Crude: A Stepbrother Romance (42 page)

“What?”
 

Reagan’s shooting me this thin little smirk, her eyes flashing at me; “So,
Sam
-“

I roll my eyes; “
Not
what you think.”

“Oh and what would I be thinking, Hudson, and why would I
possibly
think that?” Her sarcastic smile is exaggeratedly fake.

“Relax, Princess, she’s not my type.”

Reagan bristles at the word; “And what type would that be that, Hudson? The kind that has something besides air between their ears?” She snorts, “She sure had me fooled.”

For some reason, I grin; getting a weirdly smug sense of satisfaction from the fact that Reagan is
clearly
jealous. “Well what about you and
Chet
back there? You guys pick out color-schemes yet for the Lincoln bedroom?”

Reagan rolls her eyes, “Oh give me a break-“ Her eyes land on me and she grins; “What, are you
jealous?
”

I tense up inside, but I keep my voice cool; “What, of
Chet
and his collection of polo shirts and boat shoes?” I snort; “Uh, no, Reagan, I’m not.”

“Oh, and
what
, is little miss Tits McGee back there supposed to make
me
jealous?”

I want to laugh, but the fire in her eyes stops me, and I let out an exasperating sigh instead; “Jesus, what about our relationship would make you this jealous seeing that girl hanging off my arm?”

“There
is
no ‘
our relationship
’, Hudson” She snaps, looking fierce and adorable at the same time.

“Yeah, no shit,
Princess
.”

I see her eyes blaze at me, and she opens her mouth to say something but then stops herself and shakes her head instead; “We’re late for the next appearance today, let’s go.” She says curtly, before turning on her heel and storming away, leaving me standing there watching her walk away. I want to kick myself for saying shit like that to her, but really, I know why I do it. I push her away like that because I can’t let her get close; not with the shit that I’m carrying around. Fuck; I saw hell on Earth in the desert, so why the fuck can’t I deal with this girl?
 

P A S T

“What are you drinking?” Reagan’s been giving me this weird look from across the room for the past fifteen minutes while I’ve been giving my condolences to the rest of her family. I’ve finally extricated myself from Bryce and Logan, and some Aunt who I’ve never met before, and made my way over to where she’s sitting on the bottom step of the curved staircase in the foyer.

“I’m not.”

She frowns at me as she sips on the cup of what looks like coke but smells suspiciously like something else; “Well, it’s a
funeral
, you probably should be.” She
clearly
has been, as she leans into me and holds my gaze in that slightly glazed way a good couple of drinks will do to you. She sighs and looks into her cup; “Sorry, I forg- It’s just sort of weird being back here without him, even if he was barely every here anyways.”

I nod, intimately knowing the feeling she’s describing, since it’s how I feel about everything, every day I wake up after coming back from what I did; “Yeah, I know the feeling.” She’s still staring into her cup, so I try and change the subject; “Hey so how’s art history going?”
 

“Renaissance Art, and I switched to Political Science.”

I can’t help but grin, knowing how much the Old Man would have smirked at that one; “Hey, that’s pretty coo-“

“Do you want to go for a walk?” She’s looking up at me with that same look on her face that I can’t quite read, thought I can see a flare of wildness there that always manages to drag me into her.

“Uh, sure?”
No, bad idea, bad fucking idea asshole!
I’ve been around enough girls in this exact same precursor to a mistake to know what “do you want to go for a walk” means. But when she stands and offers her hand, I’m
still
grabbing ahold and getting up to following her as she leads us away from the crowd. I follow her up the staircase and down the hallways, and I
almost
want to say some quip about ‘interesting walk, up here where your bedroom probably is’ but I don’t because that would be crass, and that’s something I’m working on.
 

But we don’t go to her room anyways. We end up in the huge second floor library that’s practically two stories in itself. She’s running her fingers over the spines of leather books, almost wistfully, and when she looks back over her shoulder at me and smiles, I’m lost. She opens the double doors at the end of the room to the private stone terrace and steps out.
 

Idiot; you fucking asshole idiot this is such a dumb fucking move.

I need to leave. What I should be doing is turning right around and heading right back to that crowd of mourners downstairs morning
my
friend and
her
Father. But instead, I follow her out into the night air.

She takes a deep breath and lets her head drop back as she stares up at the stars, and she’s so fucking beautiful and so fucking sad standing there that I want to put my arms around her and tell her I’m here, but I know I can’t and shouldn’t do that; not here, not now, not ever.

“It’s nice out here; nice and quiet.” She turns and smiles at me; “Sorry, I just couldn’t be in there anymore.”

I shrug; “I don’t really do crowds either.”

She smiles and turns, and walks over to the stone balcony on the edge of the terrace. I’m tongue tied;
me
, for the first time ever at a loss of what to say; “He was a great-“

“I don’t really want to talk about my Father right now.”

