Sol purses his lips and I can’t tell if he’s jarred or amused. Or if I’m out of my mind for what I say next.
“I need you near me.” I almost look away as I say it, but in the dark of my room, as heavier rain lashes the windows, the wind howling louder than it has all night, breaking his gaze feels worse than death. “I don’t know why…I just do.”
“Then that’s where I’ll be.” Sol knocks his head against my shoulder. “Just tell me where and when.”
“When?”
Sol blinks. And then it hits him, and hitsmetoo, that this isn’t a vague moment far off in the future. One I’ll forget about before breakfast tomorrow. Or ask for in a few weeks’ time when it might feel less momentous and altering. This is now—ithasto be now, and somehow we both know it.
Fuck. My pulse erupts, hammering in my ears, loud and volcanic as Sol’s fingers curl into the sheets as if he’s trying to anchor himself to the sea bed. He takesanotherbreath, quiet…careful. As if he’s testing the strength of the truth I’ve dumped on him tonight. And too late, I worry that I’ve chucked a bomb on our friendship. That of all the shit he’s done for me, for every brick he’s cemented in the solid wall he’s always been, this is where he breaks.
But me and Sol. We’ve never been just friends. And we’re not brothers. We’re something else, and it makes me think of a quoteone of Mal’s mates once bellowed at him from across an aircraft hangar in Libya.
To define is to limit.
Mal called Raven a nerdy melt that day. Can’t remember why. Just that I laughed and it was the last time I saw my brother for a while. But that quote, it comes back to me now, and I stop trying to cage how I feel about Sol. How he feels about me. And it comes so easy that I know it’s right, and I try to nail it down, so I remember it later.
“Jack.”
“Hmm?”
Sol grasps my shoulders with both hands and eases me off my belly and onto my side. We’re in bed and my dick is tucked into my waistband. If Sol can tell without looking that I’m already hard, it doesn’t show on his face. He stares at me with the same focus he has when I’m doing other things that scare him.
Lifting weights.
Breaking up fights downstairs.
Facing the men who came to tell me my brother had been injured in combat without him or Skylar at my side.
This isn’t any of that. And I hate that he’s nervous of whatever’s about to happen. I hate that I am too, when Sol narrows the space between us a little more, then stops as if he’s not sure of his path or mine.
“How close do you want me?”
I can’t answer that question. I just know if he backs off another piece of me will die. That I need his hands on my shoulders and his gaze pinning me in place. I needhim, and fuck, my dick hurts. “Don’t go.”
“I won’t, love. I promise.”
He’s made that vow before and he’s never broken it, no matter what I’ve thrown at his feet, in his face, and something inside me gives way.
Capitulates.
Surrenders.
I edgecloserto Sol and press my forehead to the side of his face as my hand finally lowers to where I need it most.
I’m so fucking hard.
Part of me is scared to touch myself. What remains is so desperate for relief my hand shakes, and though Sol can’t see it, heknows.
“You’re all right,” he murmurs. “Just breathe and let it happen.”
“I can’t…fuck—” A groan escapes me, and not the good kind. “Sol, I need you.”
“I’m here.”
“No, I mean, I needyou. I can’t do it.”
I hate how unhinged I sound. But Sol doesn’t look at me like I’m less than I’ve ever been. He holds my panicked stare as if I’m a star burning itself alive, and even through whatever mess I’ve thought myself into, I see it—Ifeelit, that line we’re about to cross and never come back from.