“Nope,” he said, and pulled her close again. “You do not get to be sorry. I kissed you. So whatever guilty moment you’re having at kissing someone you don’t care about, I would love it if you could ignore that long enough for me to kiss you some more—”
“I do care about you,” she cried, more emotion in her voice than he remembered hearing at any point, ever.
Unfortunately, he was a bit too wankered to properly examine that fact. “You know what I mean. The way I care about you. Centuries in the making, kind of weird and obsessive, totally romantic and not just because we’re both sexy, caring about you. Like that.”
“Will,” she said, her voice ragged with frustration, and that finally caught his attention. “You don’t understand. I do care about you like that. I really fucking do, which is why this is a terrible idea.”
He frowned, suddenly annoyed with himself for all the gin he’d had—because if he was sober, those words might make sense instead of swirling around on the unabsorbent surface of his brain. “But—you said—”
“I said I couldn’t do this.” The words were fast and raw, her gaze sliding away from his, her fingers curled up tight in the fabric of his jacket. Keeping him close even when she looked like she wanted to be a thousand miles away. “I said I couldn’t, and I can’t, because—when I really, really feel things, so much that it overwhelms me, I either explode with it or I panic and close my fucking mouth. I don’t want to be—too much, to put myself out on a ledge alone. I don’t want to be honest, because, God, Will, you have no idea how bad it can hurt. When you feel everything in the world, but the person you’re with feels nothing. You don’t know.” She shook her head frantically while his stomach lurched at the pain in her eyes. “I’m scared of it. But I know for a fact that relationships only work if you can be brave, and I don’t know how to do that anymore. I only know how to be clever and how to be safe, and I don’t want—”
Will stared, astonished, scrambling to keep up, a fire igniting in his stomach and cautious hope burning through his veins. “What, Abbie? You don’t want what?”
“I don’t want to fail you,” she said.
God, he was too drunk for this. But he understood, or at least, he thought he understood—and he didn’t like what he was hearing. “Fail me? You—you can’t. You couldn’t. Ever. You’d never be too much for me.” The idea was so ridiculous, the words felt alien in his mouth. “And I’d never leave you alone.”
“That’s what you think.” She was smiling, but it was a vicious kind of smile, and he got the sense it was pointed entirely inward. “But you’re drunk. And you don’t know me. And you have no idea how fucked up I feel when it comes to things like this.”
Right now, his heart was glass. One wrong knock could shatter it into piles of fine, gleaming dust at her feet. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face against her neck. “Abbie,” he breathed, and he wondered if she could hear all the love and aching pain in that word. “You think I don’t know you? You think—that I wouldn’t want you if I did?”
“That’s not what I said,” she muttered stiffly, which was the final confirmation that it was exactly what she’d meant.
“You’re wrong,” he told her, and nothing had ever been truer. “I do know you. You try to keep yourself from me, but you’re not that good at it. And I might not know everything, but I can see that you’re hurt, and I can see that you’re scared, and I don’t want you to—just stop. I don’t want you to be different for me. I want you to tell me when you’re struggling with it, and let me hold you like this. That’s all. I want you to trust me.”
“Just—trust you?” She’d been melting ever so slightly, but at those words she pulled back, sudden and sharp. “You’re not being fair.”
“What?” He studied her face, the teeth sinking into her lower lip and the sheen in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because—because you have no idea what you’re asking me,” she said. “None. And I have no idea what you even want, not really—”
“Everything,” he blurted out. “Everything.”
“But I can’t give you everything! I already tried that, and it was—bad. It was dangerous. It was—”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” Will said desperately, holding her tighter. “You told me that. You told me that yourself.”
“A kiss is just a kiss, Will,” she said. There was a sadness in her eyes that looked centuries old, and he could feel her pulling away from him, like she was water squeezed between his grasping palms.
“Abbie—”
Bright headlights cutting through the snow, the low purr of an engine rising over the howling wind. He stopped, looked over Abbie’s shoulder as a car prowled onto Ms Tricia’s drive. Really, he knew who it was after a second of squinting, yet he held out hope that he was mistaken and this was a confused, midnight traveller who would soon realise his mistake and turn the fuck around again and leave Will to fix this, to fix the devastation in her eyes and that hopelessness in her voice that sounded like a crumbling heart.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go the way Will wanted. The car found a space, parked, and its engine cut out. Then the door opened, and Jason Farrell unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and peered over at them in the scarlet light.
“Oi,” he called cheerfully. “Are you groping my sister on the lawn? That’s a bit much, Will.”
“Oh my fucking God,” Abbie said.
Will really couldn’t agree more.
Seven
Grandma was thrilled by Jason’s late-night arrival. Abbie had a feeling she should be thrilled too. After all, he’d saved her from blurting more embarrassing, emotional truths at Will, whose new name should be The Human Wrecking Ball of Protective Emotional Walls. She half-suspected she’d been about to confess her aeons of overwhelming love to the man, at which point he’d either be appropriately alarmed and throw it back in her face or—
Or worse. Worse, he’d like it—she was starting to suspect he’d love it—and things would be perfect, so perfect, until she forgot how to quiet her bad thoughts again and she’d flinch away from him or lash out and he’d be horrified and everything would collapse.
