But not this thing—this girl. Her flaws contribute as much to her perfection as her beauty does. It all works together to make her absolutely perfect, and now that everything between us is all out in the open, I finally let myself admit I never stood a chance against her at all.
When it comes to girls I’ve never much entertained feelings other than physical attraction, and mild affection at best. When you’ve been called worthless enough times by the man who raised you, you start to believe it’s true. You stop looking at girls like Beth Caplan as attainable, and you sure as fuck don’t see yourself as worthy of them.
But fuck that. Fuck them all. Because there’s nothing mild about the torrent of emotion raging inside me as I look down at Bea, and I realize that with her by my side, reminding me of myself in my darker moments, we can have any fucking future we want.
Beth’s eyes blink open, still evaded by sleep just like me, and she looks up at me with concern. I press a kiss to her lips to reassure her, but it’s her eyes that comfort me. They are deep blue oceans, and I’ve been wading in their undertow for years, slowly drawn in until they finally caught me in their riptide. And when her lips part and she sucks in a harsh breath, like I affect her just as much, I start to think drowning wouldn’t be so bad.
Epilogue
Beth
Eight months later
David climbs out of my parent’s pool—the same pool he first learned to dive in—and shakes the water from his hair. The sun refracts off his tanned, wet, summer skin, droplets sliding tauntingly down his perfectly defined abs, and I feel it in the deepest part of me. But then, he’s had me drooling over him for years, so why should anything change now that he’s mine?
“Oh, come on, man! Pussying out?” Sammy calls from the water as he chucks the waterproof football at David’s back, landing a perfect spiral as Tucker laughs endlessly.
“Just need to kiss my girl,” David smirks, and Sammy grimaces and makes exaggerated vomiting sounds. That only makes Tucker laugh even harder.
Brody lounges in the chaise beside mine, averting his gaze at David’s words, and I can’t help but blush. It’s still so hard to process the fact that we’re related—that he’s my half-brother—but every time I catch his familiar, deep blue gaze, it becomes somehow more real. And getting to know him better has helped, too, of course.
True to his word, David jogs over and steals a quick, chaste kiss before diving back into the pool. Rory swims over to Sammy to distract him, which works like a charm. He puts her on his shoulders and Tucker grabs Carl for a chicken fight.
“We got winner, Bea!” David calls from the pool just as Rory and Carl go down in unison, and I burst into laughter. “Or loser,” David amends.
My parents sip sparkling water under the umbrella by the built-in bar, watching the fun, but more than satisfied with each other’s company. Things were awkward between my dad and me for a while, but those things I said at dinner that night—I meant them. Only I didn’t exactly have all the information. It turns out my father did come to the hospital after my suicide attempt. He rushed there, in fact, and didn’t leave for days. But my mother thought it best that I didn’t see him, and my psychiatrist at the time agreed. And they were probably right—I was certainly dealing with more than enough already.
Still, that didn’t change the fact that my father and I had unresolved issues. When he came back into our lives, I forgave him without question—for everything he’d done before he left, for leaving, for staying gone—all of it. But my father still owed a debt of apology, and I knew he’d already paid it to my mother and Sammy but I was so desperate to get him back that I never demanded payment of my own. Until recently, anyway. But now that the Band-Aid has been ripped off, we’ve finally begun to heal our relationship in earnest, and it feels good.
It took David and Sammy a long talk and a lot of time before they were right again, too, but with every month that passes, I think Sammy is starting to accept that we are for real.
I think I am, too.
I’m still anxious about it. It’d be impossible not to be after all this time, and especially after my last experience with a relationship. But David is always eager to ease my insecurities, and I love that he indulges me.
Later that night, when I’m alone with David in my childhood bed, I get to thinking about the past. About the first time he told Sammy he had feelings for me, and I decide to ask him about it.
“What if you did kiss me the night I met Brian?” I ask. “Would you have broken my heart? If we started…you know?”
“Started going out?”
I shrug and nod at the same time, noncommittal, worried I’m being too presumptuous, assuming we’d have been in a relationship if Sammy had given his approval back then.
David sucks in a deep breath, but his eyes—seas of gray and green and brown—never leave mine. They are my crystal balls, but instead of looking into the future, I’m searching for a past that should have been mine. That could have been, if my brother hadn’t rejected one of his closest friends.
“I was a real dick in high school, Bea.” He lets out a short, ironic laugh. “I’m still a dick.”
He is, sometimes. But never to me.
David sighs. “I really didn’t care about anything. I fucked around a lot. I acted exactly the way Cap said I would.”
I just stare at him, because he’s giving me the reality but that’s not what I’m looking for, and I will the crystal balls to show me the alternate life instead.
And then they grow serious and somber, and the clouds dissipate like magic, and they are utterly clear as they reveal my answer. “But no. If things had been different, if I had you…I wouldn’t have done any of that shit. I wouldn’t have had to.”
I frown. “What do you mean had to?”
His full, kissable lips twitch. “I did that shit ’cause I felt bored and trapped, Bea.” He lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I never feel that way when I’m with you.”
