I WOKE CHOKING, HER FLAYED fingers tight around my throat.
“Whoa, steady. It’s just a dream.” Hands caught me as I scrambled up—Grey’s hands, gentle and safe, easing me back against the pillows. The light clicked on, pushing the shadows toward the door. He slid down to lie beside me, turned on his side so we were face-to-face, inches apart. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” And I didn’t. They were horrors best left in a single corner of the world; whispers spun into shadows at the edge of a work-space light. The wrong fingers wiped a stray tear from the bridge of my nose. “Now you see why I can’t sleep. You don’t have to stay with me, you know. I’ll be fine.”
“Stop. I said I’ll take care of you, and I will.” His breath caught, then frayed and shuddered, went jagged all at once as our eyes met. “I’m here—if you need me. However you need me.”
Something familiar and horrible snaked fingers around my throat; something pushed those same fingers in between my ribs, worked them into my lungs one at a time. The space between us buzzed and thickened, heavy with need. Hazy with fear.
“Grey?”
“Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He rolled away and sat up, hunched over his drawn-up knees. “I didn’t mean that. I swear—I would never—”
“Grey.”
His name. A sigh, not a question, slipping like water from my throat. Stopping him cold as he turned to face me.
“This is real, isn’t it, Elaine? There’s something here.”
The words burrowed deep inside me, tearing into that space between logic and dreams. Ripping me open, the way he always had. I sat up as he shifted closer, reached for me, trapped another tear beneath his thumb. His palms slid over my cheekbones, and God help me, I leaned into it. I let myself get lost between his hands.
“Is this okay? If not—” He swallowed the end of his thought, blew it out in a ragged sigh at my nod. “You want this too?”
“Yes.” It was an automatic whisper, skirting the edges of a lie. I closed my eyes, like blotting out his face would explain that fucking flicker of insight. Of course I wanted him—he’d laid the groundwork for what wanting meant. “But there’s so much you don’t know. You don’t understand—”
“I do. It’s the same for me.”
His kiss found my cheekbone, then my eyelid, stopping the world again and again. He was longing and memories, and surprisingly chapped lips; the whiff of nighttime retainer breath a slap to my gag reflex, a detail that damn sure had never factored into the old Grey McIntyre seduction fantasy. Not that I was one to judge, what with my stiff shoulders and claw-rigid fingers, my sweaty pajama top, my tangled, unwashed hair. I started as his finger traced my neck, flinched as it found my collarbone. My vision blurred and realigned, refocused on the shadow of his jawline stubble, a bit too rough to be inviting.
I was disconnected, so exhausted, so strangely analytical, and sweet fuck could I maybe stop scrambling for an exit tucked in the walls of this unreal maze? I’d turned myself inside out, wishing for this—how many nights had I spent consumed by a half-awake need, reaching for him across an empty space? How many times had I lived this moment in someone else’s arms?
“Is this okay, Elaine? I—oh. Sorry.”
Well, maybe not this moment. Maybe not the abrupt meeting of his forehead and my nose, or the clumsy trek of fingers that could have belonged to anyone. Skin he’d never touched broke out in chills, more of a crawl than a shiver, as his hands fumbled across the minefield of my hips. But I’d take the way those hands grew urgent, found the hem of my shirt and slipped beneath it, followed the trail of my spine to my rib cage. Slid carefully over my sides, pausing just at the swell of my breasts. Stirred through my ashes until they sparked.
His gaze found mine, unzipped me, stealing every wisp of air from my lungs. That spark leaped from my skin to his, lightning arcing puddle to puddle, and it was something at least. It wasn’t solace and secrets, or the warm press of familiar lips. It wasn’t the molten silver slide of skin and leather that ended with my senses shattered, never once failing to leave me weak.
But so what if the medium was foreign—it didn’t mean we couldn’t try. We could sand the edges off all our mismatched bits, rearrange them into brighter patterns; our own kind of mosaic glass, useless until it broke. Maybe we could still make it into something nice.
I knew I looked like death—like fog and shade, threaded through with watery light. His eyes dropped anyway, took me in from lips to legs, then up again, the way they had a million years ago in a moonlit kitchen, and uncountable moments since. The flutter he sent through my heart was weak, but familiar. Routine.
I’d caught him wanting me, so many times.
