I wanted anaccidentall our own. It was really fucking wrong—all of this was wrong—but it was the only way I could find a path to right. That, or pushing my brother into oncoming traffic. I was a pond-scum-sucking bastard but I wasn't ready todothat.
"I have to get home. I can't stay," she whispered. Her fingers brushed over my temples and down the back of my neck, but she made no move toleave.
"A few more minutes," I murmured, nuzzling the crook of her shoulder. "You always smell so good here. Like birthdaycakes."
"It's cocoa butter," she said,laughing.
I nodded and pressed a kiss to her birthday cake skin. "Promise me this isn't the last time," I said. I was growing tired, my body loose and eyelids too heavy to lift. "Please,Lauren."
She didn't respond. She never did. She never committed to more than these moments because we couldn't know what waited for us on the other side. But I alwaysasked.
The weight of my exhaustion got the better of me, but before I drifted off a shiver rattled through my bones. I bolted up, and found myself drenched in an icy sweat and panting like I'd been running four-minutemiles.
I was cold, breathless, and alone. Just as I'd been since falling asleep after watching the Red Sox clean some Los Angeles clocks at DodgerStadium.
My loneliest days on this planet always followed those dreams. Or were they nightmares? Ididn'tknow.
But those fleeting, diaphanous moments were nothing more than the collusion of my wants and needs and unconscious mind. I was allowed to touch and taste everything I'd been craving, only to wake up and discover none of itwasreal.
I flopped onto my back and blinked up at the same bricks-and-beams ceiling I'd been staring at for the past four years. Light was brightening the centuries-old bricks, and I turned my head in the direction of the dawn. Summer sunrises were always preferable to acknowledging guilt-riddenerections.
It wasn't like I could minister to my cock's needs, not when fucking my sister-in-law was this morning's reason to rise. Oh, I'd indulged in plenty of Lauren-inspired self-love sessions over the years.Plenty. But the trouble was that it only made this situation worse. It left me feeling empty and traitorous, and wondering whether love was an experience I was to admire from a short distance, and never, ever keep past sunrise. I couldn't deal with that kind of shambles thismorning.
So I didn't jerk it, not even when my brain was crowded with thoughts of a woman who would never be mine. Instead, I counted the bricks on the ceiling—again—and thought about wood rot. Dry, destructivewoodrot.
Not unlike me, that shit could cause some realproblems.
ChapterTwo
Riley
The seven thirtyMonday morning meeting was as much a part of Walsh Associates—my family's third-generation sustainable preservation architecture firm—as bricks and cobblestones. It was the one time when we crowded into one place and ran through our current and upcoming projects, and everything else worthy of discussion. Although we lived in the same town and shared a Beacon Hill office, we often moved past each other like ships in thenight.
Despite the fact a very large portion of me wanted to challenge my brother to a duel for his wife's affections, my family was everything to me. These people were all that I had in this world, and I didn't know where I'd go or who I'd bewithoutthem.
Shannon had bailed me out of several regrettable situations over the years, and paved the way for me to attend Rhode Island School of Design instead of Cornell like mybrothers.
Erin, the baby of the family and the only one who didn't work at the firm, had schooled me in the ways of not giving a fuck—while actually givingallthe fucks—from anearlyage.
Sam had invited me to share the restored firehouse he called home after I'd finished grad school, and he'd trained me on how to drink and dress like a grown-ass adult. He thought he'd educated me on the ways of women, and though that couldn't be further from the truth, I let him keep onbelieving.
Patrick had taught me, in his grouchy, impatient way, that this work was about families, those before us and those yet to come, and it was always worth takingseriously.
And Matt, he was the best of them all. While I was fantasizing about Lauren, he was coaching me through my first years at the firm and making up for everything I should've learned in school. I was kind enough to repay him with a running mental montage of his wife in every perverted position I couldimagine.
So I climbed the stone staircase to our office's attic conference room steeped in shame that I wanted someone who didn't belong to me and resentment that my world was all rocks and hardplaces.
"Oh my god," Shannon said, groaning when I set the foil-wrapped tacos beside her laptop. "Thankyou."
She was pregnant with baby number two and liable to turn into a fire-breathing honey badger when hungry. It was still amusing that my older sister, the most notoriously picky eater in North America, could consume mass quantities of nameless food truck tacos but only while growing anotherhuman.
"No sweat," I said. It was easier to bring her breakfast than have mine ripped from my hands. I'd learned my lesson after she'd commandeered my burrito when she'd been pregnantwithAbby.
I dropped into my seat, careful not to bump her chair or jostle her in the process. Jostling was a known instigator of her morning sickness, and her morning sickness was a known instigator of my sympathetic vomiting. Shannon and I had cleared this room on more than a few occasions. For everyone involved, caution wasnecessary.
It was cozy up here these days. I could still remember when adding a fifth chair—four years ago, after I'd finished school and joined the firm—required a major reorganization of the world according to Walsh Associates. But then Patrick took on Andy Asani as his apprentice. Another ripple, another chair. Now she was his fiancée. Tom, Shannon's deputy in all things finance and management, had found his way into the Monday morning meeting about a year ago. We were gradually outgrowing this atticconferenceroom.
"It's quiet this morning," Matt said. "I didn't realize how much noise three summer internsgenerated."
