Page 50 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Oh God,” I groaned.
“It happens,” Arlo said as he tried to contain the worst of the beer before it went everywhere.
Oh, something happened, alright.
I had groped Eli.
I hadgropedEli.
I had been hard and pushed my cock against him.
Jesus Christ, I couldn’t remember what I’d said, but… holy hell, what had I said?
I thought of the little things from the past week that had screamed something was wrong with him, despite his insisting he was fine. A little, strangled noise that was probably an attempt at a laugh burst from me, and I was on my feet. “Well, that explains that.”
Arlo looked up, face pinched, and after looking at me for a moment, his brow raised slightly. “Uh...Milo? You’re making even less sense than usual.”
“I have to go,” I said faintly, wondering if someone could pass out from getting hit like a truck by the sudden understanding that you had copped a feel of your best friend, who was also your stepbrother. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re white,” Marshall said, leaning forward.
“I’m fine,” I said, yanking out my wallet and throwing money I didn’t count onto the table. “For my part, I’ll...call you...text you...one of those.”
“You’re worrying me,” Arlo said, reaching out, but I stepped back. The last thing I needed was to be comforted or taken care of. I needed to get back to my apartment and pray Eli was still there, and that there was still something to salvage. I didn’t know what I was going to say to him, but it had to be a hell of a lot better than whatever I’d said, drunk out of my head and rambling God knows what while shoving myself at him.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, turning and walking away, body stiff and jerky as I hurried, pulling out my phone. “C’mon, c’mon.”
Except there was no answer from Eli. For the first few blocks, I kept trying, hoping that if he was ignoring his phone, he might get curious about who was calling him back to back. At a certain point, I had to accept that he was either not hearing his phone or, worse, he knew it was me and was purposefully avoiding talking to me. I hoped my repeated calls would make him wonder if there was an emergency...or he just thought I was being dramatic. Of course, if there were an emergency, he’d also get calls from the family.
So he had to be avoiding me. Not that I blamed him, butanswer the goddamn phone!
I probably should have summoned a ride because I was too far from the apartment to make it quickly, but waiting in a car while they navigated traffic would have felt like torture. Walking was slower, but it let me dosomethingwhile my thoughts whirled, dragging my emotions behind them. I didn’t have to sit in the back seat and remind myself to take deep, even breaths because I already had to do that as I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a full-blown run. The worst was when I had to stand at an intersection and wait for the light to change so I couldfinallyscuttle across and keep moving.
By the time I reached the apartment building, I was going to explode from the pent-up stress. It had built high enough that I swore I could feel it manifesting as a tangible object lodged in my chest. My fingers fumbled with the keys to the front door, and by the time I got it open, I decided the elevator was as bad an idea as waiting in a car. I took the stairs two or three at a time as I climbed to our floor, the act of powering up the stairs helping with some of the pressure built up inside me, but I was still shaking when I tried to shove the key into our door.
I stumbled into our apartment, heart in my throat as I closed the door, ears straining for the faintest noise. Kicking off my shoes, I walked into the living room and let out a slow and shakybreath. Seeing nothing had changed in the apartment, I realized I had been holding onto the fear that, for whatever reason, Eli knew I’d remembered what had happened and had been packing his things. I wouldn’t have blamed him, because seriously, what the fuck was wrong with me?
Once, I had tried to pull off some stupid trick involving a skateboard, one of Mason’s bikes that I had asked to use beforehand, and a poorly made ramp that went too high for what I was trying to do. The thing was, it had worked, the ramp had stayed put, and I hadn’t lost control of the skateboard as I went over it. The problem was that neither Eli nor I had thought about what would happen when it came to safely landing. The board had broken under me, shattering and sending pieces in every direction, including up against my stomach. I had sat there, staring down at my shirt that was growing bloodier by the second. I’d gone to the ER, but it was a long time before I could pull up my shirt and find out if my guts were hanging out.
Lifting my shirt that day took half as much courage as it did for me to suck in a breath and call out, “Eli?”
I glanced back and saw his shoes sitting against the wall, always positioned where they wouldn’t get in someone’s way. My heart was a furious drum in my chest as I sucked in another breath. “Eli?”
“The fuck?” I heard from down the hallway, and I let out that heaving breath at the bewildered, groggy tone in his voice. He hadn’t been avoiding me; he’d been napping. “Milo?”
I could hear the alarm in his voice, and I stiffened as he stumbled into the hallway. I had a moment of clarity, relieved he was wearing a shirt and a pair of loose shorts. Of course, they were the exact kind of shorts that in the right conditions could be very distracting, which I knew from firsthand experience. The number of times I’d found myself trying not to be distracted bymovement in his shorts since the bastard didn’t wear underwear with those shorts unless he was working out.
He hunched as he peered down the gloomy hallway, slowly advancing as he cleared his throat roughly. “What the hell is going on?”
“Uh...you weren’t answering your phone?” I said more as a question than anything because now I felt like an even bigger jackass. I had been in a full-blown panic about him, and here he was, just fine, sleepy and a little annoyed, but he hadn’t been trying to move out, he hadn’t been ignoring me, and now that he’d heard how I must have sounded when I came thundering into the apartment, he had woken up alarmed.
“It’s charging,” he said, stumbling into the living room to pick up what I now saw was his phone sitting on the table beside the couch. “And on silent while I napped.”
I could see thatnow, which did nothing to alleviate my sudden embarrassment at being dramatic. “Uh...right.”
“The fuck is going on?” he asked with a frown, setting the phone back on the charger. “Christ, I thought something happened, but you’re not bleeding.”
“Nope,” I said with bright cheeriness, holding up my casted arm. “Still the only injury to speak of, and I still can’t wait to take it off because it’s beginning to itch.”
