“No.” He looked up at me. “You’re just as sentimental as always.” Isaac grinned and exaggeratedly shook his head. “Is dinner done, or are you trying to starve me all night? That’s your plan, isn’t it? Get rid of the evil stepbrother, huh?”
I laughed. “Only you’re not just a stepbrother to me,” I said, and I could have sworn he flinched.
“Brother, then.”
“Best friend.” Only that didn’t fit either. Isaac was more than both those things to me, and I’d missed him in ways I couldn’t put into words. “Dinner will be done in less than five minutes. Wash your hands.”
“I just showered.”
“So? What if you picked your nose and I didn’t see?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
Isaac came over and tugged the band off my head, making my hair fall forward, then tossed it to the counter and turned the water on. He’d always been weird about my hair. Where Isaac’s was always perfect, mine wasn’t, and he’d been strangely fascinated with that.
We ate dinner together at his small table. I couldn’t help looking around his condo and notice, not for the first time, how stark it was. “You need to up your decorating game.”
He pointed to my painting. “See? I decorated.”
“That’s only one thing.”
“It’s something,” he replied, making me chuckle. “This is really great. I always forget how good a home-cooked meal is until I go home and Dad or Helena make something. It’s actually why I asked you to move in.”
“But you didn’t ask. You only said I could.”
“Hmm, yes, well, I’m just so good that I put the thought into your head to ask me. We’ll go with that.”
I snickered, cocking a brow at him. “You’re ridiculous.”
“It’s a learned skill.”
“Will you sit with me tonight? While I paint?” I wanted to talk with him more, wanted to capture those moments in my childhood where we were so close, where I felt more connected to Isaac than I ever had with another person.
“I was, um…thinking of having someone over.”
A heaviness landed in my gut, weighing my whole body down. “Will it kill you to keep it in your pants for one night? You have more meaningless sex than anyone I know.”
Anger flashed in his gaze. “You sound awfully close to shaming me for enjoying to fuck. And is that any worse than spending a year and a half with someone you know is wrong for you? What, just so you can say you’re in a relationship?”
“Hey, fuck you.” But he was right. “I don’t want to fight with you. I just thought…hell, who knows what I thought. I’m trying here, Isaac. I want us back, and that’s hard to do when I don’t understand why we broke in the first place.”
He groaned, leaning back in the chair and looking up at the ceiling. “You’re making me crazy here, Lane.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“I know. That’s what makes it even worse. Yes, I’ll sit with you.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” The last thing I wanted was for him to feel forced to spend time with me, but I did want to be with him, soak up every moment together that we could. “Or if you’d rather watch a movie or something instead of, well, me, then we can do that too. Whatever you want. I just want to be with you.”
His gaze hardened, his jaw tense. “Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you want to be with me? Why do you want to spend so much time with me?”
Why the hell was he asking me that? “Because you’re my brother and I love you?”
“Have you ever wondered what would have happened if we’d met but our parents hadn’t gotten married?”
I hadn’t, but now I was. “We probably…hell, Isaac, we probably never would have gotten close. We’re too different. How would we have ended up even spending time together?”
He sighed and pushed some of his green beans around on his plate. “I guess you’re right.”
We finished eating in near silence. Afterward, Isaac went with me into the room he’d given me to use as a studio. It was a big space—his whole condo was. There was a bed in it instead of a couch like in my attic studio at our parents’ place. He sat there, bare feet up on the mattress, back against the headboard, and watched me while I painted. We talked for hours, the way we used to when we were kids. About dumb or random things like his friend Hutch who had a cat named after a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and a practical joke they played on him at work, and when some random guy had thrown up on him while riding MARTA, the local public transportation. And he also told me about when he’d had a stalker.
“Holy shit. I can’t believe Mom didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t let either of them know. Are you kidding me? Your mom would have worried herself to death.”
It was weird to me, how he still called her my mom. She was his too. She loved him, and I knew Isaac loved her as well. “Everything is fine, though?” The thought of someone hurting him, of anything happening to him, filled me with unimaginable pain.
“Yes, it was five years ago.”
His eyes fluttered, and I could tell he was getting sleepy, but still he stayed and I worked.
A little while later, he lay down, head resting on the pillows, and I asked him, “Do you still have them? The nightmares.”
“Rarely,” Isaac answered quietly. “You helped me fight those demons.”
“I didn’t do anything.” Not anything more than love him and be there for him.
“That’s what you think.”
It wasn’t long before his breathing evened out and he fell asleep. I cleaned up my painting supplies, and he didn’t waken. So I got a sketchbook and pencil, sat on the bed beside him, watching him, drawing him, trying to capture who Isaac was, though I’d never been able to do that in a way I was satisfied with. It was never good enough, never right, never him. It felt like trying to hold on to the sun.
When I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I set the notebook aside, turned out the lights, and climbed into bed with him. We hadn’t slept together like this in years, and it felt like getting something else back, like taking another step toward him, when he seemed so far away.
CHAPTER TEN
Isaac
I didn’t bring anyone home over the next few weeks. What was the point in pushing myself to meet guys and bring them home, in trying to make myself forget about Lane, when I never would? Especially because now he was there, living with me, and all I wanted was to spend time with him.
We’d had dinner together nearly every night. Lane cooked most of the time, though we also got takeout. We’d sit at the table and talk about our days. I’d tell him about work, and he’d talk about painting. One of his friends from Manhattan knew a woman in Atlanta, Kylie, who ran a local gallery, and the two of them had hung out a few times. Lane still hadn’t said anything about how long he was staying. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford his own place, but he continued on at my condo, and I continued to let him.