“You’re so beautiful. You’re so—”
And then he didn’t say anything at all. His words faltered as my hand rose, crept beneath my shirt to cover his; positioned his palm, pressed it to my skin just so—this would be what I wanted, if I had to orchestrate it from start to stop. His voice stumbled over syllables, ended in nonsense as I echoed his gasp, moved our hands together, up and over, and together we caught fire.
It was a collision. Rock and ocean, embers and wind, crashing together; falling in a tangle of limbs and longing and fear, and this. This, finally, was what I’d craved. Him, undone and dangerous—gentle—rough with need. My hands, guiding his, then falling away, tugging his shirt up and off. The thump of his heart, reaching through his flesh to knot with mine.
“This is okay, right?” His words were soft and low, warm against my parted lips, and if he would only stop asking me that, everything would be perfect.
“Yes,” I breathed. “I’ll tell you if—ow. That’s my hair.”
“Oh, sorry. Are you—”
“Still my hair, Greyson.” He cringed, burying his face in my neck.
“Sorry. Man, I suck.”
“It’s fine. Could you maybe stop—”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. This was a bad idea.”
“No, I mean stop apologizing. If I didn’t want this, I’d say so.”
“Yeah. Okay.” His mumble, muffled against my skin, turned to another softer kiss. He propped himself on his elbows and hovered over me, drew back far enough to see my face.
“God. This is weird. It’s weird, isn’t it? Us?”
“It’s getting there,” I muttered, eyes straying to the half-open door. “If we do this—”
He shifted his weight to the side, lay facing me again, but closer. His thumb traced my lower lip, sent an odd chill over my scalp as his fingers slipped through my hair and down my neck. Lost themselves once more beneath my shirt, looping that chill around my rib cage. I blinked at him, then past him, refocusing on the drag of his palms, unscarred and unfamiliar. Softer than I needed.
“No, it’s definitely weird. You were supposed to be my sister. But I moved in, and this whole house—you’re everywhere. You’re all I think about—this, right now. It’s all I want.”
He pulled me close again, and there it was: his heart. That was what I knew of him—that sturdy thump, reliable and safe. Separated from mine by bone and veins, and too many years since that first moment I’d leaned against it. Too many moments since then, spent chasing that bliss. And there he was, as if I’d finally hit on the right combination of wishes, only to find they were being answered all along.
It rode the edge of every hope and daydream. It was smothering heat and sour flesh, the weird catch of teeth along my jaw—hands that rushed instead of wandered, fumbling over my thighs. It was nowhere near enough.
Still, my body sought his naturally; my arms moved without me, clung to him, pulled him into another kiss as he hitched my knee over his hip, fingers grazing over the prickles of my unshaven thigh.
What. The fuck.
My eyes damn near bugged out of my head. Desire fell away from me like ice calving from a glacier, dropping forever into the frigid sea. He mistook my horrified gasp for passion, though; he swallowed it, returned it, breathed deeply against my suddenly slack mouth. I almost always kept my legs smooth, but the whole mental break thing had back-burnered the hell out of that priority. Besides, I had yet to meet the guy who’d slam on the brakes over some stubble when we were otherwise ready to go, so what the fuck, indeed—what the fuck was wrong with me, that I was letting it derail the moment, and if this wasn’t the biggest failed experiment since the goddamn frog dissection itself. Goddamn it.
I seethed over those thoughts, then worried them, then gave up worrying, all at once too tired and defeated to care. My mind drifted past his lips and out the window, dissipated as it hit the air. Left me compliant and empty, the usual reflexive severing of heart from limbs, and for a single hideous moment I thought this was the best we’d ever be—this predictable, one-sided parody, so taboo it was a joke before it happened. Awkward as two mismatched hands, accidentally tied together.
But what did it matter? It wouldn’t be a line crossed so much as a step taken—another shaded square in the pattern. Yet another dropped stitch. He’d be his own brand of distraction, and it made zero difference in the grand scheme of me—here I was, still alone. Still staring at the unchanged, empty road ahead.
And was this really how love looked from the other side? Grey McIntyre, saving me in his own way, over and over. The return to the start—to the heartbeat and voice that soothed my fear; to the safe circle of his arms, inadvertently restraining mine. Life lived in a dreamy bubble of anticipation, every moment without his hands spent waiting for them to find and somehow wake me—as if the press of my skin wasn’t the antithesis to our reality. I was supposed to be his sister. It was weird.
