Looking up, I stare over his shoulder past the kitchen's island bench, through the doorway to the large living room, to the Christmas tree, and the night sky outside the window.
I want, one day, to feel secure enough to hold Carey in this house while my parents are actually home. To not have to sneak around at night. To actually share a bed. It just feels so distant from where we are right now.
I take his hand, and squeeze it. "It's getting late. I'm gonna go to bed."
"Seriously?" He holds tight as I try to walk towards the stairs. "The fireworks… It's not even midnight."
I tug him towards me because I really do crave him twenty-four hours a day. "I don't watch the fireworks."
"You're crazy."
"Were you not here for all that?" I wave back towards the front door. "They didn't push me to go with them because they know."
"Yeah, but I just thought that was because you wanted to be alone with me."
"I do wanna be alone with you. I just don't wanna watch the fireworks."
"So I'll come with you, then." Carey tries to guide me upstairs to my room, but I stop him.
"You know you can't sleep in there with me."
"You're parents aren't here, though," he whines.
"But they will be."
"They'll be too drunk to notice."
"But also drunk enough to stumble into someone else's room by mistake."
Carey pouts. "Don't you wanna give me a new year's kiss?"
"I'll give you one right now."
"It won't count now," he says all bratty, and my balls tighten.
Tilting his chin up, I kiss him softly. "I'd like to go to bed, Carey."
"Okay," he says in a tone that tells me he's going to completely disregard everything I just said. "I guess you won't get your New Year's gift then."
I sigh. "That's not a thing."
"Then let's make it a thing. Every year we'll do something for each other that we've never done before."
Every Year…
That's too fucking real.
When it's just me and Carey it's so easy to sink into how amazing the past few weeks have been. He's a magic man. A temptress. One kiss from him really does make everything else melt away. It feels like a hundred times a day I forget that Edenwill be coming back. Thatthisis the fantasy, and not the other way around.
I don't want to say goodbye to what I have with Carey, but my relationship with Eden runs so much deeper.
I know I won't be able to keep it a secret, but how do I tell him? How do I tell my best friend of more than twenty years that I'm falling for his little brother? That I've done things to him he wouldn't believe, and that I'm not willing to let him go?
I look at the stairs down to the basement. "Do you want me to tuck you in?"
Carey flashes me his beautiful sunshine smile. "If you come down, I'll keep you there."
I contemplate it.
