The Good Liar (Infidelity #1)

by C.P. Harris

Cole studied me, studied the wayward curl swaying across my forehead like a carrot on a string. The fine leather gloves he’d held out for me now creaked between one white-knuckled fist. I knew my rabbit. Knew his need to comb the curl away if only so he could touch some part of me.

“Hey, you two,” Sofia said, gliding to a stop in front of us, the boys continuing on without her. “Are you just going to stand there all night?” Night. When had the sun fully set? How long had Cole and I actually been standing there silently making the decision to touch and be touched?

“Don’t encourage her,” I said, taking his hand and weaving us through the crowd toward the skate rental booth. He was less familiar with Brooklyn than he was with the city. Prospect Park was big, and I didn’t want him to get lost—so I told my brain when it shouted for me to let go of him. Sure, he ran a successful company projected to double in size over the next five years. Yeah, maybe he did get himself to Brooklyn in the first place. Maybe it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out how to stay within the skating area, but I didn’t feel like having to search for him when it was time to go. And I didn’t need better excuses when it was only the inside of my head hearing them.

I removed my hat and sliced impatient fingers through my own hair, noting it could do with a cut, but knowing I’d let it grow to my ankles because Cole liked it long. What are you doing, Jasper?

“Jas?” he asked two octaves above a whisper. That earned him a backward glare from the people seated in front of us, and a chorus of shushes from behind. I kept my eyes straight ahead, but allowed my legs to fall open, my knee coming to rest along his. When we were boys, we’d link our pinkies under the dinner table. I’d had to learn how to eat left-handed. When we were near it had been impossible not to touch, not to hold, not to love.

shut up im crying

An hour later when the projector went off and the lights came up, signaling the start of intermission before the Q & A portion of the conference began, I slipped a square of paper into his hands. “A few questions I thought of for you,” I said. He unfolded it, reading while absently shaking his head in confoundment. “You did this for me?” “You say it like no one does anything nice for you.” It was just a few questions. The idea was absurd. He had drivers and assistants and chefs and maids. Lovers, I was sure. Anything he wanted could be obtained with a beckoned call from him. “It’s not the same,” he said.

I shrugged it off as nothing, terrified by the open look on his face. The unveiled love and appreciation. “It’s just a few questions.” “No,” he said. “It’s not.” He was the first to raise a hand when the time came, his voice booming to be heard down below, and he reached over to squeeze my hand, mouthing thank you, after having been told his question was a good one.

I went home to Daniel, and while he made love to me that night, I imagined all the ways Cole could be fucking Leland, wondering if he was taking his body in the same ways and positions he’d once taken mine. I was so caught up in my envy, caught up in the way it was killing me, I missed the moment when Daniel left my body and our bed.

“He promised,” Jasper had said with childlike hope. He’d be devastated, and while I should be celebrating Daniel disappointing him, all I could muster was my own heartbreak for what this would do to him. Not like this, I didn’t want to win him like this. I didn’t want him more broken than he already was, because I loved him more than I wanted him.

“I hope it’s okay that I came,” I said. “I ran into Daniel at the office, and when it was clear he wouldn’t make it, I figured I’d show up for you instead.”

“Was he sorry?” he whispered. “Was he at least fucking destroyed he couldn’t make it?” He finally met my gaze. His hair was gelled back into a sleek bun at his nape, and the sharp points of his cheekbones were tinged pink with either anger or embarrassment, and his eyes were round pools of bleakness. I wanted to send him to his knees, I wanted to get down on mine, I wanted to kiss every aching part of him right then.

sobbing

His hands disappeared under the table just as everyone else started in on their food. I picked up my fork, moving the potatoes and peas around, my stomach a ball of knots and blades. I wanted to storm Nexcom’s offices, hoist Daniel to his feet before laying my fists into him, consequences be damned. Instead, I focused on what I could do to help Jasper right then, and discreetly slid the hand closest to him under the table, searching out his fingers, then hooking my pinky around his and squeezed. A ghost of a gloomy smile played around his lips, and with a sigh, he rolled his shoulders back, and held on when I attempted to pull my hand away. He picked up his fork. “Good thing I learned how to eat with my left hand,” he said.

I felt a pride that went beyond brotherly, beyond what a friend felt for a friend, and beyond even the pride of lovers. I loved him as a person first and foremost. No matter how imperfect he believed himself to be, there was no denying just how perfect he was to me.

