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The weekend went by quickly and, before Carrie knew it, she was back in her classes and back to reality. She’d been daydreaming for the past couple of days over what would’ve happened if David had kissed her on Saturday... if they had just given in to the pull that was between them. Lex and Asher had to repeat themselves more than a few times because she would lose her train of thought and find herself in David’s arms.
She couldn’t say she minded it though.
But classes were like a slap to the face. She couldn’t just go to her happy place when she was supposed to be taking notes in her Human Behavior class.
When the class was over, she packed up her laptop and notebooks before heading out the front door. She froze when she walked out of the building and saw her brother leaning against the stair rail.
“What are you doing here?”
Did he know about her and David? Was there even a her and David to begin with?
“Can I not want to see my little sister?” he asked innocently. A little too innocently if you asked her.
“How’d you know what class I was in?” She knew that she’d never shared her schedule with him, so the only way he could know was...
“I may have looked you up in the computer system. I have a lot of power now that I’m faculty,” he told her with a wry smile.
“Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“I did try,”— he gave her a pointed look—“but your phone was off.”
“Oh.” She reached into her bag and saw that he was right. Since she’d been so high up in the clouds since Saturday, she’d completely forgotten to put her phone on the charger last night before she went to bed. “What’s up?”
The two of them started walking down the stairs. She was letting him lead the way since he clearly had an agenda. She saw the dining hall pop up in the distance and assumed that was where he was taking her.
“I just wanted your opinion on something,” he said. She looked at him quickly when she heard the nerves that were in his voice. He never got nervous, not even before a big game. What the hell was going through his head?
“Okay...” Neither one of them said anything else as they entered the hall and went straight towards the coffee shop. They put in their orders before grabbing their drinks and commandeering a table that was in the corner so they were out of earshot of the students that were studying around them.
“What’s going on?” she asked him. She was starting to get nervous. “Is something wrong with Taylor? Christopher?”
“No, no. They’re both fine,” he reassured her before he continued. “But this is about Taylor.” She gave him a look that told him to get on with it; he was doing neither one of them any favors when he dragged the subject out.
He sighed before reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a small velvet box. She was a girl; she knew exactly what was inside that square box, and her eyes got wide as they went from him to the item on the table. She reached out to open it and saw a beautiful diamond ring settled in the cushion. She knew that Taylor would absolutely love it.
Before she could say anything, a girl that was passing their table stopped.
“Oh my God. Congratulations!”
Her enthusiasm quickly spread, and Carrie was fast to shut that shit down since John was dying of laughter across from her.
“Oh dear God, no. Gross. Ew.” When their newfound audience looked at her with disappointment, and maybe even a little shock, she added, “He’s my brother.”
“Oh. Oh.” The girl that started everything said before she quickly ran away. Carrie turned her accusation to John, who was still chuckling.
“What the hell? You couldn’t say anything? They were thinking that I broke your heart.” She reached a hand over the table and slapped his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said when he finally caught his breath. “I needed that laugh, Carrie. Oh my God, that shit was funny.”
She looked around and saw that now they were getting a few side glances. “For God’s sake, it’s for his girlfriend. Not me.” The few people that were staring at them quickly looked away with sheepish glances thrown at each other. John sniggered when she looked back at him.
“This is all your fault,” she told him angrily, tempted to slap him again.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. He ran a finger under his eyes before he took a few deep breaths to regain his composure. “It’s for Taylor.”
She tilted her head to the side. “No shit.” She laughed before also growing serious. “I didn’t realize you were thinking of popping the question.” It was stupid of her. They were already living together, and he was acting like a father to Christopher. The next natural step was to get engaged.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I couldn’t find a ring that I thought she would like. I was out with the guys last week when I saw this one... Do you think she’ll like it?” he hesitantly asked her.
She gave him a large smile before placing her hand over his. “She’ll love it.” She knew that for sure. “Do you know how you’re going to ask her?” She could feel her excitement growing, knowing that she was going to get a sister—a sister as great as Taylor.
“Christopher’s going to help me out there.”
“You asked Christopher?” She shouldn’t have been surprised. John knew just how to handle Christopher and make him feel included. It was so sweet.
“Over the weekend I did. He, um, asked if he could call me Dad...”
She raised her hand to cover her mouth as she felt her lips start to tremble and her eyes fill up. God, she couldn’t believe that this was her brother.
“Oh, John, that’s amazing.” She squeezed the hand that she was still holding. “I’m so proud of you, big brother.”
“Thanks,” he said quietly before closing the ring box and sliding it back into his coat pocket. “I’m more nervous than I thought I would be, though.”
“Taylor loves you; she’s going to say yes.” There wasn’t a doubt in her mind.
“I’m thinking of doing it sometime this week. Now that I’ve talked about it with Christopher, I just want to put the ring on her finger already.”
“Have you thought about whether you're going to adopt Christopher once you two are married?”
He nodded his head. “I want to. Definitely. Once Taylor says yes to this, I’ll ask her if it’s okay. I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to erase Chris from their lives, you know what I mean?”
Chris was Christopher’s birth father. He’d died in a car accident when Taylor was about six months pregnant at only sixteen years old. Carrie’s heart once again went out to Taylor for everything she’d gone through in her short life.
“She’ll understand,” she told him. There were a lot of things in her life that were up in the air recently, but that was one thing she knew without a fact. Those two were a real-life love story.