She turns, her hands behind her as she leans back on the balcony, looking perfectly broken and like the perfect fix all tossed into one beautiful package. She smiles at me and bites her lip in this sexy, innocent way as she slowly raises one of her hands from behind her and starts to beckon me with one finger.

No. Stop. Stop it.

But I’m ignoring that voice inside my head as I walk in slow motion towards her. It’s like I’m walking underwater, in a dream, as I put one foot in front of the other, and before I know it I’m standing right in front of her. Her eyes are huge, and blue, and looking up at me with such sadness and such determination, and I can smell the lavender of her shampoo in her hair, and before the world can move another inch across it’s starry path, I’m kissing her. It’s fire, and passion, and it’s everything I’ve ever imagined kissing someone who matters feels like, and it’s like my whole life gets hit with a reset button; like I know after this I can start clean.
 

She moans into my mouth, the sound both soft and completely sexy at the same time, and I find myself growling as I push myself against her. Her hands are at my neck, pulling at my tie and unbuttoning my shirt, and my hand is sliding over her thigh. I’m pushing her dress higher, feeling her shiver and whimper into me as my hand trails up until I feel lace, and heat, and-

Protect them.

The words hit me like slap across the face. Fuck; I can’t do this. I want to do this with every single fiber of everything I am, but what the
fuck
am I doing?
 

I pull away from her; “Wait, hang on,” She’s leaning forward to kiss me again and I draw back further; “
Reagan
, hold on.”

“What?” She’s looking at me like she messed up; like it’s
her
that’s doing something wrong, and that look just kills me.

“I-“ What, tell her I can’t do this? Tell her it
is
her? Yeah, no, fuck that; I’m not doing that to her. “I- I just need to go get something for a sec.”

She gives me a strange, nervous look as she bites her lip; “Oh-“

Ah, shit, she thinks-

“Ok, there might be one in my sister’s room, in the bedside table.” She looks so shy, so innocent, and so on the verge of breaking, and it’s giving me the fuel I need to walk away. I can’t let her get into me; can’t let her touch the wreck I am inside.
Reset button?
How fucking delusional am I? I’m broken, and in the way that can’t be fixed.

“I’ll uh, I’ll see you soon.”

And then I’m walking away; walking away from the one girl in the world I can’t get out of my head and regretting it and hating every step I take as I let the terrace and her and the memory of that one perfect moment in time slip away behind me.

P R E S E N T

There’s something dreamlike about being back in the Old Man’s house in Greenwich, and I feel like I’m half-asleep as I wander through it. The strongest thing is, I’ve only ever been here a handful of times, but every single one sticks out like a dog-eared bookmark along the pages of my past. The kitchen has the lingering memories of swapping stories of trauma and horror with William over mushroom pizza; like our own fucked up little PTSD support group. There’s the guest-room upstairs, where he and I sat by day and night with Bryce for seven fucking days in a row while he detoxed off the junk; screaming his demons out at the ceiling while we held him down and kept him hydrated. I can remember parking myself in the library and reading every damn book the Old Man had on power and management and business when he set me up within Archer.

And then of course, there’s the garden out back where I first met Reagan, and really, that’s the weirdest part. It’s not
just
that I haven’t been back here since William died, it’s that the last time I
was
here was when I kissed her.
 

“Remind me again why we picked
this place
for the media Q&A?” I grin as I hear her walk up behind me where I’m staring off across the back gardens like a weirdo. It’s basically the first time she’s spoken to me since our little stupid blow-up yesterday, and I can tell she’s just as weirded out by being back at her Father’s place as I am which gives me a strange comfort. We both have our own ghosts about this place, but I can’t help but wonder if she’s thinking about that last time we were both here too.

“One guess, but I’ll give you a hint; it starts with a ‘D’ and ends with ‘onald’.”

She snorts, and as I turn to her, I see her look up at me like she’s about to say something.

“Reagan! We’re live in two damn minutes!”

Goddamnit, Donald.

Reagan rolls her eyes and shakes her head, and with one last flickering look at me, she’s following her campaign manager back through the house to the front steps where they’re holding the press conference.

*****

I’m anxious and restless; subtly shifting my weight from foot to foot, tensing my muscles, and generally feeling too warm under my dress-shirt. I start to roll the sleeves up too before Donald gives me the evil eye and mutters something about “not testing well with target demographics” as he scowls at my tattoos, so I leave them be with a scowl right back at him.  

My nervousness of course has
nothing
to with Reagan talking to the media. No, fuck that, she’s
flawless
up there, looking every bit the political powerhouse behind the podium. Her answers are effortless, she’s direct and yet light, and she makes them laugh without even trying to play the comedian. No, what I’m fidgeting about is how I’m going to apologize to her about yesterday when we’re done here. There’s a nervous, rumbling energy inside of me that tumbles under the surface; the kind I usually only get when I’m strapping on my gloves for what I know is going to be a long, rough session with the bag, or when I think too long about the past. I want to tell her everything -
all
of it - and that quite honestly scares the shit out of me.