming it was a knight-in-shining-armor thing and not a shut-up-before-you-out-me-as-a-lying-bastard thing.”
“Echo.” His fingers brush my arm, but I keep walking. “It was a blind rage, get-the-fuck-away-from-the-man-I-love thing,” he finishes, so soft I might be dreaming.
Goddamn fucking butterflies.
He doesn’t get to be romantic right now.