And it was wrong. It was completely, utterly wrong.
He was only a boy. Not whatever passed for destiny, not the start of something more. Not a copper band, curved to the exact measure of my wrist, and certainly not the hands that shaped it.
Not the boy who’d finally coaxed a glow from somewhere deeper than my heart.
Something caught on the edge of that thought, tugged sharply as Grey breathed my name; tugged me not toward him, but away. Sloughed me off from his Elaine—that devoted, lovesick, irrational girl, forever prodding him into shapes that interlocked with hers and had nothing to do with who he really was.
The girl I used to be. And that was fine.
But it was no longer real.
“Don’t call me that.”
He started and blinked, drew back slowly.
“What? Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not.” I curled my hands over his, moving them gently off my face, and sat up, leaving him behind. “And my name is Lane.”
We stared at each other, apprehensive and awkward, his befuddlement turning to realization, then to abject horror.
“Oh my God. Elai—Lane, I’m sorry.” He rolled to sitting and leaned away, like I was catching. “I thought you wanted—I read this all wrong, didn’t I?”
“No, you read it right. I loved you. For a long, long time.” I steeled my courage and sought his eyes. Let myself feel the last flutter of that long-cherished ache. “But that’s over now.”
He picked over my words, cracked them open and checked for rot. Nodded at the truth he found. Unsurprised. Not even hurt.
“So that’s it, then. Wow.”
“Believe me, if you’d wanted me before all this happened, I’d have been yours. I’d have done anything in the world for that.”
“Now you tell me.”
“Grey, you were with Sadie. We barely knew each other. And whatever you’re feeling now, for me? I don’t think it’s real.”
“I do love you, though.”
God. A part of him meant those quiet words, I could tell. And I wanted to hear them, in every way—tossed casually across a room, or tacked to the end of a laugh; wanted them frustrated, and penitent, and whispered against my skin. I always had.
I just didn’t want them from him. Not anymore.
“Not like that, you don’t.”
He dropped his eyes, then his head. Dragged his fingers through his hair, clasped them at the back of his neck.
“No,” he said. “You’re right. Not like that.”
It was the answer I’d hoped for—sure and clear, utterly final. Devastating.
He wasn’t the be-all and end-all I’d imagined. He wasn’t my savior, or my salvation. The sun would rise, and this night would be wiped away. However much he wanted me, it was nothing that could last.
And that was okay. Even though it hurt, it really was okay.
“It’s for the best,” I said, nudging his knee with mine. “I mean, it’s either this or a fully screwed family dynamic.”
“You think?” He looked up, mouth pursed, trying so hard to repress a grin. But our eyes met, and neither one of us could take it—we collapsed into laughter that became breathless, hysterical mirth tears.
“Rob would hate me,” he gasped. “I’d be forever shunned for corrupting his little girl.”
“You wish. Pretty sure I’d be the corrupter in our case.”
“Shut up. At least we’d have the whole ‘meet the parents’ thing out of the way. No need to worry about in-laws getting along when they share a bedroom.”
I laughed harder, wiped my face, and when he pulled me into a long hug, it wasn’t weird or awkward or heartbreaking at all—it was gentle and soothing, a splash of water on the embers of what we’d almost been. A promise of everything we’d grow to be.
“Whatever happens,” I said as we drew apart, “I want us to be family. All of us. Always.”
“Same to you, Elaine. Lane. I meant Lane. Sorry.” He sat back, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes. “You’re still Elaine to me.”
“You can call me that, if you want. As long as I get to call you Greyson.”
“You and my mother,” he sighed, resigned. “No one else.”
“Deal. And maybe we can never speak of this again?”
“Never ever. Could you do me a favor, though? Try to sleep, just a little bit more?” He held up a hand at my protest. “I’ll be right here, the whole time. I promise.”
“Greyson. I don’t know.”
“Trust me. I’ll keep you safe.”
And somehow, I knew he would. So, I lay back down and let him slip a hand in mine. Let him settle on the floor next to my bed and stand guard as I gave myself over to the weight of exhaustion.
Somehow, after everything, I trusted him enough to finally close my eyes.