Which brings me right to Bryn’s house. I’m sitting in my car, parked by the sidewalk, my hands gripping the wheel, staring at Bryn’s front door. I debate about turning around and keeping the baking for myself, but then the front door opens. I curse. Bryn’s spotted me and I can’t drive away now.

  He waves and stumbles out the door in those sinful jeans of his. They ride too low on his hips. He has gorgeous hips. And a really nice ass which the jeans also cup. He has really nice legs too. Muscular and strong. The rest of him is pretty decent, and by pretty decent, I mean seriously amazing. His arms look like they’ve been carved out of stone, all striated muscle and veins that stand out. His shoulders are broad enough to carry a house and they taper down to a streamlined waist. That’s just the parts I can see at the moment, given that he’s wearing a tight fitting black t-shirt. God. Always the black t-shirts with him. It’s like he knows that he’s sexy enough to belong on a billboard. Bryn is definitely one of those men who gets better with age.

  I give my head a shake as Bryn approaches the car. I can’t believe I just thought that. I need to shut that shit down.

  I unroll the window when Bryn leans down. “Nice night for a drive. You were in the neighborhood?”

  I don’t live anywhere close and the bastard knows it. I hate the smug look on his face. Like he knows that the baking is just an excuse. That I really actually wanted to come here.

  “I did some baking. I brought it over for you.” My voice is nothing like how it usually sounds. It’s heavy and hoarse. “Like you asked.” Maybe I can still pin this on him.

  “Great.” Bryn flashes me a grin that is so beautiful it pretty much scalds my eyes to look straight at it. “Come on in. I was just going to order something. If you want to stick around, I might share.”

  “You should, seeing as you ate most of mine the other night.”

  Bryn’s grin grows a few inches and I realize I just walked straight into that one. Now I’m going to feel pretty much obligated to stay or I’ll be ceding the point and he’ll win our little battle of wills.

  “I was going to order from this Vietnamese place down the street. They make this amazing soup and spring rolls. If you’re good with that…”

  Damn it. I love Vietnamese and Bryn knows it. I’ve never turned it down in the past. “Alright,” I mutter, but I make it sound like he’s twisting my arm big time.

  I push the car door open and Bryn dodges back before I can hit him with it. It would have served him right. I dig in the backseat and produce the box of cookies, loafs, and tarts that I made him. His eyes nearly pop out of his head.

  “I think we should skip the healthy stuff and just pig out on that.”

  “It’s not for you,” I inform him curtly as I shoulder the box. He doesn’t offer to take it. “It’s for your parents and your co-workers. Maybe this will win over all the ones that I’m sure hate you.”

  “Hate me?” Bryn laughs. He trails behind me as I walk up to the front door. “Why would anyone hate me?”

  Because you’re so damn beautiful. Because all the men are jealous and all the women wish you’d notice them. “Because you’re obnoxious.” There. That’s better. Also kind of true. “Because you can’t cook and don’t know how to do laundry or take your things to the drycleaners. Because you’re practically a teenager.”

  Bryn dodges ahead of me and opens the door. When I pass by, he leans in and whispers right next to my ear. “It wasn’t a teenage kid who kissed you the other night.”

  “First of all, gross,” I huff. “Second of all, seriously gross.”

  I set the box down on the kitchen table I attempted to polish the other night before things got so out of control. There are a few swipes that are darker than the rest. I promise myself I’ll finish it when I come to clean next time.

  “What combo would you like?” Bryn has his phone out like the entire conversation is boring to him.

  “I should have baked a cake. I’d love to smush it right into your face again.”

  Bryn sighs. “Yes, you’ve said. Step over here. Look at this takeout menu.”

  I feel like something is up, but I slowly take a step to the left, then another and another, until I’m at the other side of the table. Bryn backs up to the living room. He produces a white piece of paper with red writing, seemingly from thin air. I’m pretty sure he had it in his pocket all along.

