Garrett
Sweat drips down my spine as I let the events of last night replay in my head. And the last ten nights before that. A dangerous thing to do on a public running trail around the city.
But it wasn’t just about the sex last night. What we did and what we said made it more than that, and how can I really be surprised? In the last two weeks, my stepsister has gone from being the pesky little girl I watched grow up into the only person on the earth that I want to see when I open my eyes in the morning.
But how long can this really go on? How long can I keep up this charade and be two men at once? She loves Drake for entirely different reasons than she loves me. If she even does. If I don’t figure out how to open up as myself the way he does, then I’m going to really lose her forever.
I’m at the start of my third mile when my phone rings. I answer it using the earbuds I’m wearing and assume it’s Emerson or Maggie with work news about the event.
But the moment the call goes through, I hear sobbing. I stop in my tracks on the jogging trail.
“Garrett,” she cries.
“Mia,” I stammer. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Ice floods my veins at the sound of her voice, the pain of her sobs lancing my heart like a knife.
“He collapsed at work,” she bellows through her tears. “He was taken in an ambulance and now he’s in surgery and I don’t know what’s going on.”
I know immediately it’s Paul.
“Where are you?”
“At St. Francis. By the harbor,” she wails.
“Listen to me, Mia. He’s going to be okay. Calm down, okay?”
“I’m scared.” And I hear it in her voice, the fear and panic. He better be okay because I can’t bear the thought of what his death would do to her.
The thought has me tensing up like a time bomb ready to explode. I’m frantic as I pull out my phone and check the location. It’s only a couple miles away, just along the oceanfront. And that’s the last thought in my head before I tell her, “I’m on my way. Mia, I’m coming.”
Then, I hit the End button and I fucking run.
When I reach the hospital, I practically collapse onto the reception desk as I ask for Paul Harris. And the lady typing away at the computer is way too fucking slow as she looks him up.
“It says here he’s still in surgery, but family members are waiting on the third floor, east wing.”
I’m halfway to the elevator by the time she finishes her sentence. An elevator door is opening right on time, and I squeeze in with a group of nurses, punching the third-floor button in a panic. Sweat is pouring down my face and back, but I don’t care. She won’t care.
The elevator chimes as it reaches my floor, and as the doors open, I see her. Standing in the maroon-and-gray waiting room, her face beat red and covered in tears as she chews on her nails. She spins to see me and I’m across the hall and gathering her into my arms before the doors are even fully opened.
And that’s when she really loses it. Clutching onto me like she needs me to stand, I hold her tight in my arms, letting her sob into my shirt. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom watching us, and I glance at her with an apology on my face. I should be hugging her too. Her husband’s life is in jeopardy, but right now, there’s only one person on this earth who matters. I don’t make the rules and I certainly didn’t see this coming, but as long as Mia needs my arms to wrap around her and my chest to cry into, that’s exactly what she’s going to fucking get.
Paul is going to be okay. He had an abscess that ruptured and nearly led to sepsis. A side effect of the cancer and treatment, but luckily, not the return of another tumor. No more chemo. No more radiation. Just surgery and one hell of a scare.
They keep him back there for most of the day. I’m able to get Mia to calm down enough to sit in the waiting room and eat a little something, but she doesn’t leave my side and she never once lets me go. The entire time we’re in the waiting area, I notice my mother’s nervous eyes landing on us more than once.
She glances down at where our hands are linked or where I accidentally touch Mia’s bare leg. I keep correcting myself, but Mia is too stressed to care. She rests her hand on my shoulder or strokes my arm like no one is watching.
After an almost six-hour surgery, Paul is finally in recovery. When I take the girls in to see him, he’s just waking up. My mother runs to his side first, touching his arm delicately as she perches herself on the side of his bed.
Mia goes to the other side, finally letting me go for the first time today. I watch from the foot of his bed as he wakes up.
“We were so worried about you, Dad,” Mia cries, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Oh, Mia. I’m sorry. I’m okay,” he says in a raspy, pained tone.
