I reached behind me and chucked a throw pillow at him, which he caught easily and laid in his lap like nothing had happened.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I just remember thinking that I was never going to do that with Miranda. She’d never make me a chicken that made me heat up inside—she might have loved me, but I don’t even think she knows what my favorite meal is—and I’d never look at her with that kind of love.”
“What is it?” I found myself asking. “Your favorite meal?”
He looked up with a shy smile that had me once again trying very hard not to launch myself at him.
“Eggplant parmesan,” he said softly with a slight quirk of the mouth. “With extra mozzarella. You?”
“Matzo ball soup,” I said. “The kind my Bubbe makes, or from the B & H if you can’t get her recipe. It’s the ultimate comfort food.”
“I’ll remember that.”
We stared at each other unblinking for another few moments, unable to fight the heat growing between us.
“Right,” I said, finally tearing my gaze away from his baby blues. “Continue.”
Brandon sighed, obviously ready to be done with the story. “Well, that was pretty much that. I was thirty-four, eleven years into a sham marriage, and ready to be done with it. I asked her for a divorce, but she said no. We’ve been arguing over a settlement ever since, but I didn’t press the matter much until recently. We were supposed to have our final mediation with the lawyers on Monday.” He looked up with a particularly forlorn expression. “She was going to sign the papers.”
It was obvious why he wouldn’t just go to court with it. Aside from the fact that it would drag both their names through the mud, there was always the risk that Miranda would withdraw her alibi from years back. Though the statute of limitations had run out on the charges of assault, the damage it would do to Brandon’s reputation—not to mention any hope of taking the Sterling Ventures public—was likely insurmountable. There was also the probability that he would be charged with giving a false statement, or possibly perjury. And just when things were about to be finished for them, she walked in on us at the house. Talk about shit luck.
I looked back at the divorce papers, now creased and rippled around the edges after drying out.
“The deal that Kieran was working on…” I murmured, a light suddenly dawning on me.
Brandon nodded ruefully, agreeing with my line of logic. “Yeah. She’s in family law; you know that. She’s mad because I haven’t been playing nice lately.”
“Because of me?” My voice was small. I didn’t want to be the reason he was getting into trouble again. But this, combined with my family’s issues…
“Because of us,” Brandon said just as softly. “You make me believe I can have what Ray and Susan have. You make me believe I can have love, Skylar, real love. And for the first time, I’ve wanted to fight for it.”
A thick silence fell over the room while his last words echoed between us. We stared at each other, blue eyes to green, each of us trying to make sense of where the other stood.
I sighed, stood up, and shook out my blanket before folding it back up and laying it neatly on the chair. When I turned around, I found Brandon motionless, still watching me nervously as if he wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. It was clearly my turn to talk, and he knew my response to his revelations probably wouldn’t be good.
But when I opened my mouth to say what we both knew I should—that it was too much, that we couldn’t see each other anymore—only two words came out:
“I’m sorry.”
~
Chapter 39
“You’re sorry?” Brandon head snapped up from his seat on the couch. He ran both hands back to front through his hair, which now resembled the back of a porcupine. He did it two more times, enhancing the effect. “Jesus, Skylar, why?”
His voice cracked on the last word. Suddenly, I couldn’t be close to him fast enough. I tackled him back onto the couch, and his surprised arms encircled me automatically as I straddled his waist and burrowed into his strong form. I leaned my head on his chest and closed my eyes, relishing the warmth of his skin, the familiarity of his scent, the steady thump of his heart.
“I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through. For what you are going through. I’m sorry for leaving before you could explain and for never really giving you a chance to tell me these things.”
He shook his head against me, but gripped me tighter against him when I tried to pull away.
“No,” he said, his voice muffled through the masses of my hair. He moved so his chin was hooked over my shoulder, freeing his mouth. “No. You have nothing to be sorry for. I should have been straight with you long ago. But the thing is, Red…”
He then pressed me gently away from him so he could look at me in the face.
