Page 73 of Maybe
“He’d like me to meet with him at the office tomorrow.” Isaac shuttled his wrist faster.
“Why?” Jeez, Isaac had got good at this. I hissed with pleasure. “Has he found another stash of HFFH’s cash he wanted to share with everyone except me?” There was perverse pleasure to be found in saying the bastard’s name out loud with his favourite son’s hand wrapped round my cock. If anything, it made the whole thing hotter still. “I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s not about him.” Isaac’s other hand wrapped around the back of my neck. His scalding tongue licked into mine, his dick a line of steel lying against my thigh. “He wants me to sign a few things, something to do with a power of attorney for my mother. And…” Without warning, I cupped Isaac’s balls through his trousers. His voice faltered, though his hand game stayed strong.
I was nearly there. A couple more tugs and I’d be in seventh heaven, performing a Jimmy Hendrix solo in front of a packed Madison Square Garden.
“And I’ve added something else to the agenda,” he panted. “Something important I need to discuss.”
“Yeah?” My legs did that wobbly thing they did when I was on the cusp. Literally, I was almost there. “It’s going to have to wait a sec. This is too fucking good, Iz,” I gasped, “So fucking good.”
Afterward, I sank to my knees. More of a fall, really, grabbing Isaac’s belt on the way down, as much for support as to unfasten it. I got the belt undone and his trousers loosened too. Then his hand, sticky with my spunk, landed on my wrist. “Ez, wait.” He tipped his head down, two baby blues locked onto mine. “When were you going to mention your tea and biscuit sessions with my mother?”
“What the fuck? Can we do this first?”
“You’ve been visiting my mother,” he repeated, holding my wrist tight. Feeling like I was being edged in reverse, I mouthed his dick through the fabric of his undies. Not so easily distracted, his hand clamped my head still, and not in a sexy way. “Ez,” he warned.
“I was going to tell you,” I promised. “But then you’d have asked me how she was, and I didn’t want to have to lie, as opposed to lie by omission—which is a nothing lie, to be honest. I didn’t want to worry you by telling you that she’s actually a bigger lush than that bloke with the flat cap on the corner of Embankment Tube station, scabbing for cash.”
“I like to think you would have phrased it more sensitively.”
“Yeah, probably.”
A conversation about Janice’s drinking habits with my lips up against her son’s dick had not been part of my plans for this evening. Withdrawing with a heavy sigh, I climbed to my feet. “Sorry. And yeah. I should have done, so I’m sorry for that, too. But you had enough going on without being lumbered with her problems. I tried to persuade her to get some help, for your sake and for the twins, but… who knows how it landed.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Isaac answered, sadly. “But I already knew. I couldn’t face it. I was at the memorial service too.” He raised an eyebrow. “Holding her up for most of it, remember?”
Only hazily. I’d been too busy railing at the world, at how that bastard was being glorified in death as well as in life, andthen staggering to Isaac’s car. I do remember falling into it, though, and the car smelling of my favourite brother, feeling like I wanted to bottle the scent and take it home with me.
Isaac chewed on his lip. “Thanks for trying, but… but you didn’t go over there to count my mother’s weekly alcohol units, did you?”
“Um… no.”
The seconds stretched, elastic and taut. How come sayingI love youto this guy was so easy, and yet explaining how hard it had been for me to walk up the driveway of that swanky house in Richmond felt like sticking pins in my eyes? When I stepped through that front door with my shitty bunch of flowers, I was stepping back into the fold. I love you’s were for today. I mean, I’d say them tomorrow and every day ever after, but when all was said and done, I love you was only three tiddly words. Whereas embracing all of the Fitz-Henrys, and not simply the special one in my arms, was binding.
“If you must know, I went over for you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. So that you don’t have to choose between me and family.”
Isaac’s lips quirked. “You mean between family and family.”
“Yes, smartarse. I don’t want it to be awkward. I don’t want you to feel you can only pop and see her when I’m busy elsewhere or something, and not discuss it because you don’t want to make me uncomfortable. And vice versa. I don’t want my presence in your life and your bed to cause a rift, because I know what it’s like to lose a mother—no parents at all, in fact. And it sucks. Even if your mum is a bit flaky, Iz, she’s still your mum, and you love her, though sometimes fuck knows why. I thought if I at least made some inroads towards an entente cordiale, then, with time, we could do normal, family stuff together, like birthdays and Christmas. And Jonty will have yet anothergrandparent figure to spoil him. Janice is actually pretty good with kids, at least with happy and straightforward ones, anyhow. She’s shite with fucked up broken thirteen year olds, but then, I was a little shite myself, and I’ll never get over her part in my mother's death, no matter how anyone tries to cut that cake, and so–“
“I’d choose you,” Isaac pressed his fingers to my lips. “If she never comes around to us being together, if the twins don’t, if our friends don’t, then I’d still choose you, Ez. Every time.”
Wow. So that got my tear ducts flowing. I blinked a few times and faked a couple of coughs as if Isaac’s fingers pressed against my mouth were cutting off my air supply and making my eyes water. He wasn’t fooled.
“But thank you for persuading her to get some help. Someone needed to. It should have been me.”
“It’s okay, babe.” I shrugged. Walking up the driveway to that big bloody house had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Far harder than walking away from it a decade earlier. “Forgive and forget, you know me. I’m not one to harbour a grudge—I simply remember things for a fuck of a long time.”
Isaac snorted at that whopper of a lie. “It’s my turn to tell you something,” he said. “The other thing on David Trethowan’s agenda.”
He kissed me, a smiley kiss, clearly pleased with himself. “I’ve put this flat on the market. There’s too much history here. For both of us.”
“Where are you going to live?”