~~~
THE NEXT DAY SHE WAS sitting down to get some work done on some of her papers when her phone pinged from her bag. She pulled it out to see that it was Taylor texting in their group thread that they shared with Rory and Luna. It was a picture of her engagement ring accompanied with a message.
Taylor: I said yes!
Rory: OMG! That ring is gorgeous!
Luna: Looks like the guy’s got some good taste
Carrie: I’m so happy for you two! How did it happen?
Taylor: He cooked dinner and then distracted me so I wasn’t looking at Christopher. When I turned back to him, my little man was on one knee and asked me if I would marry John and make him his dad!
Carrie’s heart damn near exploded with the joy she felt at hearing the story. She’d never thought of her brother as a romantic before, but he was always surprising her.
Carrie: That’s so romantic! Who knew my brother had it in him?
Rory: This is amazing! I’m so happy for you two!
Luna: Me too, girly, if anyone deserves this it’s you two
Taylor: Thanks!
Carrie abandoned her work as she got lost in the text messages. They were now ribbing on Luna, who had been dating Simon for over three years and still had no ring. Carrie laughed out loud when she imagined Luna going up to Simon and demanding him to pop the question. Knowing Luna, though, she wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one to ask him to marry her; she was straightforward like that, which was something that Carrie admired.
She was laughing when her phone pinged with a text that wasn’t in the thread. Butterflies erupted in her stomach when she saw that it was David.
David: You hear the good news?
Carrie: Yeah, I’m so happy for them!
David: He told me that he showed you the ring a few days ago. How’d you like it?
David: Not to toot my own horn, but I helped him pick it out.
Carrie: You did very well. It was beautiful.
Her phone rang in her hand as she waited for a response. She was surprised when she saw David’s name flash across the screen.
“Too lazy to text?” she asked him in greeting.
“No, I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Her heart thudded at those words. How was she supposed to keep her feelings to him in check when he said things like that? It wasn’t fair.
“You can’t say things like that, David,” she whispered as she twirled a piece of her hair around her finger self-consciously.
“I do a lot of things I shouldn’t when it concerns you.” The heat she heard in his voice almost undid her. When Lex came back from her afternoon classes, she would find Carrie in a puddle on the floor.
“What are we doing?” As much as she loved this back and forth with him, she wasn’t sure if her heart could handle it.
He sighed. “I don’t know. I never know what I’m doing when it comes to you... I only know one thing. I don’t think I have the willpower to stay away from you anymore.” She could hear in his voice that he was disappointed in himself because he wasn’t able to keep more distance between them. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“Then don’t,” she whispered.
There was nothing but silence for a few moments as he seemed to digest her words. She almost wanted to check if they were still connected, but she heard the phone moving around as if he was adjusting it.
“You’re trouble, you know that?” he asked her with a little chuckle.
“What are you going to do about it?” The question hadn’t sounded so sexual in her head, but now that it was out there, she couldn’t deny that that’s how it came out. Part of her wanted to take it back and bring this conversation to safer topics, but she held herself back. She needed to learn to go after what she wanted... no matter what.
He groaned. “I want to do so much to you, but I want to be able to look in your eyes the first time we’re together.”
She gulped as she felt her panties get wet. Was he seriously talking about them sleeping together? She didn’t think that she could even count on her hands how many times she’d fantasized about this moment, but in her fantasies, he was here in the flesh and not frustratingly across town.
“I want the same,” she whispered.
“You’re killing me here, sweetheart,” he told her roughly.
She just smiled sweetly to herself as she listened to his inner dilemma. Should she have felt bad that she was enjoying his turmoil? Probably. But that didn’t change anything.
She knew that this conversation couldn’t go anywhere good, so she decided to change the subject even though a majority of her wanted to see where this was going.
“How’s work been going? Is it getting any better?”
He sighed. “I’m getting used to it, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I love the legality of what I do, but dealing with broken families day in and day out just brings me back... to a place that I just don’t want to go,” he whispered the last part as if he was ashamed of the way that he felt.
“I understand,” she told him. “I still think that you would be a great lawyer for something worthwhile like adoption or something. You’ve got such a big heart.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
~~~
THEY SPENT THE NEXT few hours on the phone, the longest that David had ever talked to the opposite sex, and actually enjoyed the conversation. He didn’t want to hang up the phone, but when she started to yawn, he knew that he needed to cut their talk short.
“I should probably let you go,” he told her regretfully.
“Yeah,” she agreed, also reluctantly.
“Good night, sweetheart.”
“Good night, David.”
He hung up the phone and just sat on the edge of his bed, replaying the entire conversation with Carrie in his mind. He knew that he should regret what he admitted to her, the way that he wanted her, and that he wanted to do dangerous things to her. It wasn’t what the best friend of her brother should be thinking, but the longer he had the thoughts, the harder it was getting to restrain himself.
He thought of John and what he would do if he knew where David’s thoughts were. He would for sure punch him and maybe even kiss their friendship goodbye. For the first time, David was starting to think that it might be worth it. Being with Carrie the way he wanted to would be worth all of the pain in his world.
He had a feeling that being with her, though, would not only ruin his best friendship but could also put distance between her and her brother. It’d be a disaster.
But, damn... it would definitely be a beautiful disaster.