  I keep expecting to fall into a booby trap. Like he’s planted some kind of trap door just to swallow me up, just to have the last laugh. Bryn is kind of like that. I used to wonder how he and my sister got along at all, they were so different, but I figured opposites attract.

  “Stop. Yeah. Right there.” Bryn walks over while I freeze. Something on his face makes me actually obey him, like I really am standing in front of an abyss. He holds out the menu like a peace offering. “I’d recommend combo B. It’s amazing. A little bit of everything that I think you like.”

  I roll my eyes and I’m about to tell him that this is all ridiculously silly and that I would never, ever trust him with any kind of food making decision, when he takes one more step, presses his massive, intimidating, amazing, amazingly hard body against mine.

  “Oh look,” he says with a big shit-eating grin. “You just happen to be standing under a sprig of mistletoe.” His hand sweeps to my waist, tugging me even closer. He bends his head, tips mine up, the menu still in his hand, and kisses me hard. He kisses me so hard and so long that my lips go dry and start to hurt.

  When I finally remember that breathing is essential to life and Bryn is not supposed to be essential to my life whatsoever, I tear my lips from his and shove him away . My body is painfully hot, like someone just doused me with a lava shower. I’m also painfully aware that Bryn’s lips are soft and that his tongue stroking mine created a throbbing between my legs and that rest of what he did pretty much turned me inside out.

  My eyes nearly pop out of the sockets when I see the green sprig he nailed up to the wall above the dining room and kitchen.

  “That’s not mistletoe, you asshole!” I screech. “That’s just a branch off an old fake Christmas tree.”

  Chapter 6

  Bryn

  I hold my palms up in surrender because it looks like Taye might hit me. She’s not like that. She’s probably never even thought about slapping another person in her life. She’s sweet, kind, and gentle. Usually. At the moment, she looks like a pissed off mother bear who just walked into her den and found me messing around with her cubs. She looks like she could rip me to shreds and enjoy every single second of it.

  “I’m sorry. You can’t blame me for trying, though.”

  “I can so,” Taye seethes. “You promised me that you’d be on your best behavior. I brought you baking! And you ambush me here and did exactly what you said you wouldn’t.”

  “Okay. You’re right.” I capitulate easily and Taye’s eyes narrow into dangerous little slits of distrust. “You’re right. I’m an asshole. I’m sorry. You’re just incredibly beautiful.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you can find someone else just as beautiful to clean your house. I’m sure pretty girls aren’t in short supply when it comes to you.”

  I pull a face. “Come on, Taye. You can’t have it both ways. First of all, I haven’t been with anyone since Cozzie. Haven’t wanted to. Second of all, you can’t tell me that you don’t want me, threaten to quit constantly, and then act jealous.”

  “J-jealous?” she stammers. “Why the hell would I be jealous? This was a mistake. All of it. I was trying to be civil before because I was worried about you. You were really…not in a good place.” She tacks on the ending diplomatically.

  “A mess?” I throw it out there for her because I’m so much less tactful, especially when it comes to my own shortcomings. “Yeah, I was a mess for a long time. When relationships, especially long term ones, start to go south, it fucks with you. It messes with your head, and even if you want out, it’s the silence that gets you after. The loneliness.”

  “You had your friends. You didn’t have to be alone.”

  “I didn’t want Cozzie to be unhappy and I didn’t want to be either. We both needed to go our separate ways. I guess I just got blindsided by myself. My inability to fucking do anything after. I didn’t want to. I felt freed, I guess, but it was like that freedom was a whole different set of chains.”

  “Chains? Are you calling my sister chains?”

  “No!” I reach for Taye’s hand, but she tucks it back at her side. She stares at me, wild eyed, and I’m still not sure she isn’t going to spring at me. “That’s not what I meant. Ever. The only part of Cozzie and me being together that I regret is that I hurt her. That we stayed in it longer than we should have. She’s happy now and I’m happy for her. I don’t know, Taye. I don’t want to talk about that. Just please don’t stop cleaning my house. We’ve already been through this. You already agreed to stay.”