😭😭😭

How could Daniel not see that? Not appreciate it? And how could Jasper accept that for himself? Had Selene’s death, had the circumstances in which she’d died, truly sent him into a spiral of self-loathing he couldn’t pry himself out of? I felt the weight of it on my shoulders, because I didn’t know how to help him. The more I down talked Daniel, the more Jasper would dig his heels in, the more he’d profess his love for him. Hurting Daniel would win me no points with Jasper. Not as long as he was intent on only seeing the bad in himself. Until that changed, he’d continue to believe himself worthy of what he was receiving, which was nothing.

I dragged myself over to the piano, adjacent to the fireplace, and took a seat on the bench, loosening my bow tie as I gazed over my shoulder at him. Jasper watched me from his drunken lean against the archway. I hadn’t bothered with the light switch; the moon and city lights would have to do. “Your Steinway,” Jasper said with a slight slur. “I didn’t notice it the last time I was here.” “Leland surprised me. Had it shipped here from Seattle.” I had no intention of going through the trouble. I hadn’t played it in years. Not since Jasper up and disappeared from my life, removing my source of inspiration. It had only served as a reminder of all we’d lost. A reminder of the times I’d made love to him on top of it or up against it. Times when our parents would jet away for a romantic weekend, leaving us to our own devices. We’d send the staff home and take our pleasure out in the open. No hiding, no hands over mouths or teeth clamped around fists to catch our screams, to soften the blow of our mutual climax. I could still smell the phantom scent of my cum as it trickled from his snug hole onto the shiny black surface of the Baby Grand.

“I like my men submissive with only the occasional flare of temper in bed for those moments when I’d rather take than be given. Because sometimes, I like to fight for what’s mine.” Jasper’s hitch of breath was the only sign he’d been affected by my declaration.

I raised the fallboard and stretched my fingers, wondering where to start, wondering if I still had it in me. I let love guide me. I let my love for him guide me. My fingers floated over the keys self-consciously, but with every note I landed correctly, and with every click of Jasper’s shoes announcing he was drawing near, I became more confident. More secure. “Claude Debussy,” he said, settling next to me on the bench, resting his head on my shoulder. “My favorite.” I played like the song didn’t have an ending, restarting before the moment had a chance to slip away from us. I played through every uttered, “Again,” that escaped his lips.

I wanted to smash something with my bare hands. I wanted to force him to take those words back. But more importantly I wanted to listen, because he needed me to.

“You scare me,” he said in a small voice, putting an end to my mental shouting. “The things you make me want to do to him scare me.” My brows nudged each other. “Like what?” I asked. What could I have possibly made him want to do to Daniel? Leave him? My lovesick heart supplied. Cheat on him? A more sinister part of me said. The part that knew he wouldn’t leave Daniel, and that I’d do anything to have even a tiny piece of him.

“He’s better than me.” I pressed a kiss to the top of his head to keep from barking out the crude words clogging my throat. I breathed steadily, winding myself down. “No one’s better than you, Jasper. No one.”

“I manipulated you to have you. From the very beginning. From the moment I met you all I could think about was what I could do to have you. Not in that way. Not at first. But I wanted you. Always in some way.” “I knew that, Jas. All your subtle and shy attempts at seducing me when we got older didn’t go unnoticed. You weren’t the clever little mouse you thought you were.” I tapped my forehead to his. He sliced one hand through my hair, and used the other to situate my palm at the base of his skull. I moaned, my forehead rolling against his. It’d been so long since we’d touched like this. “I hate it when your hands aren’t on me. Always so hu–hungry. Starving for–for your touch, Cole.” His words were disjointed, a mash of feelings brought on by too much alcohol digested in too short a time span, and by whatever sat here with us, eating him alive. “Jasper,” I rasped, “you’re drunk.”

Our kiss turned violent, painful, toxic, even, as one of us spilled blood. The smell and taste of vodka on his tongue pierced through the delicious coppery tang sliding down my throat, smacking a bit of sense into me. I wrenched my face away from him. “We can’t.” My voice sounded monstrous. Jasper sent both legs around my middle, his toned ass pressing against the piano keys once more, the sound worked like a stiff wind, clearing the last of my haze. “I need you,” he whimpered, bucking up into me. “Not like this. I need you to make the choice with a clear head.” I pried his digging fingers from around my neck. “Not like this.” I was giving up my opportunity to have him, but in his current frame of mind, taking Jasper would only serve to prove I was a better lover than Daniel. It would do little to prove I was a better man than him.

“Can I stay?” he asked. “I can’t go home to him tonight.” He could stay, he could never leave. One word from him and I’d make it so he’d never have to lay his beautiful eyes on Daniel again. Whatever the cost may be. There was no price I wouldn’t pay.

