When Light Leads to You

by C. R. Ellis

  Before she could refute my assertion, I stood and headed for the bar to get a refill.

  When in doubt, liquor’s the way out.

  A pitcher—I needed an entire pitcher of margaritas.

  Halfway into my second margarita, I felt a thousand times more relaxed about telling Jade. “I don’t even know why I was nervous to have this conversation with Jade. It’s just sex. We always talk about the guys we sleep with.”

  Elliot’s lips twitched with amusement. “Uh, Jas, maybe you should slow down a bit. At least wait for Jade to get here so she can catch up. I thought the whole point of telling her over drinks was for her to be tipsy when you drop the Dean bomb, not the other way around.”

  I waved my hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, she just texted. She’s five minutes away. I’m going to rip off the Band-Aid as soon as she gets here. Just rip it right off.”

  I decided nerves were for idiots. This would totally be fine. Dean and I were both adults, and we’d already fessed up about our past, so she’d probably even seen this coming.

  True to her word, Jade walked in less than five minutes later, with Emmett right behind her. My brows furrowed when I saw him coming with her.

  “What, you’re not happy to see me crashing the girls’ night party?” he asked, his eyes light and his tone teasing. “Don’t worry, I’m not staying. Jade and I were at a cake tasting, so I just came to drop her off and get some food to go.”

  My gaze softened, and I smiled in return. “You’re always welcome at girls’ nights, as long as you partake in the girl talk.”

  “Uh, I’ll pass.” He laughed, bending down to kiss Jade’s cheek. “Text me when you’re done, and I’ll come back for you. And I’ll just go ahead and assume you’ll need me to drive you home, Jas,” he added, shaking his head at the half-empty pitcher, but smiling at me nonetheless.

  I nodded, reaching to pour Jade a drink. “Thanks, E-money.”

  After Emmett was gone and Jade had settled in with her margarita, I felt Elliot staring at me expectantly. Suddenly I couldn’t make the words form like I’d wanted to. The fact that I had no idea what was going on with Dean made me second-guess my decision to be so forthcoming with Jade about sleeping with her brother.

  “So, how was the cake tasting?” I asked, avoiding eye contact with Elliot.

  So much for ripping off the Band-Aid, Elliot said by way of her narrowed eyes when I finally looked her way.

  Jade nodded as she gulped down a healthy portion of her mango margarita. “It was really good. I finally convinced him to go with a chocolate raspberry combination. And he’s going to get lemon for his groom’s cake.”

  “Oh, good. One more thing crossed off the list. What’s next?”

  Elliot kicked me under the table. I shifted away from her reach and poured myself a refill.

  “Not much is left, actually. We still need to finalize the guest list and order invitations, get the honeymoon booked, and pick a DJ. Hey, y’all are both still free for the dress appointment Sunday, right?”

  Peak wedding season was upon us, and it usually meant we’d be working practically every day of the week, but I’d made it a point to tell Jade she owed it to herself not to put her own wedding plans on the back burner.

  “Of course, I wouldn’t miss it,” I vowed, squeezing her hand.

  Elliot simultaneously nodded and assured Jade she’d be there too.

  We fell into a comfortable silence, and I tried to convince myself it wasn’t the right time to bring up the Dean thing. Elliot disagreed and gave me nonverbal cues to spill. I was in the middle of adamantly shaking my head when Jade looked up.

  “What?” she asked, looking back and forth from Elliot to me. “What am I missing here?”

  I groaned and took a massive gulp of my margarita, begging for a brain-freeze severe enough I could use my pain as a distraction.

  “Jasmine was just about to tell you about where she was this morning,” Elliot offered.

  “Oh, yeah. I never got my tacos, so I’m going to assume you weren’t actually getting us breakfast. Spill it, slutopotamus.”

  Jade turned her head to me expectantly, and I shot Elliot a ‘you’re dead to me’ look before forcing my gaze to Jade and launching myself into the fiery pit of doom. Because, y’know, this has to be what hell feels like.

