“I want it all too,” she says. “Everything you said. Whether fate or luck keeps bringing us together, I want it, Ben. In the car, when I spaced out, do you remember what I said?”
“You were thinking of a garden,” I say, moving my fingers softly across her back. “A secret garden, one nobody else is allowed to talk about, apparently. You got pretty feisty when I asked about it.”
She giggles, the noise only adding to the frenetic beating of my heart, as though each drumming is another mark of how right this is.
Or how wrong this is.
“I was thinking of our family,” she says. “I was thinking of a future together. It was a party, with you and our children…with June and Mom and Dad. And Alex, Ben. Alex was there.”
Moving my hand to her face, I brush a tear from her cheek with my thumb. She reaches up and touches my hand.
“Do you really want it all?” she says.
“I promise,” I snarl. “I swear I do. I can’t believe you feel the same.”
She laughs again, but it’s touched with sadness, tremoring with her tears. “Ditto.”
I lean down, unable to resist her lips, kissing her softer this time. She opens her mouth, and we move together, caught up in the affection, our problems are forgotten for a little while.
My manhood stirs and pulses, but it’s not the savage explosion I felt before. This has something beneath it, something warm and all-consuming.
I love you, I almost say. I loved you the first moment I saw you.
“Nothing is standing in our way in the fantasy,” she says, breathing heavily, breaking off the kiss. “We’ve got each other. Alex isn’t pissed. Mom and Dad understand. We’ve got our kids, Ben, our wonderful happy children.”
“I want it so badly,” I tell her fiercely.
She shifts, her breasts rubbing against my body through the thin fabric of our clothes.
“But we don’t live in a fantasy. We’ve got no way of knowing if Alex is going to be okay with this.”
I clench my jaw, a cowardly notion trying to take over for a moment. I almost tell her we can hide it.
We can find a way to be together without telling him, without hurting him. But there’s no way I could take that route.
“Alex deserves to know the truth,” I say.
She sighs, looking down. “I know he does. But how can we tell him? And what will we tell him?”
“The truth. We’ll tell him I saw you, and I fell for you, fell hard right away, and you feel the same. We’ll tell him we tried to fight it, but we couldn’t. We can’t. We’ll tell him we’re sorry, but this isn’t some bullshit fling. We’re not going to make things awkward for him. We’re in this forever.”
“Forever,” she says. “Say it again.”
“Forever,” I whisper, moving closer to her lips. “Forever, forever…Becca bee, me and you, for the rest of our lives. Tell me you want it.”
“I want it,” she says, voice just as full of passion. “I want everything you want. I want us, Ben.”
I wrap my arms around her tightly, pulling her into my embrace. She’s the one who initiates the kiss this time, standing on her tiptoes. I’m not sure how long we kiss for. Time no longer matters as our bodies fuse closer and closer, as she drags her fingernails down my back.
“When will we tell him?” she asks, breaking off the kiss.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “When we get back. It’s been over a month since we kissed, Becca. And after tonight, after all we’ve done, all we’ve learned…we can’t leave it any longer.”
“Tomorrow,” she repeats. “I feel like there’s a pit opening in my belly. Except this pit has teeth, making me wonder if I’ll even be able to look at my big brother after tonight.”
“We have to tell him,” I say. “The longer we leave it, the more difficult it’s going to be.”
She clings on to me tighter. “I know you’re right. I know you are. But it’s going to be so freaking difficult. What if he goes nuts? What if he hates us?”