Lew checked something on his phone, then entered the door code into the touchpad.
“Wow.” I swivelled on the spot, and took my coat and boots off.
The cottage’s back wall was made of glass.
“Oh my God, we’ll be able to see the sea from bed!” I dashed over and flung myself down on the mattress.
The things we hadn’t said out on the beach hung in the air between us as Lew hung up his coat, slipped out of his shoes, and crawled into bed next to me.
I still couldn’t say them, and we turned to the mutual language that never needed any words.
Later, when we lay curled up together, both sweaty and with our hearts hammering, Lew pressed soft kisses all over my temple and my cheek.
I knew that my resolve to let him speak up first, and the panic I still felt at the thought of making him choose between Ollie and me, got thinner the closer Valentine’s Day came.
And part of me didn’t know if I wanted him to beg me to stay.
Did I really want that? For a moment the image of Lew on his knees and sobbing into the front of my shirt flashed before my inner eye.
No. That’s not what I need.
I snuggled deeper into his pecs and stroked his stomach. God, I loved his body.
Tears and begging were gestures of teenagers who’d read too many dramatic romance novels. Lew and I were both adults, well, more or less in my case. But adults. And adults devised a plan and followed it. Bali had always been my plan. But what if the plan doesn’t work? I’d realised weeks ago that it was useless to keep holding onto something that didn’t make me happy.
You know what else adults do? They fucking talk to their partners and don’t expect them to read their minds.
And as much as adulting sucked, I knew there was only one way to deal with it.
I have to tell him.
If he said “No, thank you,” fuck, of course it would hurt like a bitch. But I’d survived 100% of my hardest days so far. I would survive this, too. And I would pivot the way I always did. Some people called it resilience, but I knew better. I was too stubbornfor my own good and, ultimately, life was just too precious not to enjoy it to its fullest.
And you wanted to go back to Bali and leave him behind?
I stared at the cottage ceiling and listened to Lewis’ soft snores. It was almost a purring sound, and it grounded me the way a cat who slept curled up next to you on the couch calmed you down.
My pretty kitty.
I turned my head away from the dark ceiling and rolled over to my back so I could look at him. We hadn’t closed the blinds on the glass wall. It had been too hot to imagine someone walking past while he edged me with his hand wrapped around my throat.
My cock gave a little twitch.
It was perfect.
We hadn’t even noticed that the sun had gone down. The light of the stars and the moon glinting over the vast expanse of the sea illuminated the bedroom. And I realised that we’d never even had dinner.
With a grin, I turned my body to the side once more, like a chicken you roasted over an open flame.
Ever since I’d been a child, I had trouble sleeping in total darkness. The number of times I had to get up to open the curtains a bit, because my parents never remembered, was laughable, in hindsight. How could you not remember this crucial thing about your child? And how could they not even have offered a nightlight?
I had eventually moved into Ollie’s room. It had been tiny and barely fit more than Ollie’s bed, a small desk, and a rickety wardrobe, and a chest of drawers for his clothes. But Ollie had always made room for me.
He’d been there, my safe harbour, just like Lewis was now.
Same same but different.
I huffed into the dim room. I loved my brother with all my heart, but nothing could be further removed from what Lewis Sinclair did to me than brotherly love.