  “First of all, let the record reflect that I did bring you breakfast tacos this morning, but then I might have eaten them when you didn’t come back for lunch.”

  Elliot not so subtly fake coughed and muttered something that sounded like rip it off.

  Jade looked at her for a second and then back to me. She had an amused gleam in her eyes, but said nothing.

  “I might have slept with Dean last night. Okay, that’s a lie—I definitely slept with Dean. It wasn’t a very well thought out plan, and I have no idea what it means. Also a lie.” I grimaced. “It didn’t mean anything, and nothing’s going to change between us. I probably shouldn’t even have told you, and I’m sorry if this is awkward. I just knew I’d never get away with not telling you,” I fired rapidly, hoping that if I spoke quickly enough it would somehow lessen the impending weirdness.

  I stopped talking long enough to notice Jade’s face showed more amusement than surprise, and she quickly failed at holding in her laughter. What the hell?

  “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you. Dean might be the detective of the family, but it doesn’t take a cop to connect the dots. I was supposed to meet Dean for breakfast this morning, and when he didn’t show or answer his phone, and you were late to work…it wasn’t hard to figure out the rest.”

  I’m gonna kill him. He blew off breakfast with Jade, knowing she’d be suspicious of why he was a no-show, and then left me to deal with the aftermath without so much as a warning.

  “Plus,” she continued, “After the way you guys have been acting around each other lately, I’m shocked it took this long. You’re both grown-ass adults, and it’s not my place to try and interfere in whatever y’all are doing. Just spare me the gory details, please,” she insisted, her face contorting in disgust at the thought of hearing anything specific.

  “That’s it?” I inquired, unable to accept her complete chill.

  “Yeah, pretty much. In all seriousness though, be careful, Jas. Dean’s my brother and I love him, so I don’t want to have to kick his ass if this thing between y’all implodes.”

  Oh, it’s destined to implode, all right. A relationship rooted in emotional baggage from the past, uncertainty, and a complete lack of self-restraint in and out of the bedroom was hardly a recipe for a fairytale ending.

  But I wasn’t going to tell Jade that.

  Chapter 16

  Dean

  I used to run because I enjoyed it. Now I run to chase the sanity a certain blonde has stolen from me.

  Dean Preston, running for dear life

  I should’ve known there’d be repercussions to throwing caution to the wind with Jasmine. I’d finally made a dent in the walls she threw up, and as if on cue, I saw the panic manifest behind her eyes and knew she was already reconstructing her emotional drywall.

  In hindsight, telling Jasmine that I was basically coming to New York because of Natasha had been a mistake. Any tiny bit of progress I’d made vanished.

  It felt like we were in a perpetual loop of taking one step forward and two steps back.

  It wasn’t like I expected everything to change overnight. I didn’t even know if I wanted things to change. The sex was monumentally incredible, but that didn’t alter the fact that we had a history of causing each other more pain than pleasure. Were we capable of overcoming that pattern? I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go back to just being her best friend’s brother, but I had no clue if we could turn this into something real. A voice I couldn’t ignore in the back of my mind told me I’d be an idiot not to want to see where this went. Everything about Jas drew me in, and she was quickly turning into an addiction I couldn’t ignore.

  Temptat
ion didn’t come to me in the form of a bottle or a liquid-filled syringe. It came in the form of a slender, bright-eyed, and foul-mouthed blonde that I’d fall to my fucking knees for.

  If only she’d let me.

  As much as I dreaded the impending conversation I needed to have with Natasha, being in New York was actually a great distraction from thinking about Jasmine and all the shit we still needed to sort out.

  I’d called Nate’s school this morning, and they said he’d brought a note from the dentist to excuse his absence last week. So either Natasha lied to me, or she wasn’t even trying to talk to Nate.