Jasper reached blindly for me, and I crawled over, letting him cling to me like a magnet, his nose searching out the spot below my chin. I held him there, cradling him by a fistful of his minty hair. “I’m going to be sick tomorrow,” he murmured incoherently, gentle snores chasing the end of his statement. “Don’t worry,” I whispered into his wispy curls. “I’ll take care of you.” I would do anything for you.

I gazed at the t-shirt and sweats I now wore. They had been waiting on the bed for me when I got out of the shower. Cole and I were close enough in height, but he was broader, bulkier, so the clothes hung off my frame a bit. “I’ll get these back to you.” “Keep them,” he said.

“Are you thinking about—” “Yes, I am,” he said. “You were so damn irritating.” “And you were so mean,” I shouted to be heard over the saxophone player performing for tips a short distance from us. Cole swallowed his last bite of hot dog, and I swiped a glob of mustard from the corner of his mouth, licking it off my finger without thinking, sending us into a freeze-frame not even the two squealing kids pushing between us could interrupt. Cole snapped out of it first, wiping his mouth with a balled-up napkin. “I’m still mean,” he said, keeping the conversation rolling.

Cole rubbed his cold palms together to generate warmth while I shrugged my coat over my shoulders. Without thought, and as natural as it had once been, I covered his hands with mine, providing added friction. “You were always more warm-blooded than me,” he said. “That was a lie I told so you’d let me into your bed at night,” I confessed.

“You remember the kiss last night and you feel bad about it, don’t you? Is that why you’re avoiding him?” In all honesty, I didn’t feel bad. Maybe because I hadn’t truly faced the kiss yet. That would change once I forgave Daniel. Once I forgave him, I would then be the one needing to be forgiven. Letting go, forgiving him, would have to wait. I wanted to feel good just a little longer. “He could’ve shown up just this once. I mean, he could’ve even called.” “I can’t argue with that,” Cole agreed. “But if he had shown up, I wouldn’t have, and I don’t regret a thing about last night.” His gaze turned predatory, and my insides clenched around a knot of hunger having nothing to do with needing to be fed, at least not with actual food.

Catching them kissing through the window had raised the stakes. I’d been equal parts angry, sad, and murderous. I’d thought the fire roaring in my gut, and the tears budding behind my eyes came from believing Dylan was taking my brother—and my best friend from me. In reality, it had been so much more than that. So much more. It had taken a while longer to understand that, though.

“Took me two years of therapy to realize calling her Mom only amplified my self-hate. Now,” he shrugged. “I’m used to the shift. I don’t want to imagine what going back would do.” The acidic burn of guilt scorched my tongue. I wished I’d been there for him. Wished he hadn’t needed the therapy I so desperately needed but refused to seek out, because I didn’t deserve relief. The pain for what I’d done would forever remain front and center, as it should. But I should’ve suffered in this alone. Not him. Never him. “I’m glad you’re better.”

We got back to Cole’s place and made it as far as the darkness of his living room before he pulled me to him for a hug. It was natural for us. Not touching meant not breathing when we were alone. Brothers, friends, lovers… It didn’t matter. We’d always been affectionate. We’d always needed it. We could be the same without being the same, couldn’t we? Even as I posed the question to myself, I stepped in impossibly closer, my hands gliding up his spine from where I’d slipped them under his coat. His breath against my neck came at a faster and faster clip, and I inhaled with my nose pressed against the spot beneath his ear.

“Then why are you here with me, right now?” Because I’m in love with you, I wanted to scream. Because I’m selfish, and I can’t stop doing evil things no matter who they hurt. Because I just want to go back, I want to take it all back. Make my wrong right again. But I can’t, because the only other person I’d ever loved more than I love you is gone. Gone because of me. “Because I want you…” I said instead of all that, and then tacked on like a coward, “in my life.”

“Say it. What are you thinking?” I asked. He removed a hand from his pocket to ruffle his hair, filling his cheeks with air before releasing it into the quiet. Returning his hand to his pocket, he said, “I’m thinking you should talk to Daniel. I’m thinking you may not be drunk tonight, but you’re still operating from an unclear head because you’re upset with him. I think you need to be damn sure about this, because I won’t turn you down a third time.”

This could end badly. Would end badly. No, I could handle it, I thought anxiously. I could do this, and Daniel would never need to know. But what if it didn’t work out that way? What if I ended up scorching everything around me because I couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie? Because I couldn’t get over Cole. Would. It. Be. Worth it? The doors eased shut, caging me in with my rambling conscience. The tiny voice whispered up the line from my heart and into my skull. Yes, it said. Having him in some way would be worth everything.

