Still the One

Yeah, there was a lot he should know. Like the fact that AJ couldn’t stop thinking about her. That they’d had a near miss. And she smelled like heaven. All important details, but they paled before the biggie—he wanted her. “No.”

Wyatt pointed at him. “You hesitated.” He stopped AJ from pumping, holding the weight down on AJ’s chest. “What was the hesitation?”

“Can’t. Breathe—”

“Answer the damn question.”

“I’ve already told you,” AJ managed to say past the weight on his chest. “Nothing’s going on.” He met Wyatt’s gaze straight on and let out the rest. “But you should know, I want there to be.”

Wyatt stared at him for a long beat. “You want there to be,” he repeated. He went back to his bench and sat hard, rubbing his chest.

AJ sat up, rubbing his, holding eye contact with Wyatt because this was important. Getting this right, being honest, was important to him. And the easy part. “Yes,” he said. “I want there to be.”

There was the slightest wince on Wyatt’s face, like maybe he’d rather be having a root canal right now than discussing this, without drugs.

“So then why the fuck do you two fight like cats and dogs?” Wyatt finally asked.

And now for the hard part. “I don’t fight with her. She fights with me.”

There was a long beat while Wyatt processed this. “Explain.”

“A while back she came to me and wanted to …” AJ hesitated, unsure how to tell his best friend that his baby sister had wanted a quickie in the parking lot.

His silence must have spelled it out for him, because Wyatt scrubbed a hand over his face and muttered “Christ” beneath his breath.

“I turned her down,” AJ said quietly.

Wyatt dropped his hand and stared at AJ, the implications chasing each other across his face. “You rejected her?”

“Would you rather I hadn’t?”

“Yes. No. Shit. I don’t know.” Wyatt dropped his head into his hands. “Did you do it for me?”

It was AJ’s turn to scrub his hands over his face. “I told myself I did it for her. That I couldn’t give her what she was looking for.”

Wyatt’s eyes sharpened. “Meaning?”

“She didn’t want me,” AJ said. “She wanted oblivion. And I couldn’t give her that.”

“Why?”

“Jesus, Wyatt—”

“Yeah, I am going to need to scrub my brain with bleach after this conversation, too,” Wyatt said. “Just finish it.”

“I refused to be a one-night stand for her. Okay?” AJ shoved his fingers into his sweaty hair. “That never would’ve worked.”

“Because …?”

AJ stared at Wyatt, hoping like hell this wasn’t going to change a damn thing between them, because Wyatt was the brother he’d never had. “Because I have feelings for her. I always have.”

Wyatt didn’t move a single muscle for a long moment. Then he let out a shaky breath. “Why didn’t I see this coming?”

“I didn’t want you to see it. I didn’t want to feel it.”

Wyatt took that in. “You could’ve told me. You can tell me anything.”

“Yeah? Like your shirt’s on inside out?”

Wyatt looked down at himself and let out a wry laugh. “Emily and I shared a ride into town this morning.”

“And your fiancée didn’t happen to notice you were dressed incorrectly?”

Wyatt actually flushed. “I started out with it correct, but then we got held up by the train and …” He shook his head and tugged off his shirt, righting it. “Never mind. And nice job on the distraction technique.”

“So … we okay?” AJ asked warily.

“We’ve been together a long time.”

“And yet you asked Emily to marry you and not me,” AJ said.

Wyatt’s lips quirked. “She’s prettier than you.”

“No doubt.”

Wyatt’s smile faded as he met AJ’s gaze. “Hell. Yeah. We’re okay. We’ll always be okay.” He paused. “She really doesn’t know how you feel about her?”

“No.” Hell no. She’d make his life a living hell.

“So all she knows is that you rejected her,” Wyatt said.

“Yeah.”

“And Darcy, being Darcy, didn’t take the rejection very well,” Wyatt guessed.

“Not well at all,” AJ confirmed.

Wyatt actually grinned.

“What?”

“You’ve got to spend a lot of hours in the car with her this weekend,” Wyatt said.

“That’s funny?”

“Very.”

“I thought you said you were okay with it.”

“I am,” Wyatt said. “Doesn’t mean I want it to be easy for you.”

Darcy had been working on training Oreo for an hour—with less than wondrous results—when AJ pulled up. He parked his truck on the street and crossed the yard to where she sat in the grass.

“We’re in a showdown,” she said, nodding her chin at Oreo, who sat facing her. “I’m trying to teach him to stay.”

“He looks like he’s got the hang of it,” AJ said.

“Because I’m holding a doggie cookie. He’s like every other man on the planet. He can be bribed.”