  “That was before you tried to kiss me. No. Did kiss me. Again.”

  I sigh long and hard. “Look. I’m going on the road for a few weeks. I’ll leave my schedule like I always do. I promise I won’t be around.” I duck a hand behind my back and cross my fingers like a five-year-old.

  “This is exactly why I shouldn’t even be here. We can’t do this, Bryn. Think about what our friends and families and my sister would think. That I had this crush on you or that I was waiting for you and my sister to fail and then I swept in like a vulture to pick at the spoils.”

  “That’s disgusting. And as to what the rest of them think, we haven’t done anything wrong. Our mutual friends wouldn’t think that and Cozzie never would. She knows you’d never do anything like that. You should give your family some credit. You should give yourself some credit.”

  Taye’s eyes drop away. She looks flustered. Uncertain. I feel like someone just pulled the proverbial rug out from under my feet. I thought this was something new. An attraction that sprung up between us when I finally opened my eyes and realized that Taye wasn’t just some scrawny kid anymore. She’d grown into a beautiful woman. We’re adults. We were attracted to each other. The moment just kind of happened. I wanted it again and again and again, all of her moments, any scraps of affection she would give me. I knew I was falling, but for me, that feeling was so new, it knocked me on my ass. It wasn’t premeditated.

  “Taye?”

  Her head shoots up. “Look. Bryn. I’m going to be honest here, because that’s all I feel like I can be. I do feel something. I have since I first felt sorry for you and pity turned into something else. A little bit of a fascination. I started noticing you. You weren’t just a big brother. You weren’t my sister’s boyfriend or fiancé. I didn’t want to, but I did. I took the stupid job cleaning your house so that I could be near you in any way I could, but it was stupid. Like this thing that I kept inside my own head and chest and everywhere else. I kept it safe that way. What we did can’t happen again. It can’t! It’s too risky.”

  I kind of checked out somewhere around the time Taye confessed to feeling something for me from the cake incident. Nearly a year ago. That maybe she wasn’t just cleaning for me because she needed the cash and because she thought I was pathetic and she should take care of me after her sister left my ass. It’s crazy that she’s standing here telling me that I wasn’t just some shadow on her horizon. That I might be the sun.

  I feel dizzy, like the floor is shifting below me wildly. Like someone stuck me on some rollercoaster and it’s about to hit that sick first turn and plunge and take your stomach out with it.

  I do the first thing I can think of, which doesn’t mean much because my brain feels a thousand shades of checked out at the moment, and try and grab Taye’s hand. She stumbles back, horror etched all over her pretty features.

  “Bryn, we can’t! I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m too honest. Everyone always says so.”

  “That’s not a bad thing. Trust me.”

  “It is in this case!” Taye’s eyes sparkle with unshed tears.

  They cut at me. The last thing I wanted to do was make her cry. I should have kept my hands, my desires, my fucking shitty attempt at a mistletoe joke to myself. I knew Taye felt something and in my attempt to try to flush out the truth, I hurt her. I hurt her and I probably slammed her foot down on the gas of the vehicle she’s using to drive herself away. To drive away from me.

  Taye takes another step back, putting space between us. That gulf that opened up between us, the invisible gap, is getting wider and wider with every heartbeat and every breath.

  “Being honest is—”

  “Being honest in this case was the wrong thing to do,” Taye bites. “I’ll keep cleaning your house for the agreed upon sum as long as you’re not here. We have to stay distant friends. I can’t do this to my sister. I can’t do it to my family. I can’t do it to me or you. There is never going to be a place for us. That was decided the second you asked my sister out and in the thirteen years that followed. It’s wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels. So let’s just pretend like everything we’ve done never happened. Ever. It’s never going to happen again, and if you can’t agree to that, then I can’t work for you. I can’t do any of it.”

  “Okay.” My breathing is a mess, shaky and raspy. “Yeah. I’ll agree to it. Not because I think you’re right or that what we’re doing is wrong. Not because we’ve done anything we have to be ashamed of. I’m going to agree because I don’t want to upset you and I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to have to feel like this is a dirty secret or alienate yourself from your friends and family. That’s never what I wanted. Thank you for having the courage to be honest with me.” That last part comes out weak.