We behaved like three-year-olds, but we didn’t cross the line. And that’s what mattered, right? I asked myself before falling asleep across his chest every night. We were brothers, and brothers could act this way. It could mean nothing if we didn’t want it to.

We never spoke again about our kiss, or a possible affair, or me leaving Daniel. We just lived each moment a second at a time, regaining something pivotal, something I never wanted to lose again, something I was also terrified of re-obtaining.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this. Daniel wanted it to be a surprise—” “Tell me anyway. I’d rather not be surprised than to see you like this, Cole.” “Daniel wants to whisk you away for a few days. Sounded like he wants to get your marriage back on track.” “Oh. I mean, that’s a good thing, right?” “Yeah,” he chuckled darkly, shoving off his stool and exiting the kitchen. “It’s the fucking best, baby brother.”

“I don’t like what he’s doing to you,” Leland whispered. “He isn’t doing anything to me. I knew the deal before I got here. I’m the one with the problem.” I didn’t want him disliking Jasper. They were both important to me, and I didn’t need Leland working against us.

“So, you’re going to have your stepbrother’s husband looked into?” “He’s technically not my stepbrother anymore.” “That’s the part you choose to address?” he asked.

I’d then have him in my bed, because his preference for falling asleep on my sofa didn’t go unnoticed. And while I couldn’t argue against its comfort, I also knew it felt safer than the bedroom to him; he could tell himself what we were doing wasn’t wrong so long as we weren’t doing it between my sheets.

Things tended to revert to being strained between us whenever he spent a significant amount of time with his husband. I hated when he had to leave me, even for one night, because it meant I’d have to fight to climb over his walls again.

We were too far from each other, even though his breath fanned my lips, even though I could count the three nearly translucent freckles on his perfect nose.

“One other thing. I know the lines between us can easily become blurred with me being your firm’s most valuable client, and also being family. I’d prefer it if you addressed me as Mr. Kincaid when in a work setting,” I said before strolling off.

iconic

“What is it you want to hear me say? That the thought of Daniel’s hands on my stepbrother makes me want to draw blood? That I’d never be able to settle for an intimate affair with Jasper if it meant he’d be going home to be fucked by him?” I pointed a scathing finger in Daniel’s direction. “But that I’d do it without hesitation and pay whatever life-altering consequences and emotional penalties would come of it later because I’m fucking obsessed with him and was a fool to think this could end any other way,” I hissed, so close to him I could feel my breath rebound off his skin.

“Fuck you,” he spat. “Now you’re talking,” I said, ripping his hand away from his lowered zipper and reaching in to withdraw him again. I let his cock stand between us, but not before sweeping a finger over its glossy crown and bringing it to my mouth. We shivered in unison. “Why would you do this?” I asked. “Why here, when you know it would break me?” “We’re just brothers. Friends. It shouldn’t matter—” “Cut the bullshit, Jas. You know it matters. You know it does.”

He moved to slip his hard cock back into his pants. “Leave it,” I snarled, roughly unbuttoning and removing my blazer before flinging it over Daniel’s desk. “What are you doing?” Jasper asked, staring over my shoulder at the closed door. “I’m not sending you home with him like this,” I said, licking a stripe up my palm before wrapping my fist around his erection. He stifled a groan, gripping my forearm. Not with enough pressure to make me stop, but enough so he could say he tried.

“You’re upset with me for coming back,” I said jerkily. “You’re upset with yourself for wanting this. For needing it. But please,” I begged. “Don’t be mean. Let me know when you’re coming, Jasper.”

“Look at me,” I said when his panicked gaze went back to the door. “The only thing you think about right now is me, is this moment.” I didn’t give a damn if we torched the world that very instant with our lies and disloyalty. “You’re mine. This was inevitable. And I never want his fucking hands on you again.”

“I–I’m coming,” he breathed, gripping the edge of the desk. I was on my knees as the first jet shot through him, my mouth taking over for my hand as I choked him down whole, pumping my face back and forth relentlessly. “Shit,” he cried with some restraint for the situation we were in. He clamped his hands over my head, undulating into my mouth, no longer being a passive participant. Voices filtered in from a distance, and I fully expected him to pull away, but his orgasm was beyond his control, beyond his need for self-preservation.

I got to my feet, tangling my hand in his hair again, holding him still as I licked what spilled from him off my hand, making a sloppy show of it. “Cole,” he whispered urgently, but not before swallowing thickly. His clothes were situated now, and the smart thing to do would’ve been to release him, but I had to taste his pouty lips. I had to erase Daniel’s mark there. I smashed our mouths together, tonguing him ruthlessly, spreading the taste of him, of us, over his gums. My heart sang when he gave in for a split second before forcing me away.