Only Ever You (A Little Like Destiny Book 2) Read online

  “You can’t tell me that wasn’t all sorts of right.” His voice is full of the same desperation I feel in my heart.

  I push his hands from my body and twist out of his grasp. “You’re right. I can’t say that.”

  “It was right AF.”

  I almost feel a smile tug at my lips—that he can so easily lighten this heavy mood with just one phrase. I don’t allow the smile to form, though. I stand firm in my decision to be with Brian. “It can’t happen again. I need you to go.”

  “I’m not going to give up on you. On us.”

  “Why not?” The agony in my own voice surprises me.

  “Because this shit doesn’t happen to me. Not after one night, not after two. I’ve never had feelings afterward or wanted to see someone again. I’ve never felt like nothing else matters except you and me. I know you feel it, too. You can’t tell me what you have with him is stronger than what you have with me.”

  I don’t answer, and he takes a step away from me and toward my door. He sets his hand on the knob and then turns back to me. “My grandfather taught me to go after what I want. To stop at nothing to get what I deserve. He’s right, you know. I deserve happiness. I might’ve fucked up every good thing I had in the past, I might be fucking up my relationship with my brother, but I won’t fuck this up.”

  With that, he opens the door and leaves.

  No kiss. No hug. No final, longing gaze. Just a warning that he won’t stop pursuing me, and I hate the traitorous corner of my heart that quakes with happiness.

  four

  “Reese!” Rachel practically yells. She launches herself into my arms as if we didn’t just eat breakfast together at my parents’ house a few days ago. I smile at Ben over her shoulder.

  My God. Has it only been a few days? So much has changed.

  “How was the drive?” I ask, opening my door wider and motioning for them to come in.

  “Fun,” Rachel says. She glances over at Ben, and he chuckles as if it’s some inside joke. “You want to take those to the guest room?” She points to two overnight bags.

  He nods and carries the bags down the hall, and I can’t help the dart of jealousy I feel in seeing how easy it is for Rachel and Ben. I want that. I want three years with someone who gets me, someone who will pick up the bags and take them to the guest room in my sister’s house because he knows where it is.

  I realize all that takes time, and I also realize it’s exactly what I’m growing with Brian.

  Rachel turns to me. “What’s wrong?” she asks as soon as he’s out of the room. Her eyes are alight with the giddiness that only comes from arriving in Vegas for a few days. It just doesn’t feel like the right time to confess I cheated on my boyfriend with his brother.

  “Nothing,” I mutter. I’m pretty sure my expression doesn’t show any giddiness at all. I wonder if she can see the guilt I carry around like a bag of weights.

  “Hey,” she says, touching my shoulder. “Talk to me.”

  “It’s a long story.” I glance down the hall to see if he’s coming back yet. “We’ll talk later.” I nod with my head down the hall. I give her a quick hug and change the subject. “Brian made us reservations for dinner. I’ll get changed and we can get going.”

  She goes to meet Ben in the guest room and I walk into my bedroom. I hear a knock at my door a few minutes later, and Rachel is already changed and ready to go.

  “You ready to talk yet?” Rachel asks me.

  “It’s complicated.” I dig though my closet for some shoes that’ll look okay with the red dress I chose.

  “Always is,” she muses.

  “How has work been?” I ask.

  “I came in here to see what was up with you, not to talk about me.”

  I disappear into my bathroom, avoiding eye contact. “We’ll get to my stuff later.”

  She follows me and stands in the doorway between my bathroom and my bedroom. “It’s later. How about now?”

  I roll my eyes. “Nice try.”

  “Is something going on with Brian?” she asks.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then something’s going on with you.”

  I blow out a breath, ready to tell her my secret when Ben knocks on my door. “Rach?” he yells.

  “You better go get your man,” I say, thankful for the interruption.

  “I can’t wait to meet your guy at dinner!”

  I force my eyes down to my selection of eyeshadow palettes. “Get out of here so I can finish getting ready.”

  She laughs and bounds out of my room, presumably back to the man in her life, and I’m left wondering if I’m making the right choice—and I’m not talking about the eye shadows.

  *

  Rachel grins at me across the table as Brian and Ben engage in an intense conversation regarding which football team is the best. We just placed our dinner orders, and we’re all on our second drink of the night. Wine has managed to dull the ache I’ve had in my chest all day, and I’m finding myself having a good time with Brian. This division that I’ve created between us can be mended—I’m sure of it.

  “If you’re having this conversation,” I say, “I need to voice my opinion.”

  “Who’s your team?” Ben asks.

  “Arizona.” I nod to Rachel. “Our dad has season tickets.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Brian says, looking at me as if he feels bad for me, “the Cardinals suck.”

  “Almost as much as the Bears,” I shoot back at him with narrowed eyes. He laughs, and the tightness in my chest dissipates further. This is how it’s supposed to be—teasing each other with another couple about football teams instead of thinking about his brother or his secretary.

  “Mid-nineties were the best,” Ben says. “The Cowboys ruled.”