Things, in Abbie’s experience, always collapsed.
So, yes. She should be grateful for Jase’s interruption. Which did not explain why, the following morning, she found herself glaring daggers at him over the breakfast table.
“I’d no idea you were coming so soon,” Grandma trilled as she dumped an extra seven thousand rashers of bacon on his plate.
“Ah, well. Abbie wanted me here.” Jase slid her a look that said Clearly you changed your mind, though? before continuing. “So I got away as soon as work allowed.”
On the other side of the table, Will snorted into his sausages. He’d already been for a morning run—followed by a series of very impressive burpees on the frosty lawn, not that Abbie had been peeking through the window or anything—so he was glowing with sweat and looked more fresh and gorgeous than hungover.
The freak.
“You do know,” Will was saying, “that you can leave work whenever you want, right? You work for yourself.”
“And I’m the world’s worst boss,” Jase twinkled.
“Oh, he’s such a good boy, aren’t you, my darling?” was Grandma’s predictable response to that tripe. She popped a kiss on Jase’s smug forehead.
Abbie stuck out her tongue. “You’re only her favourite because you went into the family business.”
“I don’t have favourites,” Grandma said, turning toward the Aga. “Oh, Jason, your extra hash brown is ready.”
“Outrageous,” Will muttered.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Abbie muttered back. Then she remembered that she was in turmoil over last night, over whether or not Will even remembered last night, and therefore shouldn’t be sharing mumbled discontent and knowing looks with hi
m across the table.
Too late. Their eyes met, and his were like a shot of espresso: dark and delicious and dangerously invigorating. She felt a bit jittery. Shit. Abbie dragged her gaze away and found herself staring at Jase instead. Her twin was currently watching her with that infuriating smirk he got when he thought he knew something she didn’t. The dick. She stuck her tongue out at him again, then yelped at the familiar whack of a wooden spoon on her shoulder.
“Behave yourself,” Grandma said sternly.
“Yeah, Abbie,” Jase snickered. There was a thud under the table, and his smirk was replaced by a wince. “Ow.” He turned to glare at Will, who was looking pointedly in the other direction.
Abbie felt herself smile.
“So, Will,” Jase began, sitting back in his chair and adjusting the cuffs on his black silk shirt. (Jason had told her, when they were fourteen, that he intended to dress like a sexy pirate for the rest of his life, and he had taken that very seriously.) “How is it, being back home?”
Will rolled his eyes and stabbed another sausage. “Same as it always is. Colder.”
“Hm, yes, fascinating,” Jase said. “Abbie. How is it having Will back home?”
Across the kitchen, Grandma whipped around with an expression of eager delight. Which was both weird and unnerving. “Yes, Abbie, how is it?”
“Fine,” Abbie bit out.
“Really?” Jase grinned.
Abbie narrowed her eyes at her twin. Shut the fuck up.
Jase arched an eyebrow. Make me.
Abbie kept on looking. I’m serious.
Jase rolled his eyes. “I see we’re all in excellent moods this morning.”
“They’re hungover,” Grandma put in slyly, “judging by the state of my secret gin bottle. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Will is hungover,” Abbie put in. “I was sober as a church last night.”
“That was the only churchly thing about you,” Jase said with a smirk.
Now it was Abbie’s turn to kick him under the table.
After breakfast, Grandma went off to wrap presents. Will announced that he was going to shower, then looked at Abbie in a way that made her feel a bit faint and said, “We need to talk later. Okay?”
“Okay,” she breathed, momentarily brainless and legless and very, very aware of her own vagina, and also of the tight tangle of nerves in her stomach.
Will disappeared upstairs, his absence returning all the oxygen to the room, and Abbie sucked in a calming breath and got a grip. Then she headed into the family room to embroider and worry, and Jase followed her there with the express purpose of getting on her nerves.
“Nice silk stitch,” he said, peering over her shoulder at her embroidery hoop.
“Leave me,” she muttered, focusing very hard on the shell of the little turtle she was creating.
“No, thank you. Snogging Will in the garden, yeah?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. She’d known last night would backfire on her. It was entirely Will’s fault for being perfect and enticing and upset and so adorable when he was drunk, and for saying shit that was honest and earnest and so close to perfect it made her feel nauseous with fear.
That in itself was the problem.
Working hard to keep her voice unembarrassed, Abbie said, “Bring that up again and I will sneak into your room at night and shave your precious beard.”
“As if you’d do your own brother like that. You know I’ve got no jawline.”
“Try me.”
Jase laughed, but there was concern in his voice when he spoke again. “I thought you’d be happy. He’s into you, you’re into him, he’s already family—it’s so … tidy. You love tidy.”
Abbie dropped her hoop and glared up at her brother. “There’s nothing tidy about it, Jason. What’s going to happen when we—?”