  Nathan and I agreed to meet up at our favorite hot dog stand a few blocks from his school. I idly checked my phone for the fifteenth time while I was sitting on a bench waiting for him to arrive. I told myself I was only checking it to make sure I didn’t miss Nate’s text saying he’d left school, even though we’d been through the same ritual hundreds of times. If by Nathan you mean Jasmine, then yeah, you’re totally only checking to see if he’s texted.

  “Yo, might wanna lose the death grip on your phone,” Nathan called.

  I looked up in time to see his megawatt smile and stood to hug the little brother I never had. It was hard to believe he’d once been a tiny kid who barely came up to my waist; now, at eighteen, he was rapidly approaching my height.

  “Hey,” I said, pulling him in for a bear hug. There had been so many times I wished Nathan had his own family to embarrass him with hugs, that I just sort of took on the role naturally. I’d made it clear several years back that he’d never be too old for me to hug in public. If there was one thing the horrific way our paths had crossed taught me, it was that life was too unknown, too uncertain, to ever sweat the small things. If I never taught Nathan anything else worthwhile, that’s the one thing I hoped stuck with him through the years.

  “When’d you get so stealthy? I didn’t even know you’d left school yet. I figured I’d have to wait a while.”

  “I have last period as my free period, remember?” he asked, looking at me like I must’ve suffered a head trauma if I’d already forgotten his schedule. “This is what happens when you up and move to the middle of nowhere, Texas. Or maybe that’s just what happens in your thirties; I’m not sure.”

  “I see your jokes haven’t improved since I left,” I countered, matching his smile with one of my own. God, it felt good to be around this kid again. At least when he drove me crazy it wasn’t likely to send my blood pressure through the roof, unlike some people currently in my life.

  “Seriously though, I don’t know how you could ever leave New York for Texas. I might be leaving the city, but I’ll still be in the same time zone,” he scoffed.

  Before I made the decision to leave the Big Apple, I’d had a lengthy discussion with him about it. Naturally, as a seventeen-year-old New Yorker who’d rarely ventured outside his own borough, he thought I was crazy. But I reminded him that MIT wasn’t exactly down the street, and after assuring him that I’d bring him out to Texas for the summer, and fly to Boston as often as I could, he came around.

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve been there, Nate. You might be surprised this summer.”

  He looked at me with a skeptically arched brow and shrugged.

  “You getting excited for graduation? I can’t believe I’ll be back up here in a few weeks to see you walk across the stage.” I ordered our hot dogs and handed the owner of the cart my money, telling him to keep the change.

  “I don’t know. I’m excited for sure. I guess it’s just hitting me how much life is going to change after this summer.”

  I knew Nate well enough to read between the lines. He was apprehensive about leaving New York, leaving behind the only life he’d ever known.

  A wave of sympathy hit me as I considered what the next few months would be like for him. “Things might change, but it’s going to be the greatest experience of your life. College is the first step toward the rest of your life. It’s a blank slate; you can mold your life into whatever you want it to be. You’re going to love it,” I said, hoping to reassure him. “Trust me. Embrace it. Before you know it college will be over, thirty will be knocking on your door, and you’ll start forgetting what you ate for lunch the previous day.”

  He laughed. “I know it’s going to be great. I’m not worried about that. I just…I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve become had you not come into it. I guess I’m just trying to say thanks, D. For everything you’ve ever done for me. I know there’s no way I can ever repay you, but I’m going to make you proud. I swear.”

  “Nate, you already make me proud.” I clapped a hand on his back. “Every day. You’re the toughest person I know, and I’m pretty sure you’ve taught me more than I’ve taught you. As for repayment…I’ve got a favor to ask when you come to Austin. There’s a small amount of manual labor involved.”

  “Name it. Though, last time you asked me for a favor, I got drenched helping you ‘fix’ Natasha’s busted pipes. What sort of manly trade did you have in mind this time?”

  I laughed at the memory of our unsuccessful endeavor. “Just a little carpentry. No plumbing involved this time. Speaking of Natasha,” I said, grateful for the segue into the conversation I didn’t want to have. “How are things at home?”

