"What? No!" I bolt across the room to him in a few strides. "Why? What the fuck Rhys?"
"What the fuck Rhys? No, what the fuck Duncan?!" He yells as he steps around the counter putting space between us.
We're like mirror images of each other, chests heaving, palms flattened, glaring at the other across the island.
"Rhys, please for the love of, just, fucking tell me what the fuck is going on."
"I want more!" His words crash against the hard surface between us. "Not just more Duncan, I want it all." These words are whispered but they reverberate off the walls and send tremors through my body.
"I want that too." I say after my body settles.
"No you don't." He says with a scoff. "You literally just said you don't want it."
"When did I say that?" My mind races with what words he could possibly be thinking of right now.
"I said I wanted to make you mine," he points to the sofa. "Fuck Duncan, I wanted to claim you, I still do even though my head is telling me not to."
Rhys's hand drags up through his hair and he grips the back of his neck. His biceps pop in a delicious way and his chest looks broad and solid, like a place I want to rest my head when this fight is over.
"I want to be yours, Rhys."Desperately.
"No you don't."
"Don't tell me how I'm feeling." I grouse.
"Thenyoutell me! Fuck Duncan, I never know what's real or what's a joke with you!"
The ALS sign for I Love You rises and falls on his pec and it becomes my focal point as I try to settle my heart into a normal rhythm again.
"Everything is real, it's all real. Rhys, I love you. I've never, and I meannever,felt this way about another person before. You," my palm slaps against the counter as my brain struggles to come up with the words. "You're everything. You're like the feeling of satisfaction after a long workout.You're like the rush of adrenaline when we pull ahead, you're like the wave of desperation when the other team scores a goal."
"Are all of your descriptions going to be hockey related?" He asks with the hint of a smirk that gives me so much hope it's dangerous.
"That's pretty much all I know. And someone once called it poetry."
"That person sounds pretty smart."
"He's hot too." I bite back my smile. Suddenly my back feels tired, the weight of everything I am feeling and confessing becoming too much on my shoulders. I drop to my elbows on the counter, fold my hands together, and after tapping my clasped fingers a few times I turn my gaze to Rhys.
"My life has been joy, jokes, and hockey. And then you come in and bring this brooding artist energy,"
"Are you calling me depressing?"
"No, well," I pause. "No, not depressing, but thought provoking."
I glance down at the counter again, these words feeling too heavy to share with eyes wide open. "You've allowed me to discover a depth of feeling I didn't know I had." I rise up and dig a finger into the muscle over my heart. "Here. It hurts right here. My heart is so fucking frustrated because none of the words my brain comes up with are enough."
"Duncan." He whispers.
When my eyes find his again they're lined with tears. Maybe his heart hurts too. "My best friend fell in love, he had a baby, he doesn't have the same room for me as he did, and I'm happy for him, really I am. Crocs and I have been at each other's side for too long. And then, you waltz in and teach me how a friendship can also include a lot of hot sex but more than that. When I’m with you I feel like my heart is outside my body."
I flatten my palm over my pec. Below it, under thin layers of skin, thick layers of muscle, and a bone or two the organ beats wildly. "It's still in there, but when you left it felt incomplete."
"Duncan." Rhys's words have softened and the kitchen island feels like a continental divide between us.
Before my brain knows what is happening I lift myself up onto the counter, land on my ass, swing my legs around and in the unsexiest move ever witnessed, scootch my ass across the marble.
Rhys smiles and steps back enough to give me room to let my legs fall off the edge. Then he steps between my knees and rests his hands on the tops of my thighs.
