Page 55 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
The repetition of how he was okay made me finally meet his gaze. I searched his face and found...nothing to be alarmed by. He was smiling, but it felt natural, and his body language wasn’t tense or wound up. He wasn’t exactly comfortable, but he didn’t look like he was holding in a bunch of shit that he was refusing to express because he was worried about me.
I fidgeted, feeling a little better, but there wasn’t really a way for the conversation to go that would leave me completely free of feeling like shit. “Still?—”
He held up his hand. “And quit acting like you molested me, for God’s sake. You were drunk out of your head and obviously not thinking clearly since you decided to spill the beans on something you’d been working like hell to keep hidden for years. I was the sober one, and I was the one who put a stop to things before they went too far. You didn’t get mad or make a scene over it, you just went right to sleep, accepting me telling you no without saying no directly.”
“Before they went too far?” I asked, and goddammit, I could feel what felt like a thread of hope start to grow inside me. The phrasing was just loose enough that I could actually see how it could be taken as him being...almost happy about what hadhappened, but not liking that I was drunk while it was going down.
“Like I said, and like you know, you were wasted when it happened,” he said with a slight shrug. “There wasn’t any way I was going to look at what you said and did that night and run with it.”
“Being drunk doesn’t magically absolve me of responsibility.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but you weren’t yourself, and this isn’t a court of law where the standards are higher. This is you and me, alright?”
“It was you and me that night too,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead as I tried to wrap my head around what I’d done and that Eli was handling the whole thing better than I was. “And look where that got us.”
He snorted. “Quit being so dramatic. I’m trying to settle this for us, alright? I’m not planning on moving anywhere else, and I’m not going to change anything between us, alright?”
“What, we just act like I didn’t...you know?—”
“Honestly, I’m not bothered by the groping thing,” he said, but something in the way he fidgeted told me there was more to the story than he was letting on. The problem was that I could have figured that out for myself, but I also knew that trying to dig deeper was probably a fruitless endeavor. Eli wasn’t shy about expressing himself or being honest...when he was good and ready. If he was keeping something to himself, then it was something that he still wanted to mull over in his head, and honestly, I didn’t have a lot of room to demand anything more from him. “It’s more about the feelings you’ve been keeping so close to your chest that I find myself...put off.”
Fair, not good, but fair. “Look, I-I know that’s gotta be uncomfortable to know, but it doesn’t mean...it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I think it means plenty,” he said, and again shrugged. “Not in the way your panicking little squirrel brain is probably trying to make it mean. But it does mean something. It means you’ve been dealing with this shit on your own for a long time because you were freaked out at how I might handle things. Like you thought I might look at you or our relationship differently.”
“What, are you saying things haven’t changed?”
“Again, yes, it’s going to change, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to change in the way you’re afraid of,” he said, drinking the rest of his beer and setting the empty back on the table with a dull thunk. “But it hasn’t changed how I look at you.”
Once again, I got the impression that the full scope of his thoughts and feelings was being kept out of sight. All I could do was accept that he had his private thoughts on the whole thing that I couldn’t just drag out of him, no matter how much the not knowing was going to drive me crazy.
“It at least explains a few things,” I said with a sigh. It didn’t matter if he said he wouldn’t look at me differently; I could already see how things had changed. Even if it didn’t change on his end, it would still change on my end. I knew he was going to be looking at a lot of the stuff I used to do with him. Every touch was going to be second-guessed. Any time he saw me looking at him a little too long, he was going to wonder, and while I didn’t get why he’d started sleeping with his door open, it definitely made more sense why he kept his clothes on while he was asleep, unlike before.
“It explains less than you think,” he said with a roll of his eyes, but didn’t elaborate.
“I mean, if you want to sit around and act like nothing is different and nothing has changed, be my guest. But I know for a fact that you’re still holding things back,” I said, because while giving him space to think through things was what I did, calling him out on intentionally holding back was something else I did.Other people might not realize what he was doing, but I did, and he needed to know that someone was on to his bullshit.
“Well, yeah. It’s a lot to think about and absorb,” he said as he stood up to take the empty to the kitchen, reappearing less than a minute later with a new bottle for both of us. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not telling you the truth.”
“I get that,” I said with a sigh. “But this is just...a lot for me too. And it’s weird as hell that it’s more for me than it is for you. Then again, you’ve always been good at acting totally calm when you’re anything but. I wish you’d teach me that trick.”
“It’s not a trick,” he said with a throaty chuckle I definitely didn’t feel go straight to my gut. It probably would have gone even further south under circumstances other than facing the reality that I had confessed my feelings for him and gone out of my way to act on them.
Oh God, I had really done that.
His brow arched, and he pointed at me. “Whatever thought flitted through that weirdo head of yours needs to stop, alright? We’re fine, nothing has changed.”
I could practically sense the missing ‘yet,’ but there was no point saying it. We were both stubborn, but I wasn’t exactly at my best right now, and my desperation for relief from feeling like I was losing my mind from embarrassment wouldn’t let me keep up with him. He was too calm to be pushed away from his center; all I could do was be helpless in the face of his calm. He had the upper hand right now, and there was nothing I could do but hope I would get more explanation soon.
“Yeah, sure,” I muttered, knowing I didn’t sound convincing, but I didn’t have the mental strength to pretend.
It seemed that was enough for him, and he leaned back on the couch. “So, what’s the rest of the week look like for you?”
“Normal stuff,” I told him, trying to rally myself to a state where I would seem back to normal. Or at least as close tonormal as possible for me. “Probably gonna spend some more time with Marshall.”
“You really are going to have to introduce us...like really introduce us,” he said with a snort. “I’m more annoyed that Arlo met him properly before I did. That’s just rude.”
“It wasn’t on purpose,” I told him, wrinkling my nose. “But Marshall was texting me when I confirmed plans with Arlo earlier, so I just kind of...asked. They both agreed, and that’s that.”