“Can I call you Red again?” he asked with another shy, hopeful smile.
I could almost smile back, but not quite. I was almost ready to forgive him, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t hurt by his secrecy. “I…Okay.”
Brandon reached up and toyed with a strand of my hair, curling it around and around one finger before letting it fall next to my face.
“The thing is, Red…is that I’m so fucking in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since…Christ, probably since the first moment I saw you, and definitely since you walked out of my office. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than when you told me to fuck myself.” He chuckled at the memory, but then grew serious. “And even though I don’t ever want to have anything between us again, I probably would have done a lot worse than hide a few things to keep you in my life.”
The look on my face must have shown my dismay, which had Brandon shaking his head at me as he clasped my cheeks with both hands.
“No more secrets, baby,” he said, pulling me down so our foreheads touched. “That’s a promise. They might be easier sometimes than the truth, but I can’t live a lie any more, and I definitely can’t live without you. Do you believe me?”
We breathed in each other’s spaces for what seemed like forever before I finally nodded infinitesimally.
Brandon exhaled deeply. “Thank Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathed before pulling my lips down to his.
I hadn’t realized until his tongue touched mine how badly I wanted to erase the morning from memory, how much I wanted to sink into him and forget everything else. I returned his kiss with all the pent up emotions dying for release, unable to get deep enough as I clawed at his neck and ground my hips against him. He slid his hands under my ass and stood in one graceful motion, as if I weighed little more than one of the throw pillows.
“Need you,” he grunted against my lips in between long, deep kisses. “Inside you. So bad. Right. Now.”
He hiked me up his waist while I kept my mouth firmly attached to his, and started walking us down the hallway to the bedrooms. His foot kicked my door open with a heavy bang.
We couldn’t get our clothes off fast enough, but couldn’t stop kissing each other either. Keeping our mouths fused, Brandon tore off my sweater and ripped at my pants while I yanked his belt away and wrenched his t-shirt over his head. We tripped over our limbs, our shoes, our clothes, laughing in between furious lunges back to one another after even a sliver of separation. When we were finally naked, he tackled me onto the bed, covering my small body with his big, warm one, pressing his hard length into my already drenched sex with one hard thrust.
“Skylar!” he cried as he entered me roughly. “Jesus, baby, you’re so tight!”
But this wasn’t a time for dirty talk, or any kind of talk at all. Brandon’s mouth anxiously found mine again as he started to move within me. A big hand reached under my ass, lifting my leg up and around his hip so he could get leverage to go deeper, move closer. Intentionally or not (I couldn’t see how it was, lost as we were in other), the edge of his pelvic bone rubbed against the sensitive skin covering my clit, creating a delicious friction only further enhanced by the frenzy of our mov
ements. The combination of his unforgiving thrusts with the tortuous stimulation was automatic—I cried out into his mouth as the rise of my orgasm started to mount, fast and hard.
“Brandon,” I moaned, gripping his thick curls and moving my hips unconsciously with the demanding rhythm he set. “I…I…”
What I wanted to say, I didn’t know. All I felt was him, all I wanted was him, body, mind, soul. I grasped at his shoulder, his neck, his back, unable to find purchase to get as close as I wanted. It was all too much, too much to handle or comprehend. More than any other time we had been together, I was genuinely losing my ability to think straight.
“Tell me, baby,” he demanded against my ear, continuing with the unforgiving pace as he pulled the lobe between his teeth.
He groaned as I squeezed around him, both of my legs clenching about his waist, urging him deeper and deeper as I hurtled closer to the edge.
“Tell me what you feel,” he huffed. “Not what you think. What you feel.”
“I…” My orgasm came, fast and sharp, with his next hard, deep plunge into me. “Oh, holy mother of God, Brandon, I LOVE YOU!”
I shouted it over and over again, my body convulsing under him as he continued with his relentless pace.
“SKYYyyylar!” Brandon cried his own release as he buried his face in my neck, his hand clutching my hip hard enough to leave a bruise while he rolled out the rest our mutual oblivion. Gasping for breath, we gripped each other until the waves finally faded.
