Lane pulled away, gave Jayden a small grin, then turned to me. “How’s work going, Isaac?”
“Great. Landed a huge client last week. I’m on my way to making partner. I’m living my best life.”
“Are you seeing anyone?” Jayden asked.
“Isaac doesn’t want a relationship,” Lane answered for me.
I did, actually, but I wanted it with him.
“My brother is correct.” I made sure to stress the word brother to solidify what everyone thought we were, what I needed to remind myself we were supposed to be. “He knows me better than anyone. We used to tell each other everything, but I guess those things change when you grow up. But yes, he’s right. No relationships for me. Guess I’m not made for that, but I do enjoy myself in other ways. Had a fantastic threesome just the other night.”
Helena gasped.
“Isaac! What the hell has gotten into you?” Dad’s words were sharp, his disappointment clear.
Jayden’s brows drew together.
Lane just…looked at me, a softness in his brown gaze I wouldn’t want directed at me by anyone but him. Because I’d always felt safe with Lane in a way I never had with anyone else. After all these years, I would have thought this would go away. That keeping my distance and not trusting him with my secrets would sever this need I had for him, but it hadn’t. It was still there, as powerful as it always had been, simultaneously breaking me down and building me up.
Every set of eyes at the table was trained on me, confusion, disappointment, and concern in their stares, except Jayden, who I was pretty fucking sure hated my guts as much as I hated his, and who was enjoying this entirely too much. There was something about him I didn’t like, but it was probably just the fact that he was sleeping with Lane.
“Shit. I’m sorry.” I rubbed a hand over my face, wishing I could sink into the floor and that I hadn’t just let the smarmy motherfucker sitting across from me win. My insides ached, the anger and hurt turning into the fire of my words. I wouldn’t have said those things otherwise, and my pride helped tamp down the urge to make a scene. “I have a lot going on, and I let it get to me.” I leaned over and kissed Helena’s cheek. “I apologize. You definitely shouldn’t have to hear that from your favorite son.” The playful words nearly stuck in my mouth, but these were moments where I shined, so I tried to play off that—to be charming and pretend I wasn’t falling apart. Pretending I was okay when I wasn’t, the way I used to do with Dad.
She chuckled. “Oh, stop that. Are you going to play the favorites game again?”
“It’s not a game,” I told her, showing her that charisma people were used to from me. “We all know I’m your favorite. Poor Lane has come to terms with that years ago. Admit it, brother. I’m the best son.”
I waited for Lane to answer, silently pleading with him to pretend I hadn’t made an ass of myself. Lane was the only person who never let me get away with my shit, who never let me lie about how I felt. I used to love that about him, but now I needed the opposite.
“Remind me again, who got grounded more when we were kids?” Lane asked.
Dad and Helena laughed.
“Oh, we’re playing it that way? Who got mud on the white carpet in Helena’s favorite room of the house?”
“Who broke the kitchen window with a baseball and the living-room one with a rock, in the same month?” Lane countered.
I gasped. “Playing dirty, are we? Who asked me to hide my report card so they could pretend we hadn’t gotten ours yet because they’d failed math?”
“Who did it? That makes you bad too!” Lane objected.
“Wait, when did you do this?” Dad asked.
“Twice!” I added. “Because he was always daydreaming about painting.”
“Isaac used to get drunk at field parties almost every weekend.”
“Lane smoked pot in the attic because it helped him with his creativity.”
“Only a couple of times!” Lane shot back.
“It was really Lane who—”
“You wouldn’t,” Lane cut me off. I cocked a brow at him. Oh yes, I really would. “Isaac is totally the best son!”
“Wait. What did he do? This sounds like something I need to know,” Helena told us.
Lane and I locked gazes, a smile passing between us, this lightness in the air that hadn’t been around us in far too long, and we both busted into laughter at the same time. It was always like this with him. He made me think I felt good even when I didn’t. My gut began to ache, but I couldn’t stop. Lane couldn’t stop laughing either, covering his mouth because he’d always been insecure about a tiny chip in one of his front teeth. I loved it. I told him it gave him character, and he always said he would get it fixed but never had.
Dad and Helena joined in, no one eating, just happiness and laughter all around us. Jayden watched us for a moment, looking totally lost, like this kind of thing was so foreign to him, but then he tried to join in, tried to pretend he was in this moment with us too.
When we finally settled down, Helena said, “I really want to know what Lane did.”
I playfully made the my-lips-are-sealed gesture.
“Let the boys have their secrets, dear,” Dad told her. Secrets. That word sobered me up. I was so goddamned full of them, wasn’t I?
This time, I didn’t let it show. I was again the Isaac who held everything inside. Who grinned when he was supposed to and played the role of someone who had everything together.
I winked at Lane. “I’m packing that away for when I really need it. You better be nice to me, or I’m going to tell on you.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me,” I countered. In the way he was supposed to, not in the way I wished he would.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lane
It was late, but after dinner, Jayden had some work calls to make. He went into the backyard. While doing dishes, I watched him speaking and pacing back and forth beneath a tree with huge weeping branches that I’d always loved. I’d drawn that tree more times than I could say. I’d drawn Isaac in that tree too.
There was definitely something going on with him. I didn’t know if it was more than just me not telling him about my sexuality, but I had a feeling it was. Work? Men? Was it just one of those times in Isaac’s life when he was a little sadder than usual but tried to hide it?
Jayden was now alternating between speaking animatedly and listening, and my gaze traveled away from him, to the far corner of the yard.
I remembered sitting there the day our parents got married. I was drawing them, but then I’d looked up and seen Isaac in his window, watching…hurting. I began sketching him instead, his eyes, where I could see his loneliness even from the distance. He’d always been an enigma to me. He was the smartest person I knew. The funniest as well. He lit up every room he went into and oozed confidence, but he also had a bone-deep pain I hadn’t seen until I watched him through the glass.
And in that moment, when Isaac thought no one saw him…I did. Completely. The real him, not the facade. It was silly, and probably didn’t make any sense, but that had been the moment I’d felt I really knew him…and I’d wanted to know him. Had wanted to be close to him and discover his secrets and how someone like him could be so many things at once. I’d been fascinated with Isaac from then on, looked up to him, even though only two months separated us in age.