CHAPTER 1
ALEX
Big Bear,California - September 1999
We fell apart, our bodies turned toward each other on the blanket next to the river where we’d been fishing. Our rods and reels lay on the grass around us.
Kelly’s fingers came up to my face, tracing across my forehead, down my nose, and over my cheekbones.
“Xander…”
I knew the words he was gonna speak before he even drew a breath to form them. “Don’t, Kelly.”
He sighed, sitting up, his arms draped over his bent knees. He trained his gaze on the river that cut a swath through the landscape stretching out around us.
Without looking at me once, he finally said, “I think I have the right to ask. We’ve been together…”
“We’re not a couple. I’ve told you that,” I interrupted, lifting myself up and resting on one elbow.
His head swiveled to look at me over his shoulder. “Fine. Then I’m the guy who fucks you. Daily. For over a year. So, yeah, I think that grants me the right to ask.”
“Then ask what you think you have the right to know.”
“How are you going to do this?”
“Do what?”
“How are you, a greedy bottom who gets cranky when he goes too long without riding a cock, going to live that life?”
“Carefully.”
“So we could…”
“No, we’re not a couple. I told you when we first hooked up, we never would be.”
“Xander, I love you. I want to be in your life. I need to know you’re okay.”
My first instinct was to repeat the sentiment. Kelly was my greatest friend. My only friend, really. But as much as I’d longed for love and family, to belong and be a part of something bigger than the small, isolated world I cocooned myself within, I knew better than most what love did to a person. I lived it, and that lived experience taught me that all those things I longed for, while fabulous for some, were far from it for others.
That word…I hated how it ruled people. I loathed how it made me feel. The things it did to my insides. How it electrocuted my nerve endings. The way it scrambled my brain, until it resembled…not beautiful, fluffy, bright yellow eggs that went well with bacon and toast…thick, curdled milk, that the thought of turned my stomach.
“As long as you know all we’ll ever be is friends, because once I sign the papers, I’ve got to be careful to avoid suspicion.”
“So, that’s it? You’re going to live like a monk? You’ll never have a relationship?”
“No, I won’t be living like a monk. There will be hookups, yes. A relationship that requires something I refuse to subject myself or anyone else to? Absolutely not.”
“What’s that?”
“Need. Relationships require you to be vulnerable and to rely on another person. Needing them, them needing you. I’ve dealt with the second-hand fallout from a relationship going fuckingsouth, and I have no desire to experience it firsthand. Or to inflict it on someone else.”
“After all this time…”
“After all this time, what?”
“You don’t feel anything for me?”
“Of course I do. Just not what you want me to feel. You’re my friend. My best friend, but Kelly, I don’t love you the way you want me to. And I definitely don’t need you like you want me to, or how I’m guessing you need me. I won’t apologize for it.”
