The Bride (The Bride #1)(28)

“Okay. You have extra towels in your bathroom?”

“Yes, I put one up there for you. The green one. Do not use my blue one or I will kill you.”

“That seems a little extreme over a towel.”

“I’m very particular about my towels, and I don’t want your man parts touching the blue one.”

He shook his head, but didn’t argue and left. A couple minutes later I heard the water turn on overhead and went back to chopping garlic. I was running the knife over what I had already cut to make it even finer, and I slipped and caught my thumb with the knife.

Instantly the blood started to gush, and I quickly set it under water before it ruined the work I had already done. Only the damn thing kept bleeding. I wrapped a towel around it and that helped, but if I was going to finish cooking I needed a band aid. I listened for it and I could hear the water was off upstairs. Jake was finished with his shower. Hopefully back in his room already.

I jogged up the stairs and froze.

I froze because as I was rounding the steps Jake was leaving my bathroom with a towel around his waist, and as he took a step the towel came loose and I saw it.

His penis.

I saw his naked penis.

“Ellie, what the hell?” he said as he gathered the towel around him.

“I’m cut. I need a band aid.”

I could see it then. The indecision of wanting to see how bad the cut was, but not wanting to get any closer. Because he was naked except for a towel. More naked than anyone I had ever seen.

Chest, legs, and penis. Only the penis was now covered.

I hoped to hell he couldn’t see me blushing as I headed toward the bathroom. “I’m fine. I needed a band aid and I thought you were done.”

I closed the door and gave him the opportunity to return to his room without worrying about another towel-slipping incident. The mirrors were fogged up, which was good because I didn’t want to see my face.

I didn’t want to see how red and blotchy it was because I saw my first human male penis.

And it was Jake’s.

It was no big deal. I shook my head and decided I was being stupid. We lived together. It had been bound to happen at some point. We were family. Family sometimes had to see shit. That’s the way it was.

I grabbed the band aid and worked it over the cut until it was secure, and then I went downstairs to finish the meal.

Ten minutes later I had steak cooking in the skillet and Jake came in dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. The universal uniform of cattle ranchers everywhere.

“Should be ready in another few minutes,” I said as casually as possible over my shoulder. As casually as possible for someone who had just seen her first penis, that is.

“Ellie,” he said quietly. “Do we need to talk about that?”

“Nooo,” I said quickly. “It was no big deal. I’ll have the gunk off your shower tomorrow and you’re back to having your privacy. Let’s not make something out of nothing.”

He waited a bit, then sighed. “Okay.”

Which is when I started to have all these thoughts in my head. Like I shouldn’t have said it was nothing. No man wants his penis referred to as nothing and no big deal. The truth was, it had actually been pretty big…

No, no, no, no. I wasn’t thinking about his dick. I wasn’t going to think about the size or the shape or the dark hair around it. He was a man. He had a penis. I knew what it looked like. Story over.

I served him his steak and mashed potatoes, like he liked them with extra butter and garlic.

I ate my own steak but didn’t really taste much of it. When I was done I let him clean up and I headed to my room. Normally I would change into my flannel PJ bottoms and my tank top.

Never once had I thought about it. The tank top had a bra shelf, so it wasn’t like my boobs were flopping in the wind. Still, I was a respectable C-cup. It never occurred to me that it bothered Jake. That I sat every night with him watching TV, not wearing a bra.

If it had bothered him he would have said something, right? Or he wouldn’t have said anything, because that would be calling attention to something neither one of us wanted to call attention to.

He wasn’t a man. I wasn’t a woman. We were Jake and Ellie.

We didn’t think about each other’s parts. That’s not what we were.

Except I had seen his penis and his hairy chest and his hairy legs, and something inside me shifted.

Like I wasn’t looking at Jake. Like instead I was looking at a naked hot guy. My very own personal porn.

And I wanted to touch…

No, no, no, no. I had to lock down any and all thoughts about that. I would not go there. I could not go there.

Jake was my older brother. Jake was my way older brother. Jake was MY BROTHER.

I pounded the thought into my head so that it was louder than all the other ones. I couldn’t go downstairs and hang with him, naturally. I knew enough about myself to know I needed distance. But he would think it weird if I bailed this early for bed.

So I did what smart girls everywhere did when they wanted to get out of an awkward situation. I lied.

I walked out of my room and called down to Jake from the top of the stairs.

“Hey, no TV for me tonight. I’ve got a book I’m behind on for English.”

There was a beat. A moment when he said nothing and I cringed.

“Okay,” he finally called up to me.