  “Stop living in the past.” Brian picks up his beer and takes a sip. “That shit was over years ago. Rachel, what about you?”

  She rolls her eyes. “I couldn’t care less about football. I think secretly my dad wanted me to be a boy so he could have someone to toss a football with and my inner rebellious nature has caused me to hate football forever.”

  Ben laughs. “I can’t get her to watch a game with me. Not even with the men in uniform.”

  “Give me a baseball player any day.” She winks at Ben, who played baseball in college, and he laughs.

  “Oh, our dad definitely wanted her to be a boy. They even had a boy name picked out for her.” I giggle, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m teasing my sister or if it’s because I’m a little tipsy from wine on an empty stomach.

  “Richard,” Ben and I say at the same time. Ben laughs, a hearty sound that betrays such a genuine affection for my sister, and I giggle along with him.

  “Don’t laugh at that,” Rachel scolds him.

  “Sorry, Richard,” Ben teases.

  She narrows her eyes at me. “Do you always have to tell people about that?”

  I lift both shoulders and pretend like I’m sorry. For some reason, that one movement sends a dose of reality through my spine. I’m always pretending, and, frankly, I’m getting tired of it.

  “You okay?” Rachel mouths across the table to me. The boys are enraptured with their football talk, so they don’t even notice us.

  I lift a shoulder.

  “Excuse us.” Rachel stands and gives me a meaningful look. I grab my purse and follow her.

  Once we’re behind closed doors, she starts the inquisition. “One second you’re having fun, and the next it’s like we’ve lost you. What the hell is going on with you?”

  I sigh heavily. “I slept with someone else a few nights ago.”

  “What?” Her voice is shrill and loud, a shriek of shock as her eyebrows lift up her forehead and her eyes widen. “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I want to tell her, and I will—eventually. But if I’m looking to her for some honest advice, telling her it was Mark Ashton is the exact wrong avenue to take. She’ll be too busy fangirling to give me any real gui
dance.

  “Have you told Brian?”

  I shake my head.

  “Are you going to?”

  I set my hands on the cool marble of the counter in front of me. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you still want to be with him?”

  “Yes? I don’t know. Yes.”

  “Oh my God, Reese. But he’s perfect. How could you ch—”

  She cuts herself off, but I know what she was about to ask. How could you cheat on him?

  There’s only one reason why: the one I cheated with is inexplicably even more perfect.

  “How did it happen?” she asks instead.

  “It’s a long story.” I step away from the counter and toward the door.

  “I’ve got time.”

  “Our food will be coming.”

  She stops me with a hand on my arm. “You can’t drop a bomb like that and then check out of the conversation. Talk to me, Reese.”

  “I had a one-night stand with a guy a couple months ago.”

  “What does that have to do with Brian?”

  I step back toward the counter and stare in the mirror as I speak. “I fell for him that night, but we didn’t exchange numbers. I had no way to get in touch with him, but I felt more. I wanted more.”

  “Of course you did.” She steps behind me, and our eyes meet in the mirror. Her concern over me just loads more guilt on top of everything else. I want her to be happy with Ben on her short getaway to visit Vegas, not weighed down by my mistakes. “Sex can’t happen in isolation. Women associate emotions with it, and most of us aren’t hardwired for one night only.”

  “When did you get so smart?” I ask.

  She lifts a shoulder and gives me a half-smile. “I’ve been with Ben a long time, but, as you know, there was a lot of experimenting before him. So what does the one-night stand guy have to do with Brian?”

  I turn around and face her. “It’s his brother.”

  “Oh, shit.” She starts pacing in front of me. “And you slept with him again?”

  I nod. “A few nights ago.”

  “Does Brian know you were with him before?”

  I shake my head. “Brian has told me again and again how competitive they’ve always been, and I’m terrified his brother is only interested in me to win me from Brian.”

  “Have you asked the brother about the competition between him and Brian?”

  I shake my head. “Something happened with Brian’s ex and his brother. I don’t know much more about it.”

  “You need to find out.”

  “Do I? Or can I just leave it alone and allow Brian to move forward?”

  She lifts a shoulder. “Who initiated it the other night?”

  I lean against the counter. “He did, not that it matters.”

  With the wine coursing through my blood, her pacing is making me a little dizzy. “Do you think he wants more?” she asks.

  “He says he does, but I don’t know. I feel like it’s that competition thing.”

  “Who do you want to be with?” She stops in front of me and waits for my answer.

  I shrug, and then I say, “Brian.”

  She sighs. She knows me better than anyone, and I’m sure she can sense that I’m saying what I’m supposed to say. I’m just not sure I fully believe it.

  “You have to go with your heart,” she says. “I know you’re the logical one, the practical one. You always go with your head over your heart. But this is love, Reese. You have to choose because you can’t have both, and there has to be one who your heart is more connected to.”

  I nod. I don’t disagree with her, but I have no idea how to identify who my heart is more connected to. “You’re right. And I choose Brian.”

  My parents taught me well. They taught me how to save money for a secure future. They taught me how to hold onto a job and how to set goals, plan, and balance my checkbook. They taught me to invest in moderate stocks.