  I wish I could follow it up with something along the lines of, But I wish you had more backbone than that. Or maybe, you’ve always been a free spirit. Strong willed. When you want something, you go after it. You could do this if you really wanted to. We both could.

  I choke it all back because I can’t push Taye any more. Not right now. I know there are different ways of seducing someone. I might be rusty as fuck, since I haven’t done any kind of seducing since I dated Cozzie back in high school. After we decided we wanted to be together, we fell into a comfortable rhythm of familiarity. That didn’t mean it was easy, but it always just kind of felt like a given. Maybe that’s why we didn’t make it. Because we lost that spark, that fire, that desperation, the glue that bound us together, without even realizing it.

  “Just like that? You’re going to agree? No tricks or catches or games?”

  Taye’s skepticism is warranted. She knows me too well. That what I want, I go after. But she also watched her sister and me grow apart and fall apart. We have a history. I guess I can see how things are complicated on her part. They might be complicated on mine too, since I know I just checked out on Cozzie at some point and that’s why the relationship failed.

  Even if I’m shit at feelings and opening myself up and completely unpracticed in anything even resembling romance, I can grow a set of balls and do this. It might be terrifying to think about feelings and this growing into something where we’re both required to put ourselves on the line but for the first time in ages, along with the terror comes a rush of something I don’t understand. I don’t want to give up on it though. That undefined feeling. I don’t have to give up on Taye. I just have to switch tactics.

  “Yeah. No tricks. No games. I won’t do anything else until you’re ready.”

  “I’m never going to be ready,” Taye scoffs. “That was the point of this whole conversation.”

  “Right. Well, thanks for the baking. You’re too sweet. My mom will probably burst into happy tears when she hears it’s from you. I’m sorry about the kiss. You sure you don’t want to stay for takeout?”

  “No.” Taye shakes her head hard, almost like she’s trying to convince herself, not me.

  I let her go. I let her edge towards the door until her hand closes in on the handle. I don’t tell her that she should take a risk. That nothing in life is worth having if it doesn’t hurt a little. I don’t tell her that we could be good. That she should follow her intuition. I don’t tell her that she feels it too, because I know she does. She’s shutting it down and now I know why.

  I lift a hand and wave at her. “Merry Christmas, Taye. Thanks again. For the baking. For cleaning my house. For looking after my ass. It’s a pretty thankless job.” Unless she’d let me thank her in all the ways I now realize that I want to.

  “Yeah. Merry Christmas.”

  Taye flees out the door. It slams shut behind her and I imagine her power walking her way down the driveway and tumbling into her car, breathing hard, steadying herself so she can concentrate on driving, and cursing me, and herself, the entire way home.

  The fact that it’s the second time in a few weeks that she’s had to make a getaway only tells me it’s time to up my game.

  What Taye needs is proof. Proof that this could work.

  Even if I don’t know how I’m going to get it, I’ll figure it out. I didn’t fight hard enough in the past. I didn’t fight at all. But it’s something I want to figure out. Badly.

  Chapter 7

  Taye

  I’m not one of those people that loves Christmas. I could do without the stress, the corny office party, the slogging through stores filled with crazy amounts of people in the whole month of December. Even getting groceries is more difficult. The lines are longer. The traffic seems worse. I feel like people are either sickeningly bubbly or overwhelming stressed out and hard to deal with. I could do without pretty much everything that has to do with the holidays, except our family gathering. It’s the one thing I love most, and that’s what Christmas is supposed to be about anyway.

  Our family doesn’t really even do gifts. We decided a long time ago, when my sister and I were grown up, that it made more sense to get together, have a good meal, get out the board games, and be a family than it did to waste money on gifts. We do something small and meaningful if we’re going to do anything. A handmade card, baking, something bought at a craft show or something vintage, but it’s not expected and it should never be costly.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11