“I didn’t say you weren’t, but you still have a parent. Two, in fact.” She holds up her index and middle fingers.
“You still have a mother,” I argue, because my mother loves her unconditionally. Halle took a step back as she got older because she resented my mother for not supporting our feelings for each other.
“Not biologically.”
“So what?” I snap, annoyed at her usual argument. “You’re angry with her? I get it. I’m not happy about how she handledthings either, but give her a break. Most parents worry about their kids going outside and getting into trouble. She couldn’t even relax when we were both home because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”
I try not to dwell on the fact that my mother caught us in bed togethermore than once. She’d witnessed our looks and innocent touches that turned not-so-innocent overnight. She’d confiscated my phone once for breaking curfew and found a slew of texts no mother should ever see her son sending or receiving, let alone to and from the girl she was raising as her daughter. She’d had a front-row seat to us discovering our feelings for each other, and then our hormones, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
We started therapy very early, but once she learned what was going on, she forced us to talk to our respective therapists about our growing feelings toward each other. Both suggested needing space from each other, but Halle had no one. She had relatives who lived in different states, but I’d been adamant that she wasn’t leaving our house before she turned eighteen, and if she did, I was going with her.
Almost a decade later, I get why my mother acted the way she did. We were from a smaller town in North Carolina, and what kind of mother would she look like if it got out that her kids,bloodlines be damned, were sleeping together?
“You’re really defending herto me? After everything she said to us over the years? After making us feel like we were dirty or sick…or wrong?”
“I think she was dealing with things the best she could…all by herself. She lost someone, too, Saint.” Even though I was there when it happened, I always felt like my feelings came third to both hers and Saint’s. He was my stepfather, but he was also Halle’s father and my mother’s husband, and I still had a dadwho was presentsometimes. So even though I lived with my mom and stepfather, it felt like I had to be the least affected.
Neither Halle nor my mother did anything to make me feel that way, but I just thought I had to be strong for them both, especially since I was the only man left in the house. Even at the age of five, I was the one who made sure my mom was eating in those following weeks and that she woke up every morning, because what would happen to Halle and me if she didn’t?
“I know, Sebastian,” she snaps, and I glare at her because her using my first name does the same thing to me that it does to her.
I narrow my eyes at her. “Don’t use my name like it’s a swear word.”
The server returns with our drinks, and she glares at me from across the table, her arms crossed over her chest and the sexiest fucking scowl on her face like she thinks it will move me. I know when she’s pissed about something, and more importantly, when she’s pissed atme, and neither is the cause for the look she’s giving me.
“Have you had a chance to look at the menu?” the server asks.
“Are you hungry?” I ask her, and she shakes her head as she takes a healthy sip of her martini. “When’s the last time you ate anything?” I know her schedule as well as I know my own, so I know she met me right after her last class of the day. She’s in her final year of graduate school and has days when she barely has time to eat anything but a protein bar or a bagel. “Not a snack, Saint,” I say before she has a chance to respond.
She closes her mouth quickly and rolls her eyes at me before looking up at the server. “Can you give us just a few more minutes, please?” He disappears from the table with a nod, and she lifts the menu. “What looks good?” she asks, like we hadn’t just been having a back-and-forth about how we’ll be spending the anniversary of the worst day of our lives.
“You want the crab dip?” I ask even though I already know the answer. If there’s crab dip on the menu, she’s ordering it.
She nods. “And I’ll just get a salad.”
“And then half of whatever I order?”
She smiles that smile that used to have the power to make me do whatever she wanted.
Hell, it still does.
“I got a room while I’m in town,” I tell her, and I watch as the smile fades from her face. “I was thinking we could have lunch tomorrow, though? And maybe we could see a movie? Go to Central Park? What do you want to do?” She goes to respond, and I put up a hand. “Besides that.”
“That’s all I want to do, and you’re annoying the shit out of me by acting like you don’t.”
“Don’t swear at me,” I snap, and she glares back.
“Don’t pull that bossy shit unless you’re planning to back it up with your dick,” she says with a saccharine smile and a flutter of her eyelashes. I can almost hear what she wants to say, which definitely involves that fucking D word that makes me want to fuck those perfect lips. The ones on her face, and then immediately the ones between her legs.
“Saint…” I groan and drag a hand over my face, trying to will my dick down after Halle addressed it.
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know why you’re being such a prude about it. Like we haven’t had sex a million times before. It’s just sex, Sebastian.”
I frown as anger flashes through me because she knows how I feel about her, and I know how she feels about me. “Don’t reduce us to that. It’s never been just sex with us.” Not the first time or the four hundredth. It’s always meant something, and I’m pissed that she thinks she can say it doesn’t.
She lets out a sigh, and she looks contrite, probably knowing she plucked a nerve. “I know, but…you’re freaking out.”
“Because I’m worried we are screwing us both up for life.”