Eventually my consciousness returned. I could barely register the mess thrown about the room, the sweat rolling down our bodies from our effort, the way my skin stuck to his as I was trapped beneath his chest, where his heartbeat raced against mine. The air surrounding us had become cloyingly humid in the heat of our passion. I couldn’t move; I didn’t want to.
Finally, Brandon was able to push onto his forearms and look down at me, his faced flushed from exertion. His eyes, however, had lost that petrified look he’d walked in with. All I saw was love.
He leaned in with a soft, yet thorough kiss before he gently pulled out. Like a bear moving lazily toward hibernation, he clambered up toward the pillows at the head of the bed, tugging me with him until we were settled under my thin comforter. I was tucked securely into the crook of one arm, my head on his broad, firm chest and his hand rubbing absent circles into my back.
We lay like that for several minutes, slowly coming down from the high of the quick, fierce joining. Just as I was about to doze off, he murmured into my hair.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice gentle but cut through with longing. “Tell me again. Please.”
I blinked slowly, unable to keep my eyes open as I nuzzled further into his neck. I knew exactly what he wanted me to say, and I knew I couldn’t keep it back, no matter what it might cost me in the end. “I do. I love you, Brandon.”
He hummed, low and content in his chest as he squeezed me close and inhaled from the top of my hair. We both began to drift off, the two of us protected temporarily in the cocoon of warmth and knowledge we had built out of strife.
~
The sun was already low through the blinds when I woke up again, which meant that it was nearly five o’clock. We had slept most of the afternoon away. I felt like I could sleep the rest of the night too. Brandon snored indelicately, and I took that to mean I could slide out from his death grip in order to get a glass of water and rinse off the sticky residue of sex. I snagged the thin cotton robe I kept hanging on the back of my door and slipped out of the room, padding down the hall to where I found Jane reading on the couch.
“Hey, there, Missy,” she said, looking up from her book. “Sleeping late today?”
I shrugged. “We…fell asleep. After. You know.”
She grinned at me. “We? Is there a wee tycoon napping in your bed, my dear?”
As if on cue, a very loud snore erupted from the direction of my bedroom, causing Jane and I to burst into a fit of hushed giggles. I stumbled over to the sink and poured myself a glass of water, which I downed in a single go.
“Worked yourself up a thirst, I see,” Jane remarked, watching me. “Good for you.”
“Ah, Jane.” I quickly washed the glass and set it in our small dish rack to dry before turning to face her. “It’s so messed up. He’s…shit, he’s married.”
She frowned, but showed no signs of surprise. “You didn’t know that?”
I threw up both hands in frustration. “No, I didn’t know that. I didn’t want to cyberstalk the guy, okay?”
“Well, it’s hardly cyberstalking when he’s a public figure. Besides, everyone runs a Google search on new dates. Bosses too, come to think of it.”
I glared at her. “Well, I don’t. Or didn’t. You didn’t think to mention it?”
Jane bared her teeth in mild shame. “I thought, you know, it was one of those topics. You knew, you made the choice to be with him anyway. Really, who am I to judge who you want to pork?”
I shook my head and leaned back against the counter. There was nothing to be done about it now. “Whatever. So I didn’t know. It doesn’t change anything between us.” I sounded more certain than I felt.
Jane shrugged and tapped her pen absently on the edge of her book. “Well, he is separated. He filed, what, three years ago now?”
“How do you know that?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “Page Six, I think. Plus, he left his new divorce papers sitting here.” She gestured toward the creased mass of papers Brandon had left on the coffee table when he’d walked in. “It’s not that big of a deal, is it? I mean, considering how loaded he is, I’m not surprised it’s taking him forever to reach a settlement. Especially since there was no prenup.”
Checking again for the sound of Brandon’s low snores, I padded over to where Jane sat and sank into the couch with a defeated grunt.