  They didn’t teach me about taking risks—calculated or not. They didn’t teach me to follow my heart or my gut. They taught me to follow my logic and my head.

  All signs point to the secure and logical choice. It’s how I was raised and it’s what I know. As much as the risk is a glittering, tempting star in the sky, I’ve never been much of a risk taker.

  five

  “I told Kelsey to book a third ticket.”

  “Good.” Now I can keep track of this Kelsey chick, but more importantly, I can spend some time with Brian in a setting where the pressures and temptations are in a completely different country.

  “Tell me about what you’ll be doing there,” I say, settling into bed beside Brian after dinner with my sister and Ben.

  I know what comes next. We just went out to dinner, and now we’re back at my place. It’s a little early for bedtime, not even eleven yet, but there’s that little activity we typically do before we go to sleep.

  He’s been so busy over the past few days that the last man I slept with was his brother, not him.

  “It’s different everywhere I go, but I had an entire contract hammered out with the president of this company in Houston, and then a competitor swooped in and lowballed my bid. In Houston, we met with a third-party contractor who started designing models for what their system will look like, and the same competing company got a look at some of our ideas. So now I have to rework our entire plan and renegotiate the contract.”

  “Can the competitor just steal your ideas like that?”

  “Isn’t that what the competition does? Swoop in and take what doesn’t belong to them?”

  My heart races. It’s almost like he knows something, but I’m sure that’s just my imagination at play. “I guess,” I murmur. I want to argue that competition can be healthy, too—that it’s not exclusively about taking something that doesn’t belong to you, but it feels better to let him believe his opinion is right.

  “I hate to tell you this, too, but I’ve been working long hours this week acquiring a couple of new contracts. We’ve been working out a deal with Japan, and I’m expecting a call sometime early in the morning, though it may be sooner. I’ll need to get over to the office once I get the call.”

  “Okay,” I murmur. At least he gave me the warning, which I appreciate, but it feels like he’s always running off to work. Sometimes I feel like I’m not a priority to him, but it’s not fair of me to feel that way considering what I’ve done.

  I turn away from him and snap out my light before I snuggle into my pillow. His arm goes around my waist, and I stiffen.

  He pushes his hips into my ass, and I feel his erection digging into me. “I’ve missed you.”

  I don’t move, don’t push back against his hardness.

  “Is something wrong? Are you thinking about something?”

  Your brother, actually. “School’s coming up. Summer’s closing in on me.” I almost add something about how he doesn’t know me, how we’ve only been together for a couple of months and we’re still in that stage where we’re discovering things about the other person…some that we’ll like and others that we won’t.

  “You get like this every year?”

  “I suppose.” It’s easy to lay blame elsewhere.

  “Are you sure nothing else is going on?”

  He knows something’s up. I’m not doing a good job of hiding things from him, and it’s probably because I shouldn’t. I should be honest with him.

  I slept with your brother.

  I push Mark out of my head, an impossible feat given that he was here in my house earlier today. “I’m sure.”

  “Let’s fuck, Reese. I need to feel you.”

  His fingertips slip under my shirt and start softly stroking against my breast. I draw in a breath and let it out softly and then push my ass against his steel erection.

  He lets out a soft moan, and heat starts to warm my belly. His fingers trail down past my waistband and into my shorts, where he brushes against the soft skin. Just before he slips a finger inside me, his phone
rings.

  “Fuck,” he whispers. He slowly removes his hand and flips over to get his phone, leaving my backside cold. I turn onto my back to watch him.

  “Brian Fox,” he answers. I hear something on the other end, but I can’t make out the voice or the words. He blows out a frustrated breath. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  He tosses his phone on the nightstand and collapses back onto the bed, his head on the pillow and his eyes up on the ceiling. “I need to go.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  I can’t help the corner of my heart that hates that I don’t always come first for him. I say the words before I think them through. “I’m not. I get it, Brian. Work comes first. But we haven’t had any time together lately. You’re constantly putting work ahead of me, and if we’re going to make this work, I need to come first sometimes.”

  “I always let you come first.” It’s dark in the bedroom, but I can still picture the cocky grin he’s aiming at me.

  I can’t help my chuckle despite our serious conversation. He’s not wrong there. “You do, and I appreciate that. But when was the last time you, uh…made me come first?”

  “Yeah. It’s been a while. I’m sorry. Let me make you come and then I’ll go.” He trails his fingertips down my arm.

  “Not like this,” I say, picking his hand up and pushing him away a little.

  “What do you want, then?”

  “I want you. I want your time. Your attention.”

  He nods. “I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. I’m not being fair to you and I’m not giving you what you deserve. But I do have to take a conference call with this company.”

  “Can’t Jason or Becker do it? Or one of your employees?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s my account. My responsibility. Remind me to hand off the foreign accounts to someone else in the future so I don’t have to take care of things in the middle of the night. And just so you know, I hate this.”

  “What?”

  “Leaving. Being apart. Way too many days without sex.”

  “I hate it, too.” If we’re going to find a way to make this work, we need time together.