Charmed by the Billionaire (Blue Collar Billionaires #2) - Lemmon, Jessica Page 0,71
a family I didn’t know. When I was adopted, there was just Archer and William and Lainey. I was an interloper. Then came Nate a year later, and I remember feeling this massive sense of relief. I was no longer the only kid who didn’t fit. And he really didn’t fit.”
She laughs softly as her fingers dance over my skin.
“He was a big, rough kid. He scared the shit out of me at first. I stuck close to Archer for a few years and then Nate ended up being my best friend. My other best friend,” I correct, placing a kiss on the top of her head. “We fought and played the way brothers do and eventually, an unbreakable bond formed.”
“You three are inseparable. It’s sort of awesome.” Her voice is as soft as her touch. Her fingertips trail over my chest hair and tiptoe down my torso, tickling a path to my belly button before repeating the pattern. It feels good to be touched this way—to be touched by her.
“Sometimes I find myself wishing my parents were alive,” I admit. “Then I feel like a traitor, because if they were I’d never know Nate, Arch, William, or Lainey. Or you. That is some fucked-up thinking. Knowing if I could turn back time and prevent the accident, I’d lose all of you. I think that might be worse than losing them. Now there’s something to feel bad admitting.”
“No, it’s not.” It’s her turn to give me a comforting squeeze. “My life would suck without you in it. And the Owens.” She shakes her head against my chest. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“You don’t have to, Firecracker. I’m not going anywhere.”
Two things happen then. First, Vivian’s question from a few nights ago pops into my head. The one about how I’d feel if Cris were to marry someone else. Devastated. That’s how I’d feel. I’d be a miserable, sorry sack and virtually inconsolable. Even now, the idea of her leaving me carves an ache deep in my chest.
Second, the phone rings again, bursting our bubble. Reality barrels in on our fantasy world. There’s work to be done. A job we do together. We pull on our clothes in our respective corners of my bedroom and barely make eye contact while doing it. She answers the phone, first putting on her “work voice.” I smile sadly as I realize I know she has a “work voice” to put on.
Reality is a world away from where we were an hour ago, shucking our clothes and our inhibitions and talking about the things you talk about when you’re lying skin to skin with someone you care for very much. Caring for her was never up for debate. I adore her. But there’s something different about the way I care about her since we started sleeping together.
When I propositioned her, I told her, as well as myself, that it was just sex and I was providing a service. Once she gave me the go-ahead, I dove in tongue-first, content to give her everything she wanted out of her first time. Her third. Her tenth.
I sit at my desk, frowning at the screensaver on my laptop—photos of me with Nate and Archer on a golf course. One of William and me shaking hands after I accepted my high school diploma. Another of me kissing Lainey on the cheek on her birthday while she holds a giant bouquet of flowers.
Cris’s musical laugh from the other room slices me open and reveals the ugly parts I’ve been trying to keep hidden for decades. I haven’t successfully relegated what we’re doing to “just sex.” I can’t categorize what she means to me as “just” anything.
When this ends and she’s here every day, clothed, and not kissing me by the coffee pot or flirting with me when she strolls by my desk, how the hell am I going to handle it? Before we had sex, I thought we could chalk it up to fun and move on. Now, though… Knowing what I know…
How the hell am I going to let her go?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cris
I’m at Club Nine, Archer’s nightclub, for Nate and Vivian’s engagement party, toddling along in a pair of borrowed shoes—one of the many pairs of Christian Louboutins Vivian owns. I’m doing my best not to resemble a newborn foal on shaky knees attempting to stand for the first time. Apropos, considering I’m navigating new territory tonight.
“How do you walk in these things?” I ask as Vivian