“I don’t want marriage. I don’t want anything. I’m over him.”
“Well, something’s going on with you.” He groaned. “Don’t date him. He’s a six-month guy. He dates a girl—”
“I know.”
My hands were wrapped so tightly around each other, a paperclip couldn’t have gotten in between them. He was right. God, he was right. “I don’t have feelings for Kevin.”
My chest burned. I felt that void opening even more.
“Right.” His tone softened. “That’s why you look like you’re going to cry.”
“I’m crying for the squirrel.”
“Summer.”
“It must’ve been so hungry.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Enough with the nonsense. A different feeling descended on us, and I had to be honest too. My throat felt raw.
“I don’t have feelings for Kevin, but…” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know what was going on myself. I just felt that ache inside of me. It was so deep, all the way to my core.
I couldn’t feel that. I’d talk about Kevin. Somehow he helped cover that up.
“He was the popular guy. I was a nobody. Every girl wanted him, but he was going to be my stepbrother. I thought it was meant to be. Fate put us together. I was so sure of it. I mean, what else could it have been, right?”
I laughed, then cringed, hearing how hollow it sounded. “I waited. I just kept waiting. He had one girlfriend, then another, and he was with a third when he went to college. It was like he couldn’t stand to be alone. They always had to be with him at the house, but my graduation night…”
I’d stood there in my graduation robe. My hat was on, the tassel hanging in front of me. When I saw him sneak in through the back door, my heart had squeezed. I’d just known. He was there for me. It meant something.
“He came alone. That meant he didn’t have a girlfriend. And that night… We were in the hallway.” I winced, remembering it clearly now. “I was the one standing there stupidly. I kept staring at him, and he stared back.” His bedroom had been behind me. “But he was just waiting to go to his room. That’s all he was doing.” My bedroom was up the stairs behind him. “I was drunk, and I just kept staring.” Then he’d touched me on the shoulder. “I thought he was making a move.” His hand had grazed my shoulder, but I closed the distance. I’d felt something else that night, a pain I didn’t comprehend. I couldn’t comprehend. “I kissed him. I made the first move. He just—” helped cover up that emptiness in me.
“Took advantage of you.”
“No. He’d been drinking. We were both drinking.”
“You were drunk.”
“So was he—”
“Matthews doesn’t drink to get drunk.”
“What?”
Caden shook his head, hard-pressed rage barely blanketed in his eyes. “He drinks one or two. That’s it. I’ve never seen him drunk, or heard about him being drunk.”
“Ever?” My mouth felt dry.
“Ever.” His jaw clenched. “He holds a drink all night long because it helps loosen girls up. If they think he’s drinking…”
“…then they’ll drink.”
He’d had a beer all night at Clarissa’s graduation party. “I thought he had a new beer every time I saw him.” My hand had brushed against it when he’d put it on the counter before we left. “The bottle was warm.”
“He knows what he’s doing with girls, Summer.” Caden leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Did he say he had feelings for you?”
“I wasn’t prepared for you when I saw you.”
My hands were sweating. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t the reason for this conversation anyway. That ache in me…
“You know he’s a bad guy. You know he’s a serial dater. You know he doesn’t date longer than six months. You know all this. If he was so serious, why did he leave with someone else?”
I nodded with each statement. “I know all these things. You’re right.”
“Don’t fall for him.”
The truth bloomed in my chest. It was the way he’d said those words: fall for him. He wasn’t Kevin. He was about as far from Kevin as it was possible to get—the anti-stepbrother. Kevin was a flashy light. He was the bobber on a hook, distracting the fish so they’d get caught.
Caden was so much more. He was the real deal. Suddenly that ache in me took on a different form of pain. It throbbed, and I felt a slice of panic.
I couldn’t look away from Caden.