BROKEN BLOOD

Chapter Three: What Silence Costs

She called me four days later.

Four days of radio silence that felt louder than any conversation could have been — four days of catching Angel's eye across the dinner table and feeling like a stranger wearing my own face, four days of watching Dustin at a family dinner and having to physically stop my hand from shaking around my fork.

Come over. Please. We need to talk about this like adults.

That's what her text said. We both knew that wasn't really what either of us wanted, but it was the version of the truth we could type out and send.

I told Angel I had a late meeting. Another lie stacked neat on top of the others, and I was starting to understand how Dustin had done this for six years — you don't decide to become a liar all at once, you just cross one line and discover the ground on the other side isn't actually that different, and you keep walking.

Paige opened the door before I even knocked, like she'd been standing there watching for my headlights. She'd changed since that morning four days ago — hair down now, a fitted black dress that she definitely hadn't put on for a business conversation, and I registered, with a kind of dull inevitability, that neither of us was here to talk like adults at all.

"You came," she said.

"You knew I would."

She stepped back to let me in, and the door had barely clicked shut behind me before the air in the room went thick and electric, both of us standing there pretending we didn't know exactly where this was going.

"So." Her voice wasn't quite steady. "What do you want from me, Blake. You said you hadn't decided. Have you decided now?"

I should have said something about boundaries. About Angel, about Sarah, about the six other people this could destroy. I thought all of it in the half-second before I answered, and none of it made it out of my mouth, because the truth underneath all my righteous anger from four days ago was simpler and uglier than I wanted it to be: I had wanted her since long before I ever saw her with Dustin, and finding out about the affair hadn't killed that wanting — it had just given it teeth.

"I want the truth," I said instead. "Say it. Tell me you've wanted this too. Not just with Dustin. With me."

Her breath caught, something raw crossing her face before she could hide it. "Blake—"

"Say it, Paige."

"Yes." The word broke out of her like a confession dragged loose under torture. "God, yes, okay? I've thought about it. More than once. More than I should have. Is that what you needed to hear?"

The last of my resistance went up in smoke. I closed the distance between us in two steps and kissed her — not gentle, not asking permission, six years of watching and wanting and hating myself for both finally collapsing into the two inches of space between our mouths. She made a sound against my lips like something in her had been waiting for exactly this, her hands fisting in the front of my shirt, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away.

"This is insane," she breathed when we broke apart, forehead against mine, both of us breathing hard.

"I know."

"We shouldn't—"

"I know that too." I pulled back just far enough to look at her, at the flush already climbing her throat, at the way her eyes had gone dark and unguarded in a way I'd never seen directed at me before. "Tell me to stop and I will."

She didn't tell me to stop. She answered by dragging my mouth back down to hers, and this time there was no hesitation in it at all.

My hands found the zipper at the back of her dress and she shivered under my touch, arching into me as the fabric loosened, as I pushed it off her shoulders and let it pool at her feet, leaving her in nothing but black lace that did absolutely nothing to disguise how much she wanted this. I took a step back just to look at her — the curve of her waist, the way her chest rose and fell too fast, the small, nervous smile that broke through the desire like she couldn't quite believe this was actually happening.

"You've thought about this," I said, voice rough. "Tell me how."

"Blake—"

"Tell me." I walked her backward until her legs hit the edge of the bed, my hands sliding up her thighs, thumbs pressing into the soft skin just below the lace. "I want to hear it."

"Late at night," she admitted, breathless, eyes fluttering shut as my fingers traced higher. "After Dustin left. Wondering what it would be like if it were you instead. Hating myself for it."

"Look at me while you say it."

Her eyes opened, dark and glassy, and the sight of her like that — undone, honest, mine in this one stolen moment even if it destroyed both of us — snapped something loose in my chest. I laid her back against the sheets and followed her down, mouth finding her throat, her collarbone, learning the map of her with a kind of desperate thoroughness, like I could somehow make up for six years of not doing this in one night.

Her hands found the hem of my shirt, dragging it up and off, her palms flat against my chest like she needed to feel my heartbeat to believe any of this was real. I unhooked her bra with hands that weren't quite steady, and the sound she made when my mouth closed over her n****e, back arching off the bed, was the single most addictive thing I'd heard in longer than I wanted to admit.

"Blake—" Half a warning, half a plea, and I didn't let either one land, sliding lower, hooking my fingers into the lace at her hips and dragging it down her legs slow enough that she was trembling by the time it hit the floor.

"You don't get to feel guilty about this yet," I murmured against the inside of her thigh, feeling her whole body go tight with anticipation. "Not yet. Later. Right now you're just going to let me have you."

She didn't argue. Her fingers tangled into my hair the second my mouth found her, a broken sound tearing out of her that she immediately tried to muffle and failed, hips rising to meet me like she couldn't help it, like six years of wanting the wrong brother had built up a pressure that only this exact moment could release. I kept my hands locked around her hips, holding her right there on that thin, unbearable edge until she was gasping my name — not Dustin's, mine — over and over like it was the only word left in her vocabulary.

When she finally came apart it wasn't quiet. Her whole body arched, thighs shaking around my head, one hand clawing at the sheets and the other still fisted in my hair, and the sound she made echoed off the walls of that apartment like a confession neither of us could take back now.

I gave her exactly long enough to catch her breath before I was over her again, her legs wrapping around my waist on instinct, pulling me down, both of us too far gone now to pretend this was anything other than exactly what it was.

"Are you sure," I asked, one last time, my voice barely holding together, my body screaming at me to stop asking and just take.

"I've never been more sure of anything," she said, and dragged my mouth back to hers.

I sank into her slow, feeling her whole body go rigid then melt around the intrusion, both of us groaning at the same time, foreheads pressed together, breath mingling. She was tight and impossibly warm, and the way she gasped my name against my throat when I started to move undid something in me completely — every ounce of guilt I'd walked in with burning off in the heat between us until there was nothing left in the room but her nails dragging down my back and the sound of her begging me not to stop.

We didn't stop. Not for a long time.

Afterward, tangled together in sheets gone damp and twisted, her head on my chest, both of us silent in the aftermath of something we couldn't undo now even if we wanted to, she finally spoke into the dark.

"This doesn't fix anything, you know. It just makes it worse."

"I know," I said, staring at her ceiling the way I'd stared at mine four nights ago. "I don't care."

What I didn't tell her — what I could barely admit to myself — was that somewhere underneath the anger and the blackmail and the six years of buried wanting, I already knew this wasn't going to be a one-time thing.

And I had absolutely no idea yet just how much deeper this family's rot actually went.