New Brother

Growing Tension

Hailey

Time drifted as we placed our orders and the dishes arrived, the waiter attending to us. Damien Black seemed preoccupied, his attention split between his phone, intermittent calls, and three glasses of wine that adorned the table by the end of our lunch. He barely spared a glance in my direction, yet I found myself stealing looks at him, sizing him up every now and then.

And the conclusion was infuriatingly clear—he was flawless.

Throughout the meal, I'd been desperately searching for imperfections. Why, I couldn't quite fathom. Perhaps it was a feeble attempt to convince myself that he was human, fallible, or maybe—more plausibly—the reason I refused to acknowledge: to give myself cause to deny...liking him.

I didn't know why I wanted to dislike him. But I just wanted to. Real bad.

This whole situation was fucked up, and I was acutely aware of it. But awareness did little to guide my actions.

I was not naive. I knew my stuff. I knew when I was attracted to a man and right now, the man before me, I was attracted to him in ways I couldn't fathom. To the point that I could imagine him when fingering myself—well, call me shameless but that's what I felt. He truly had the kind of face girls would love to imagine between their thighs.

"Well, Damien, Madison, and I are planning to take a drive. Could you possibly drop Hailey off at the apartment on your way to the office?"

Coby's announcement caught me off guard, nearly causing me to choke on my food. I shot wide-eyed looks at him and then at Mom.

"What?"

"You never let her in on the plan in advance, do you?" Coby chuckled, glancing at Mom as he stood up.

"If I had told her, she wouldn't have come," Mom chuckled too, rising from her seat. So, this was their ploy? They'd ordered lightly for themselves, scheming to bond with my newly discovered older brother of seven years?

Shit! This was messed up. I couldn't bear to meet his fucking gaze, let alone share a car ride with him.

Tugging at Mom's dress , I shook my head in a silent plea to dissuade her. Damien noticed, yet he chose to remain silent.

What was he thinking? He'd been ominously quiet throughout lunch, and I could only imagine the tension building during the impending car ride.

"Damien, honey, do you have time? I don't want to cause any trouble for you. If you're too busy, Coby and I can drop her off before we head out," my mother said.

Given Damien's preoccupation with a string of important phone calls since the beginning, I anticipated a polite refusal. However, to my surprise, he nodded. "Sure, I can drive her home. It's no problem."

A smile spread across my mom's face at his response. "Thank you, honey, and I apologize for the trouble."

"Great! Then Madison and I will head off," Coby announced, patting Damien's back, whose unexpected gaze had locked onto me, unyielding. Mom leaned in and placed a kiss on my cheek.

"Finish your lunch and then head out, alright?"

"I can just take a cab. He seems busy anyway," I stammered, desperately trying to avoid this unwanted journey home.