  I saw the gears immediately shift behind Nate’s eyes. “Fine. Everything’s good. Why? Did she say something?” he asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

  I refused to lie to Nate, but I didn’t want to make things tense between them.

  “Nate, she’s just worried about you. She mentioned that you’ve been staying out late recently.”

  He let out a groan of frustration and squeezed the foil from his hot dog into a ball. “Twice, Dean. I stayed out late one night to work on a group project, and another night to go to the movies with friends. That’s it though.”

  I pushed up from the bench and followed him toward the trash cans nearby. “I believe you, Nate. Okay? But you gotta make sure Natasha knows where you’re going to be. You know she worries when you don’t answer your phone.”

  “I get it, Dean. I know. Trust me, I learned my lesson after January. I don’t hang out with those guys anymore. I swear.”

  I nodded. “I know. I just need you to try to understand Natasha’s perspective. She’s just looking out for you.”

  I wasn’t sure that I believed my words, but I hoped Nate did. The best way to ensure smooth sailing over the course of his last few months in New York was to make sure he knew we were all on the same team.

  Fortunately, Nate and I shifted topics, and I’d gotten over my frustration with Natasha by the time we got to her apartment.

  Until we walked in and found it empty.

  “Oh, yeah,” Nate said, dropping his backpack by the dinner table and heading for the fridge. “Natasha asked me to tell you she’d be going to happy hour with some friends, and wanted you to meet her at the restaurant.”

  I clenched my jaw to hold in a groan of annoyance. “Did she say what restaurant?”

  “Firewise, I think?” he said before biting into an apple.

  Of course she was halfway across town.

  “Okay, I’m going to head that way.” I eyed my watch and calculated how long it would take me to get there. I looked back up and nodded toward his backpack. “Got any homework?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Dad, I do. Don’t worry, I’m about to start on it.”

  I laughed. “All right, smart ass. We can shoot some hoops when I get back if you want.”

  He nodded and pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt to flex his right bicep. “Bring it, old man.”

  I mimicked his pose. “That teenage arrogance is going to bite you in the ass, Nate. I’d rather have these ‘old man’ muscles than your baby muscles.”

  After a few more wisecracks from Nate, I left him to do his homework and started the trek across Manhattan.

  By the time I got to the restaurant, any sliver of the good mo
od I’d had was gone.

  I weaved my way through the restaurant, searching for Natasha along the way.

  “Dean!” she called, drawing my attention. I whipped around and saw her waving me over from across the room.

  Natasha was pretty in a bought-and-paid-for kinda way. She had dark, shoulder-length hair, icy blue eyes, and a body she spent a helluva lot of money enhancing to make it fit her definition of perfect. But I didn’t even feel the slightest inkling of attraction toward her anymore.

  I walked up to the table and gave Natasha’s friends a polite smile. I’d met them several times, but seeing them now that we were broken up was awkward as hell.

  “Pull up a chair, darling,” she drawled, jumping up to greet me with air kisses. “Samantha and Madison were just asking about you.”

  Ignoring her weird greeting and the casual pet name, I shook my head. “Actually, I was hoping we could talk privately.”

  She arched a brow, but picked up her purse without hesitation before turning back to her friends. “What do you think, ladies? Should I give him a chance to try and win me back?” she asked in a sugary sweet tone I had to force myself not to roll my eyes at.

  Her friends giggled and offered their answers, but I willed myself to ignore them.

  Natasha repeated the air kiss routine with her friends before slipping her arm through mine and leading me toward the hostess.

  “Did you really just tell your friends I’m trying to win you back?” I asked.

  “Oh, that? Dean, relax. That was just a little joke.”

  I wanted to reiterate to her that we, in no way, shape, or form, were getting back together, but I didn’t want to sour the mood before talking about Nate.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, looking down at her menu a few minutes later. “Their risotto is fantastic.”