Reese’s arms closed around me, his forehead resting on my shoulder for a moment. “I wish my brother—I get you. I get what you went through, but Damian didn’t want to suffocate you.”

“No.” I sniffled. “He did at the end. He couldn’t help it. He was too far gone, too much in denial of what was happening to him.”

“My brother thinks I owe him. My lifestyle should be his. Hell. He kinda looks like me, so he tells people he is me, and he gets all this treatment because of it. Penthouse suites. Comped meals at restaurants. He tries to get free shit. Women. I’ve had so many women claim I got them pregnant; then they realize it was my brother who fucked them, and suddenly, it was a false positive.” His voice was laced with disdain. “He was using my name at a club, and a girl thought she was going to sleep with me. She found out during the act that he wasn’t me. She tried to say no. He didn’t stop. He just…” His arms tightened around me. His voice was anguished. “Didn’t stop.”

I felt hollow at times. I recognized the same in him.

I felt it, and I understood.

Letting go of my sleeves, I slid my hands over his arms, moving to face him. I twisted around, my forehead pressed into his shoulder as I tried to grip him back.

I wanted to soothe his pain, to shield him from the harm his brother could do, to take away the damage his brother had already done. I knew in that instant that these were the same feelings I’d had for Damian, all over again.

But this was different, because Reese didn’t need me to breathe for him.

I just needed to sit alongside him.

He could breathe on his own.

After a beat, I lifted my head. “I know why we’re friends.”

He grunted, sliding his hand up my back, curling it around my shoulder. “Please, enlighten me. This should be good.”

I paused, my hands falling to the bottom of his sweatshirt. I tugged on it. “You want serious or the joke response?”

His chest rose, pausing, and his forehead came down to rest on mine. “I think I need the joke now,” he murmured. “That’d be helpful.”

The joke. I could do that. I was good at that.

“Well, we’re friends because we’re both ridiculously good-looking.”

He snorted, lifting his head. “Jesus. Are you kidding me?”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not. Ridiculously good-looking people are friends with other ridiculously good-looking people. It’s a whole wavelength thing going on between them.” Sitting back more on his lap, I rested my hands on his legs. “See? At some point, they’ll always intersect, and that’s where we are.” I clasped my hands together. “We intersected.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. There are lots of good-looking people I am not friends with, and there are not-good-looking people I’m great friends with.” He tugged on a tendril of my hair, pulling my head back a tiny bit before letting go to slide his hand down my back and tunnel up under my shirt.

His finger began tracing circles on my skin.

Goosebumps spread all over me. I ignored them.

They were weird. Odd. I couldn’t handle having them, or the sensations that came from being in his arms, feeling his touch, feeling him all around me. Or the way his breath fanned over my shoulder, then my face because he was so close.

We were friends.

Friends didn’t affect each other like this, hold each other like this.

But we were still friends, right?

I swallowed over a lump. “Which one am I?”

“What do you think?”

I could hear his smirk.

And I couldn’t help myself. I reached up, my hands touching his face. I explored him. My fingertips moved over his jaw, feeling a slight stubble there, grazing its roughness, and I touched his mouth. He trembled, just slightly, but I followed the lips, and I was right.

He was smirking.

But it was disappearing under my touch.

I couldn’t see him, but I felt the air changing. It was folding in around us.

I could smell him, the mixture of sand and pine filling me up, circling around me, pulling me in.

I was closing my eyes, giving in, when suddenly he asked, “What’s the serious answer?”

“Why we’re connected?”

“Yeah.” His voice was rough, deepening. He felt what I was feeling, and before I knew it, I’d rocked forward on his lap.

He caught me, splaying his hand over my hip, and he leaned forward. I felt his breath warming my neck. Slowly, so slowly, he moved to pull on the end of my sleeve. He tugged, inch by inch, until a portion of my shoulder was bare to him.

If he dipped down, half an inch, his lips would be on me.

My heart sped up, and my breath quickened. My lungs constricted.

But the need—I ached, and I rocked forward once again.

He groaned under me, holding me even tighter, anchoring me to him.

I felt him hardening under me, and I couldn’t stop myself. I had ceased to think. I couldn’t remember what he’d asked in the first place, and I moved forward once more.

“Fuck,” he gasped, his mouth slamming down on my shoulder. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

I whispered, “No.” But I moved again, rocking forward until I was full-on grinding on him.

I couldn’t stop. Not if he asked. Not if I tried.