“What?”
She sighed and shook her head.
“Oh, what the fuck. Seriously? You’re already thinking about it going south?”
“Whatever,” Abbie muttered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Abs,” Jase said gently, moving to sit beside her. “I understand why you worry about this stuff. Really, I do. But—Look. Feel free to punch me if I’m being patronising, but you know it’s okay to trust Will, right? He’s not a bad guy.”
Abbie looked up with a frown. “Of course he’s not. He’s the best guy. I’m worried about me.” Only when the words were out of her mouth did she realise how true they were. It was exactly what she’d told Will—or tried to tell him, anyway—last night, but she didn’t know how to explain it to anyone around her. “You don’t understand. None of you do. You’re all so fucking well-adjusted.”
Jase choked out a laugh. “Well-adjusted? Abbie. Are you serious?”
“Fine, you’re all nuts, but you don’t get this.”
Jase’s expression softened as he slung an arm around her shoulders. “Well, explain it to me, then.”
Her throat felt tight. “You know I don’t enjoy talking about … feelings.”
“You and me both,” he muttered. “But since you and Will clearly can’t get it together on your own—”
“We’re not getting anything together,” she shot back.
“But you want to.”
Sometimes having a twin was quite awful. He sort of followed her about, showing up when it was least convenient, seeing things no one on earth was supposed to see. “Yes,” she admitted softly. “I want to. I wish I could. But if the last couple of days have shown me anything, it’s that I’m just not ready.”
Will said he cared about her, and she believed him. He said it would be different, and she believed him. But that didn’t change the fact that thinking about being with him gave her butterflies and jitters. That didn’t change the fact that every time she tried to express even half of her affection, she worried she was inviting unhappiness. That wasn’t healthy, and it wasn’t the kind of relationship she wanted to give to him.
“I thought I was better,” she said out loud. “I thought I was … fixed. But I’m not.”
“You don’t need to be fixed, Abs,” Jase said. “Look at me.” He caught her hand and met her gaze with an uncharacteristically serious expression, the one that said he meant business, the one she saw once in a blue moon. “All I want for you is happiness. I don’t care how you get there. Will is my best friend and I love him, but I’ve gotta be honest, you could suck the marrow out of his bones and I’d secretly be on your side. You are my sister,” he said slowly, clearly, unapologetically. “I don’t give a fuck what you do or don’t do, if it’s healthy or not, if it’s straightforward and simple or overcomplicated. I will never draw a line under you, and I will never want you to be fixed. Whatever you’re working with is good enough for me. Always has been, always will be. Okay?”
She exhaled shakily, those words surrounding her like the safety she hadn’t known she needed, the violence of her uncertainty calming a little, now. “Okay,” she whispered.
“Good. So. The real question is: happy—how do we get you there?”
“I am there,” she said honestly. “Most of the time. Just—Will. I wish things weren’t so complicated with Will.”
“Then uncomplicate them,” Jase said.
She knew he was right.
After years of careful avoidance, Abbie couldn’t stifle her feelings anymore. Will had practically dragged them out and forced them beneath a microscope, and the worst part was, he had no idea he’d done it because Abbie had handled the examination alone.
But she was done now, and the right path was scary but clear. She had to stop swinging between distance and longing, had to stop pushing him away while hoping, secretly, that he’d ask for more, had to stop claiming caution when really it was fear. Two facts mattered.
Will wanted her.
And she lo
ved Will. So much, and so hard, that the idea of loving him out loud felt dangerous, like dynamite, inevitably explosive. She could feel herself pulling back from him because she was afraid that he might see it all inside her. What would he think? What would he do with the power that gave him?
She’d never explicitly asked herself the question before; she’d been too busy instinctively fearing the answer. But now, with her brother’s arm like an anchor around her shoulders, she felt safe enough to forget her memories of a different time and a different man, and recall her memories of Will.
Will, who’d snuck her and Jase home from their first drunken party and held Abbie’s hair back while she threw up. Will, who could spend Christmas in Cabo with billionaires but instead came home every year to play with cats he was allergic to. Will, who’d asked her about their first, terrible kiss two years after the fact and told her it was okay even after he learned that she’d essentially used him for a taste of sunshine and replied—
“That is the best thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Those didn’t sound like the words of a man who needed someone to be fixed.
Abbie had trust issues and Abbie was anxious and Abbie’s natural neuroses had been magnified tenfold by her worst fucking nightmares coming true, so maybe she’d never stop waiting for the worst to happen. Maybe a tiny piece of her would always expect the sky to fall. But when she closed her eyes and looked past the stomach-curdling panic and the I-should-have-seen-this-coming shame, she realised that even in her worst imaginings, Will wasn’t the one crushing her. He was the one standing beside her, holding her hand.
Fuck. When she opened her eyes, they felt a little teary. Jase politely pretended not to notice.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Feeling nauseous,” she replied dryly, and he smiled because he knew the real answer was yes. “You really love me,” she told him.
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