Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I said, and Isaac’s gaze snapped up, clashing with mine. I saw the flicker of something ignite there, but as if he was trying to tamp it down. When Isaac didn’t reply, I said, “How could I not have known? This whole time. How did I not realize it?”
“Lane?” he asked, my name a question. He took a step toward me, and then another.
“I had to have known…somewhere, deep down, ya know? But I was afraid to acknowledge it was there because, brothers aside, how could you love me like that? How could someone like you feel the same way about me? It’s why I didn’t tell you I’m pan, I think…and why I couldn’t fall for anyone else, why I couldn’t love them. My heart was already yours, and I was too damn afraid to admit it, even to myself.”
Isaac gave me a small smile. “Stepbrothers,” he corrected, still moving closer, but slowly.
He didn’t argue with what I’d said. He didn’t acknowledge that I loved him, but he also didn’t say he didn’t feel the same. And I did…love him, was in love with him. It had hit me last night, and now that I’d seen it, I couldn’t keep quiet about it. Not with Isaac, the man I’d seen from the start as I looked through that window. The one I’d been fascinated with and had wanted to know. The one who’d given me his secrets in everything except for this.
“It’s why you pulled away, isn’t it?” I asked Isaac, who stood directly in front of me. He’d clearly showered somewhere, but it didn’t hide his weariness.
“Yes.”
“All this time… We were eighteen years old when you left early for California.”
“I knew even before that. Really fucking inconvenient to spend your life in love with someone you can’t have. It definitely screwed with the image of myself I wanted to project to the world.”
I smiled. “God, you’re so fucking ridiculous.”
Isaac reached up and cupped my face. He brushed his fingers over my cheekbone. My eyes fell closed as I leaned into his touch. He felt warm and alive and…right. Isaac felt like he was mine, and he always had been.
“You’re a mess. You have paint everywhere.”
I opened my eyes. “Um…it might be all over the room too.”
“I don’t care. You can cover the whole fucking condo in it. What are you saying here, Lane? You really love me? It’s okay if you don’t, if you’re not sure. I just… God, it’s been killing me, eating away at me for fourteen years. I tried to hide it, tried to make it go away, but I couldn’t, no matter how much I knew I should. You don’t realize how irresistible you are. I nearly went to jail for murder because of it.”
I frowned.
“I wanted to stab the fuckface slimeball with a butter knife at dinner.”
I laughed, my chest vibrating, in a way only Isaac could make me do. “You were always braver than you let yourself see.”
“Because I wanted to kill someone?”
“No…because you didn’t spend your life in denial about how you feel.”
His hand trembled against my face. I grabbed his wrist, kissed his palm, then laced my fingers through his.
Isaac went easily when I moved toward the studio room. I tugged him inside. The canvas I’d been working on wasn’t facing us, and Isaac didn’t mention the ones stacked or leaning against the wall, splattered with paint and random colors, but nothing real, nothing true.
It wasn’t finished. I’d had no idea what I was going to paint when I started, the evidence was on all the canvases, but I wanted Isaac to see it, wanted him to know what I was thinking about him last night, that I was with him, even though we hadn’t truly been together. That I was with him in this, these feelings that were going to get us both in so much fucking trouble.
I led him to the front of the easel. It was different from my typical style—a little darker, edgier. It was a forearm and a hand, my forearm and hand, and inside my palm was a heart. Not a cartoonish one, but a realistic, throbbing heart, there for him to take.
Isaac’s hand trembled when he reached over, touched unmarked areas of the canvas. He ran his finger down it, not speaking, as I held my breath.
“It’s called Yours,” I said, to break the quiet.
Because I was just that. His. My heart was his. I’d kept it to myself when it always wanted to be with Isaac, and now I was handing it over to him.
Still, he didn’t respond, just dipped his fingers into the red I’d been using, wielding them like a paintbrush and smearing the color on my chest, over my heart.
I breathed in a shaky breath, watching him, unable to turn away as Isaac tugged his shirt over his head and dropped it to the floor. He took my wrist, dipped my fingers into the paint, then pressed my hand to his left pec.