And you don’t have to give my stubborn arsehole brother a cuddle to make him feel better, but there you go. The jealousy I’d felt at that moment returned like a raging bull. Tension hit my muscles, and a spasm of pain shot through my shoulder.
I swallowed a wince and searched hard for the tiny fraction of myself that was a reasonable human being. “I know it doesn’t have to be like that, but I can’t handle him all up in my face. He thinks I’m an idiot.”
“He doesn’t.”
“He does.”
Gus pursed his full lips, clearly amused.
I scowled at him, but it was impossible to be irritated with him so fucking close. His leg was pressed against the entire length of mine. Our hips were touching. If I sat up an inch I could’ve kissed him, and I craved his ghostlike fingers on my skin.
As if he’d heard my every thought, Gus’s smile faded, and his molten eyes blazed at me. “I need to tell you something. If you haven’t already worked it out, that is.”
Wariness warred with a flash of hope that had no place heating my bones. “If I was any good at working shit out I wouldn’t be cadging your spare room.”
“But you are, so I have a confession to make. At least, I hope it’s a confession and I’m not about to make an idiot of myself over something you don’t even remember.”
Breath caught, I sat up on my elbows. I had hazy memories of him putting me in his bed, and no recollection whatsoever of encountering him on the nights I’d got hammered alone in “my” bedroom. Perhaps I’d stumbled into him on my way to the bathroom. Or made so much noise he’d told me to shut the fuck up. But as Gus twisted his work-hardened hands, and a slight flush coloured his cheeks, my heart suddenly knew he wasn’t talking about anything recent. That his soul had gone back in time and we were about to take a trip down memory lane. “I remember.”
Gus’s smile returned, a whisper at first, but then broader, and brighter, until he seemed to catch himself. “That’s awesome. I was worried you didn’t and you’d think I was a right weirdo.”
“I already think you’re a right weirdo, but not because I jumped you in an alleyway a hundred years ago.”
“Is that what happened? I’ve always remembered it the other way round.”
“Maybe we met in the middle.”
“Maybe.” Gus relaxed again. Somehow, his hand found its way to rest on my stomach and felt like it had been there all along. “Anyway, I never told anyone about it for years, but when you had your accident, and it looked like you might come home, I told Luke.”
“You don’t say,” I drawled, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “That’s your confession? Man, I was hoping for something juicier than that.”
I lay back down, amusement and disappointment sluicing through me in equal measure. Gus leant over me, his hand pressing into my abdomen. “You knew? I didn’t think he’d say anything.”
“He didn’t.”
“So how did you know?”
“Luke twitches when he’s curious. It’s totally different from his deadpan reticence and I can spot it a mile off.”
Gus laughed. “And you narrowed down the source of his twitching without him ever saying anything? That’s some skill.”
“It didn’t take a genius, mate. And I’m glad you told him, to be honest. I never got round to having the sexuality deep and meaningful with him because he wasn’t around when I needed to have it. Sometimes I forget how much my life moved on without him.”
Gus said nothing, just rubbed his hand in a slow, absent circle on my belly. The sensation was fucking magical, and it took every scrap of self-control I possessed not to moan like a dying man.
I closed my eyes, and tried to form the words to continue the conversation. I wanted to reassure him that I didn’t give a single fuck that he’d told my brother about that years-old night, but with Gus’s hand burning fire into my belly, coherent thought was gone.
“Billy?”
I forced my heavy eyes open. “Yeah?”
Gus leant down, and his heated palm slid beneath my T-shirt. “I—”
The oven timer went off.
Gus
It took me a moment to place the shrill sound coming from my kitchen, a long moment that seemed both a cruel joke, and life rope to pull me from a rabbit hole. Had I seriously been about to kiss Billy? To seal my confession with the madness it had come from in the first place?
Yes. Of course I had. Because apparently I was thinking with my dick now.
Blinking, I rolled away, giving Billy room to move.
He got to his feet and left the room without looking back. I waited for his footsteps on the stairs, and the thud of his bedroom door, but it didn’t come. The oven timer shut off and the smell of real, home-cooked food reached me. This was the pure sorcery of Billy. His very presence had made me forget about dinner.
I stood and took a step towards the kitchen, lured in by the scent of whatever he was cooking and yet frozen by the pull to him I felt in my chest. Hungry for more than dinner, I craved him, even if we had one of those nights where he scowled at me and smoked a lot. But fear hit me too. Billy had zero intention of sticking around, and he’d made it clear from the start that he didn’t do casual sex.
Not that there was anything casual about the blood roaring in my ears. Never had been, when it came to Billy. He was my kryptonite, the face that could never be faceless. If we never kissed again, he’d still be the only one I remembered.
You’re overthinking it. It’s just dinner.
And I was starving, obviously. It had been at least an hour since I last ate.
“The fuck are you doing?”
“Hmm?”
Billy shook his head from the living room doorway. “You’re literally
