Stepbrother Dearest(68)

I jumped up and turned the television off.

We walked down the hall, and the smell of the soap on her skin was invading my senses. I glanced over at her and wanted her to know how beautiful she looked when I said, “You clean up nice.” When we entered the elevator, I added, “I like your hair up like that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. It’s how you were wearing it the night when I first met you.”

“I’m surprised you remembered that.”

I hadn’t forgotten one thing.

Not. One. Thing.

We’d started reminiscing about how I used to torture her and at one point, she said, “Well, you weren’t exactly as mean as you wanted me to believe you were.”

I returned that with, “And it turned out you weren’t that innocent.”

The tone in my voice made no secret of what I was referring to. We looked at each other with a silent understanding that the conversation needed to end there.

If I thought the night was going to get any easier once we entered the distraction of a nightclub, I had another thing coming.



***



We’d been dancing a lot. It was the most fun I’d had all night. The bass was blaring, and I could feel it pumping through me. Dancing bodies tangled together around us, but Greta and I kept a space between each other.


It was necessary.

At one point, I went to the bathroom and as I made my way back through the multi-colored flashing lights, I spotted a guy dancing very closely around her and talking in her ear.

When I returned to the spot where she was dancing alongside him, my conscience gave way to a primal and impulsive reaction. I wrapped my arm around her tiny waist and pulled her firmly back into me. She didn’t resist. My arm was still dominantly locked around her when she turned to look at me. I gave her a warning look. In that moment, we were the Elec and Greta of seven years ago. I was jealous, and I was once again making it obvious. Given the not so minor detail of my being in a serious relationship, it was unfair to expect her to accept things that I couldn’t, but she cared about me enough to let me get away with this somehow.

We didn’t speak about it, and eventually, my caveman moment passed. I let go of her, and we were back to getting lost in the music.

Everything changed, though, when a slow song had come on. People started scrambling to find partners while others left the dance floor. Somehow, it felt like we were the only ones left.

Greta panicked and started to walk away.

I couldn’t blame her, but what if tonight was it for us? I wanted this dance.

I grabbed her hand. “Dance with me.”

She looked scared but let me reel her into me anyway. A deep breath escaped me when her entire body melted into my arms. She closed her eyes as she planted her head on my chest. My heart was hammering against it as if to tell me that I was an idiot for not realizing that this was precisely what it wanted.

For the first time since we arrived at the casino, thoughts of Chelsea were completely buried by the intensity of my feelings for Greta. Needing to know if she felt it, I looked down and at that same exact moment, she looked up at me. I was losing my ability to breathe. I touched my forehead to hers and just knew. That was the moment I stopped lying to myself. I was still in love with her. I didn’t know what to do about it because I loved Chelsea, too.

Before I could think it through, Greta pulled away and started running off through the darkness of the crowd.

“Greta, wait!”

Within seconds, I’d lost her. I made my way to the exit and ran toward the elevators. The doors were closing, and I stuck my arm through the opening to stop them.

She was crying. God, what had I done to her?

“What the f*ck, Greta? Why did you run from me like that?”

“I just need to go back to my room.”

“Not like this.”

Without thinking, I pressed the stop button.

“What are you doing?”

“This isn’t how I wanted our night to end. I crossed a line. I know that. I got lost in the moment with you, and I’m so f*cking sorry. But it wasn’t going to go any further because I won’t cheat on Chelsea. I couldn’t do that to her.”

“I’m not as strong as you are, then. You can’t dance with me like that, look at me like that, touch me like that if we can’t do anything about it. And for the record, I wouldn’t want you to cheat on her!”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t want you to say one thing and act in a way that contradicts it. We don’t have much time left together. I want you to talk to me. That night at the wake…you wrapped your hand around my neck. It felt like for a moment you were back in that place where we left off. That’s sort of how I feel around you all of the time. Then, later that night, Chelsea told me what happened after you got home.”

What was she talking about?

“Exactly what did she tell you?”

“Were you thinking about me? Is that why you couldn’t perform that night?”

The f*ck?

I had no words. The fact that Chelsea told Greta about that private moment actually pissed me off. I was speechless.

“I want you to tell me the truth,” she said.

She couldn’t handle the truth, and I couldn’t handle these feelings for her. But I was pissed that they’d been talking like that behind my back. On top of that, my whole life felt like it had been turned inside out in one night.