“Hmm, well. You should let me come with you.”
She looks at me wide-eyed, totally scandalized by the idea, which is hilarious because of what we just did. “No way.” She smooths a hand over her wild hair.
“That’s not going to help.” I reach her in a single stride and finger comb the long, sandy tresses out into some semblance of order. “There. That’s better.”
She’s frozen, staring up at me with those huge eyes of hers. She’s looking at me, trying to see something that’s not plainly there. Something she thinks I’ve been hiding from her. She’s trying to comprehend all this, what just happened here. She’s also looking for some kind of sign, and there’s something there too that is totally naked, easy for me to see. There’s a lot of it, a lot of feelings that go beyond the time I have at the moment to untangle them.
Stella rakes her hands through her hair, mussing it up all over again. She just can’t give me the satisfaction of knowing I’ve done something good for her, and she can’t admit it to herself either—not that I fixed her hair and also just gave her a killer orgasm.
“Are you ready?”
I start. “Ready for what?” I can only imagine what she’s plotting.
“I’ve changed my mind. You’re coming to the bank with me. I’m not going to let you get out of transferring the money, and my phone is dead, so I can’t call you until after I charge it. It’s also already way after nine, which is when you were supposed to have it to me by. I can’t let the deadline slide for too long.” Somehow—god knows how she does it—she gets all of that out with a straight face.
I see my opportunity, and I’m not going to let it slide. I don’t think this is just about the money. I can’t be sure because Stella is stubborn, but she’s also brilliant. She knows me in and out—a little more literally now, and I hope to make it even more literal soon—which makes her a worthy opponent. It also makes her harder for me to read because she knows how to keep her feelings hidden away from me. After all, she knows exactly how I go about reading them.
“Alright. If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” Stella sighs. “Now, you’re a little bit wrinkled. Smooth it out, and we’ll go out there like none of this just happened. Like it was a business transaction.”
“It definitely wasn’t,” I say sarcastically, making it clear that I’m appalled at the suggestion.
Stella rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. “That’s not what I meant. Now, get whatever you need. I’m charging you an extra thousand for being late, by the way.”
“Even if you made me late?”
Her face goes from being flushed with pleasure to being flushed with straight-up mortification. “Christ,” she mutters before spinning around and marching to the door. She doesn’t let me see her face, but I think we both know what her expression would say, and she clearly doesn’t want me to read whatever is there.
CHAPTER 14
Stella
I don’t even know how it’s possible for me to focus on driving, but somehow, I do—even with Hal beside me and with my body still trembling and quaking and after-shocking all over the place. My hands keep jerking and twitching on the wheel, but it’s not enough to make even so much as a dent in the forward direction the car keeps traveling.
I’m on autopilot as we head to the bank.
That’s a crazy pronoun. We. I’m not used to it.
God, Hal? Truly?
How could I have done this to myself? How could I have wanted to do that with him? How could I have betrayed myself, my family, and especially my brother like this?
Oh, right. That would be because, for the longest time, I’ve wanted to. I guess it started when I was around sixteen. Hal and Sam were five years older than me, and I never thought of Hal as a brother even though everyone thought I should. I always thought of him as exactly what he was—Sam’s best friend, a kid who my parents loved, and a part of our family that wasn’t related to me by blood. He was just like an older brother, yes, but I never thought of him the same way I thought about Sam. Ever. Not once.
A sixteen-year-old girl who develops a crush on her older brother’s best friend isn’t unusual, but I was always mature, and I understood what would happen if I let any bit of that sentiment out. For starters, if I made a fuss about it when I was that young, my dad would’ve taken out the shotgun he didn’t have, and my mom would’ve been so worried that she’d have a spontaneous heart attack. Furthermore, it would’ve soured the relationship between Sam and Hal, maybe even to the point where things would never have been the same.