“It’s just so fucking complicated,” I said as I rubbed ferociously at my temples. “She walked in on us at his house. We were…getting busy in the kitchen, if you know what I mean. And…I think she watched. We didn’t know she was there until it was over.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Jane erupted into another mass of giggles, much to my disapproval.
“It’s not funny!” I protested with a light smack to her upper arm. “I was so pissed. I feel kind of violated by it, if you want to know the truth. So I ran out of there, but he followed me back here and made me listen to the whole sordid story. And by the end…he tells me he loves me and then he makes love to me—or fucks me, I’m not really sure which—and I say I love you back…but I don’t really know if I can handle this, Jane! It’s just…so much, you know?”
Jane had stopped giggling, and scooted over to the side of the couch closer to the chair, where she could reach out and pat me reassuringly on my leg.
“Oh, hon,” she said. “Yeah, it definitely sucks. I’m so sorry, babe. Really. What are you going to do?”
With another glance in the direction of the snore steadily coming from my room, I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I do love him. And I forgive him, for the most part. I mean, I sort of get why he didn’t tell me about everything.”
It was the truth, but a niggling voice inside reminded me of the soul-wrenching revelations I’d made to him. Of my own accord. Brandon knew the worst parts of my past, about Patrick, about my dad’s embarrassing history.
I sighed. “I don’t know if it’s enough, you know?”
Jane nodded again and patted my leg sympathetically a few more times before sitting back with her books. Like any good friend, she knew when to interfere and when to give me the space to sort things out.
“I will say one thing, Sky,” she said as she picked up the textbook she had been reading before. “I like him. Or maybe I should say, I like who you are with him. You’re…warmer, I guess. And in the last few months, you’ve seemed happier than I’ve seen you in the last three years. Don’t take that lightly, and don’t make your decision when you’re stil
l upset. At least sleep on it. You’ve had a hard day. Give it a little time.”
I sat there for a moment, mulling over her words along with the other thoughts cycling through my mind. Finally, I nodded and stood back up. “Okay. I’m going to jump in the shower and then wake up the wee tycoon for some dinner. Maybe talking about the weather over a plate of pasta will convince me that my boyfriend isn’t actually married to someone else.”
“I’ll head back to the library, give you kids some space,” Jane said as she leaned over to gather her books together. I almost told her not to bother, but I realized just how much I didn’t want to go back to the house on Beacon Street.
“Thanks,” I said, and padded back down the hall to the bathroom for a shower.
~
I stood under the shower head for what might have been minutes, but what felt like an hour. I let the hot water stream over my naked body, washing all vestiges of the last twenty-four hours away despite the fact that their purveyor was asleep in my bedroom. Mentally, I felt like I had been run over by a bus, and I reveled in the feeling of the hot steam soothing my aching head.
What a goddamn clusterfuck of a situation. It had occurred to me while Brandon was telling his story that perhaps Miranda’s alibi was covering for more than just assault with intent. He never said who actually killed Ricky O’Neill, only that his friends were doing time for it. Had he lied to me about that too? There was no statute of limitations for murder in Massachusetts. If Miranda recanted her alibi, would the state reopen the case?
I shook my head under the stream of hot water. No, there would have had to be evidence of his presence and involvement with the crime, most likely with the murder weapon. Either an actual witness to the crime, fingerprints on the weapon, or something equally condemning. But if that were the case, there’s no way the state’s attorney would have declined to prosecute just because of Miranda’s alibi.
Besides, I told myself, Brandon Sterling wasn’t a killer. A poor kid in rich clothing, okay. A reformed hustler, sure. But he wasn’t the type who could shoot someone in cold blood. I closed my eyes and imagined his gentle, yet strong features looking at me, blue eyes full of the yearning I knew came from a lifetime without true affection. Parents who had clearly never treated him with the love and attention any child deserved. Foster parents who treated him with curious disinterest despite good intentions. Even when he got married, it obviously wasn’t because of love, but because the boss’s daughter was infatuated and her daddy wanted to keep his talent for making money in the family.
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 43