“The doctor said you should be able to go home tomorrow,” my mother replies.
As I stand there and watch the three of them, both women fawning over him and him comforting them in return, my heart aches for something it’s never ached for before. Growing up, it was always just me and my mother, the best mother, really. She was devoted to me, and I never once felt alone or obligated to another person. But she loved me so selflessly that I never realized until just now that that love cost her something. She never remarried until I was older. Never dated. Never dared to want more.
And that entire time I was ignorant of what I was missing…or making her miss. A family. People on both sides of your hospital bed.
I’m glad she found Paul and Mia and finally has the family she always deserved. As if she can read my mind, my mother looks my way and reaches out a hand to me. I put my fingers in hers and the four of us sit here in comfortable silence, no one speaking or needing anything more than what we have in this space.
Mia glances my way for only a split second and the ache in my heart grows.
Fuck, I silently mumble.
Suddenly, I know what this ache is. I know what it is I want. And it’s not her body or sex. It’s knowing that one day when I’m in this hospital bed that she’ll be at my side. And she won’t be alone.
My hand slips from my mother’s as I mentally panic.
“I’m going to go grab some air. Paul, do you need anything?”
He shakes his head and I feel their three gazes on me as I quickly move toward the door. “I’ll be back.”
I can’t do this. I can’t keep going down this path, especially not with Mia. I’m not that guy. I’m not family-man material, and I never will be. Not only do I own a fucking sex club, but I’m not equipped to be supportive and confident the way Paul is. I’m a mess. I seem fine to Mia now, but at some point, she’s going to learn the truth and see me at my lowest. Then what?
It’s fine. She knows this is just sex. We’re not attached like that. Pretty soon, this will be a thing of the past and she’ll move on with someone better for her.
“Garrett,” she calls when I reach the hospital exit.
I spin and find her jogging my way. Regardless of the fact that her eyes are swollen from crying and there isn’t a shred of makeup on her face, she still looks ridiculously beautiful.
“Are you okay?” she asks. When she reaches me, her fingers glide across the skin of my forearms and I want to flinch from her touch.
“Yeah. I just needed air. Are you okay?”
“I am now,” she replies solemnly. “Your mom said we should go home and rest.”
“What about her?”
“She’s not leaving his side.” When her hands reach for me again, I let her wind them around my waist, pulling her body close.
This is the final surrender. I’ve realized my mistake too late. I can’t avoid where this thing is going with Mia. We’re already there. And I don’t hate it as much as I expected to.
We both desperately need showers, me more than her. So when we reach my place, I pull her into the master bathroom. I have a very solid plan for this girl. Shower, food, sleep. And that’s it. No sex. How very gentlemanly of me.
Turning the water on, I undress her first, which she lets me. I said no sex, but I can’t help but steal a quick kiss after tugging her shirt over her head. She’s already shampooing her hair when I climb in after her, and I’m finding it hard not to let my fingers graze over her soft, soapy flesh.
“You okay?” I ask, checking in with her again.
She nods. I don’t know why I keep asking that, waiting for her to open up and spill whatever’s on her mind. As if I would even be equipped to handle that if she does. I’m really not one to talk. I literally never open up the way she wants me to.
After our quick shower, I find her something comfortable to wear before I head to the kitchen to make her some food. Moments later, she walks out of the bedroom in my gray sweatpants and a T-shirt that fits tight over her breasts. She gives me a warm smile, and I pause, staring at her.
“I look like a boy,” she complains.
“The hottest boy I’ve ever seen,” I reply as I pull the carton of eggs out of the fridge.
She giggles as she climbs onto one of the stools around the island. Pulling her knees up to her chest, curled up in my pajamas, she looks so young. Glancing back at her as I crack eggs into a bowl, I try to pinpoint the moment when Mia stopped feeling too young for me. And I realize that our age difference was never my problem. It was how I thought it would be perceived. How people would look at me, or more importantly, at her. But from the minute Mia could hold a conversation with me, I saw her as my equal. Like we were always kindred spirits, two halves of one whole.
