Page 39 of Love Thy Brother
“The family business is timber and trucks.”
“Yeah, okay. Give me my keys. And my phone.”
Rubi braced his arm on the door, caging me with his wider frame. He leaned down as if he might kiss me, but gripped my chin instead, forcing me to hold his gaze. “I don’t want to talk about business. I want you—fuck, Ineedyou—to believe I’d never have hurt you like I did if I’d been in my right mind.”
He was so close. Want and love unfurled inside me. His face. His lips. His rough hand on my jaw. Before that night, he’d never kissed me. Never pushed our luck beyond lingering looks and a hand on my arm that stayed there too long. But since that clusterfuck of a night last year, my dreams had tormented me with memories of his tongue sweeping into my mouth. Teeth clashing, the impact so beautiful and violent it had drawn blood.
Did that happen? Was it real?
I had no idea, and it was slowly dawning on me that perhaps he didn’t either.
“Fuck.” Rubi growled and punched my front door.
It was the kind of crazy I pulled all the time, but so out of character for him that I jumped a fucking mile, too late to catch him as he wrenched himself away from me.
The abrupt switch in our personalities left me reeling. I reached for him, but he was quick for a big motherfucker, already at the gate, hands on his head, eyes wild.
It was like looking in a mirror. Except Rubi wasn’t me. He wasn’t a volatile piece of shit who smashed and kicked things instead of dealing with his emotions. He was kind and clever andpatient.
Something’s wrong.
His hands were still balled into fists, my keys on the ground between us.
I stepped over them and wrapped my fingers around Rubi’s. “Oi. Relax. I’m the psychopath with no chill, remember?”
Rubi hissed out a breath. “I don’t, though. That’s the fucking point. I’m looking at your mouth and wanting to kiss the hell out of you like it’s the first time, but I don’t know if it is. I don’t know anything, and it’s messing with my head.”
“Ask me then.”
“You don’t know either. I know what you’re like when you get rinsed on K. You’re someone else and I fucking hateit.” He spat the words and ripped his hands from mine. “Ihateit, and I hate myself for letting you think you’re goddamn forgettable.”
“You can’t—”
“I don’t remember the inside of yourhouse.” Rubi’s voice rose, deepening like thunder. “Your bed. How we got there or what we did. Goddamn, Riv. I don’t even know if I fucked you or you fucked me.”
Now that was a conundrum that hadn’t occurred to me. It tripped my brain. “You’d let me fuck you?”
Rubi blinked. “I never told you that?”
“I’d have to snort a trawler’s worth of every drug under the sun to forget that sentence coming out of your mouth.”
He relaxed a fraction, but it wasn’t good humour. It was defeat. His big shoulders slumped and he hung his head. “I feel like my brain fell out and I only put half of it back, and it ain’t getting better. I’m sorry I messed everything up, but I can’t promise I won’t do it again.”
“Do what? Fuck me or leave me?”
“Any of it. All of it.” Rubi snatched my hand and jabbed his temple with my fingers. “I’m fucked in the head. Don’t you understand?”
Slowly, I reached up and grasped his wrist, tugging our hands down, covering his with mine. “You’re in recovery.”
“Am I? What if this is as good as it gets?Whatifthat night was all we’ll ever have and I don’t remember any of it except how you felt beneath me?”
“I was beneath you? Sounds like you were doing the fucking then.”
A tiny smirk threatened Rubi’s fissured expression. “Why are you being nice?”
Because I’d never seen him like this, and I was terrified my wayward mouth would hurt him more than he could take right now.
And because it felt better than being a colossal dick to him.