“Did you run to the hospital?” she asks while I’m whisking the eggs.
“Yes.”
“How far?”
I shrug. “A couple miles. I was already near the bay on my jog.”
“You could have taken a cab or gone home to change first. Why did you have to get there so fast?”
My movement stops as I stare at her. “Because you needed me. Because I wanted…to be there with you.”
Solemnly, she nods as if she’s pleased with that answer. “Garrett…what are we?”
Taking a deep breath, I ready myself for the answer. The one I already know.
“Because I know that when I found out about my dad, there’s only one person I wanted to call. One person I needed at that moment. So, I think you’re my person, but I don’t want you to be mine if I’m not yours.”
“Mia…” I mutter, questions and doubt swimming around in my head.
“Last night you said I was yours. I just want to know…if any of that was real.”
“It was real,” I mumble, like an idiot who doesn’t have the vocabulary to properly string together a full sentence to express just how I feel.
She’s staring at me with a nervous expression, and I drop the bowl in my hand and press my palms against the cool granite of the counter. I want to go to her, but it’s not the time for touching. It’s time for talking. And I suck at it enough as it is, so it’s best to keep some distance to keep from getting distracted.
“Mia, I haven’t been in a relationship in a really long time, and I’m a mess. You’d be signing yourself up for—’
“I’m a mess, too, Garrett. But if you’re going to call me yours, I need to know that I am.”
In the back of my mind, I distantly recognize that this is the time to come clean. I need to fess up to being Drake and the camgirl thing, so we can put it behind us. But I’m still a fucking coward.
It’s ironic to me that I hid behind the Drake profile because it was my barrier so I could have Mia, without letting her see the real me. Now it’s a wall, keeping me from everything I want. Do I want Mia if it means having this lie between us forever or do I risk losing her and tell her the truth?
Moving to her side of the island, I step up to her, eager to touch her face as I pull her in for a kiss.
I can’t risk it.
“I am yours, and I’ll give this a shot if you will.”
“I promise,” she whispers in return, a gentle smile lifting the corners of her mouth as she leans in for another kiss. I notice the way her hands hold me a little tighter and her lips hold mine a little longer, as if she’s showing just how much she wants this, and the guilt assaults me again.
“We should probably wait until my dad gets out of the hospital before we tell him,” she mumbles against my lips.
I wince. “No, I think the hospital might be a convenient location for my sake.”
She laughs. “He’ll get over it.”
“Well, yeah. Neither of them is the type to hold grudges. And I think it would be really fucking weird for a long time, but they’d eventually get used to it. We’re still us.”
Leaving her arms, I return to the eggs, grabbing some cheese and ham out of the fridge before I resume scrambling. Glancing up at her, I feel a sense of peace for the moment as the guilt fades.
She’s here in my apartment in the middle of the afternoon and I’m cooking for her, and nothing feels weird or wrong, and it’s become obvious to me that while I tried to say I didn’t want a girlfriend, that seems to be what I got anyway.
Moments later, I scoop her omelet onto the plate and carry it to the table for her. She must have worked up an appetite because she eats every bite, and I watch her, a feeling of pride washing over me as she does.
She yawns while I’m cleaning the kitchen up and the next time I turn around, she’s gone. I find her curled up in my bed, already asleep by the time I enter the room. Standing in the doorway, I watch her sleep, replaying every moment of the last month that led to this.
For fifteen years, I’ve known Mia. And while I loved her in my own weird way the entire time, there was never anything more. For so long, nothing. Then suddenly, there was everything.
Just like that.
Standing there watching her, so peaceful and content, I tell myself that I can really do this for her. I can keep it together. I can be good—be happy. Shield her from the darkness, until it all fades away. People have overcome worse.
With that, I crawl into bed next to her. As I pull the covers up, she turns, nuzzling her body against my chest. She’s breathing heavily as I press a kiss to her forehead.
“Love you, Kitten,” I whisper, but she doesn’t respond, already too deep in her dreams.
