Seductive Secrecy (Shadows series) (20 page)

I stopped him. “Cameron, if you’re asking if I mind if your brother moves in, my answer is of course he can. He’s your family.”

He kissed my hand. “It’ll only be until he finds the right place.”

I kissed his hand back. “He should stay as long as it takes.”

I felt his body relax a bit against the couch. I almost couldn’t believe he’d asked
me
before offering his place to Ryder. It was his apartment after all; he paid for it, not me. This was another way for
him to show me how much I really did matter in his life, of how
much
he respected and valued me. I was honored that he would even
consider my opinion on this.

“Thank you,” he leaned forward and the kiss he gave me was much deeper, much more passionate than the one I had given him when I’d first come in.

“No, I should be thanking you.”

He smiled. “For what?”

I sighed. “Just for being…you.” I nestled my head in his shoulder.

He kissed the top of my head. “Hey, Thunder,” he called out
happily. “Put on a little speed in there. I have someone out here I
want you to meet.”

“Thunder?” I asked.

Cameron laughed. “Yeah. It’s his nickname. I used to call him that when we were kids.”

My head spun a bit as thoughts of the mansion rushed back to me.

I knew someone named Thunder...

My hands began to sweat and my fingers turned numb. “Why do you...where did that name come from?”

Cameron blushed a little as he told me. “In every house we lived
in, we shared a bedroom. Sometimes there was only one bed. We
were always together, and considering how our lives were, I preferred it that way.”

Thoughts, memories, precise details started to swirl through my
mind.

Thunder.

It couldn’t be...

He laughed. “But man—you should have heard the sounds that guy made in bed.”

I got the feeling I
had
heard them. But I knew he wasn’t talking about the sounds I was thinking of.

“Cam, do you have any takeout menus?” Ryder shouted. “I’m starving.”

As soon as I heard his voice calling from the bathroom, I knew…I
knew
.

I knew…
him
.

“I have a whole drawer full,” Cameron yelled back. “What are you in the mood for?”

I heard the click of the door and the sound of his shoes on the
hardwood floor. I slowly turned around to meet him, wondering if
he’d recognize me as immediately as I’d recognized him. My eyes
dropped
to his feet, gradually taking him in again: his long, toned legs
outlined
in his jeans, his belt riding under his narrow hips, and his waist gradually widening up his torso to his shoulders. His neck was
much
thicker than his brother’s, his black hair a bit longer, messy and
gelled.
But like Cameron, scruff covered his cheeks and shaded the
thickness of his lips.

Those lips have traveled my body...

His skin was lighter, though. And his eyes were blue with a
touch of gray.

They’re just as blue behind a mask...

He stood only a few feet from me, his hand reaching toward me to shake. “Charlie!” There was no mistaking it. His Boston accent was thick, and the more he spoke, the more the memories flooded my head. “It’s nice to finally meet…you.” His expression told me he knew something wasn’t quite right.

“I’m...uh...I’m happy to meet you as well, Ryder.” I tried my best
to avoid his gaze. “I know Cameron is…so glad…to have you
home.”

He released my hand, but his eyes stayed on me. They had
followed me during his entire walk over to the couch, but now he was taking
in all of me: my legs, my breasts and my face in one long, drawn-out
scan.

It wasn’t the first time that had happened.

“How about pizza?” Cameron asked.

I avoided his stare.

“Pizza is…fine,” Ryder replied slowly.

When I finally looked up again, Ryder’s gaze was locked on mine.

Cameron stood from the couch and moved into the kitchen, but Ryder remained in front of me, his eyes searching my face as quickly as mine were scanning his.

“You…” he said softly.

I turned my head, my eyes moving to Cameron as my back shot
up straight and pushed against the couch. My feet began to tap
against the wood floors. The food I had eaten before I’d gone to Chet’s was now sloshing around my stomach.

Even with everything I’d done in my shadowed past, I had
never been so lost for the right thing to do as I was at that moment.

I slowly turned my face back to Ryder. I had to make sure I
wasn’t imagining this. Cameron was right; he had lost weight…at
least
fifteen pounds. I could see it now in his cheeks, the way the shirt
hugged his stomach where his ripped abs had lost some of their definition. He’d been quite a bit bigger when I’d seen him last. But it was unmistakably him.

“
You’re
Thunder
?
” It came out in a rougher whisper than I’d
intended. My mouth watered. I tried to swallow it all down. My
hands went to my belly, trying to rub away the nausea that was threatening to send everything back up.

“Cee…”

There was no misjudging it. We both knew: Ryder had been one of my clients at the mansion. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. I could tell that he didn’t know how to react to the realization, either. What I did know was that we
had
to tell Cameron. There was no way we could keep something this significant from him.

He deserved to know the truth.

What
that you’re a slut? Like he doesn’t already know that.

The fact that you’ve fucked his brother will be a surprise, though.

Lilly’s voice appeared again, to remind me of how undeserving I was of such a good man. She was right, as always.

I didn’t deserve him.

I looked away from Ryder and watched Cameron from across the apartment. He was happier than I’d ever seen him. He had his brother; he had me. He had his family in his home.

And it was all a lie.

I didn’t know how I was going to tell him, but I knew it had to be done. He had to know that Ryder and I had met before, that we’d been intimate.

I had to tell him that I’d known Ryder as Thunder, too.

But in an entirely different way.

“AM I MISSING SOMETHING?”
Cameron asked. His head moved
back and forth, his eyes following as he glanced from me to his
brother. He held a to-go menu in his hand, but I didn’t think he had even looked at it. He stood behind the couch, waiting for an answer.

I didn’t want to be the first person to speak. Ryder didn’t appear as if he wanted to either. And the two of us just stared at each other, unsure how to move forward from this.

It sickened me that I knew his body as well as I knew
Cameron’s. That if he removed his button-down, I knew the words tattooed right
under his neck,
Always Stay True To You
, the images that circled his
chest
and the ones that traveled down each arm, stopping right at his
elbow.

“Ryder? Charlie? Someone needs to start talking,” Cameron demanded.

I looked at Ryder standing in front of me. I didn’t want Cameron to see my face. If he gazed directly into my eyes, he would know. I wouldn’t be able to hide it.

And then I would be just another source of pain for him.

So would Ryder.

“What the
fuck
is going on?” Cameron said, in a much stronger tone.

Ryder kept his arms crossed and his lips glued shut as he
glanced down at me. There was a look on his face that I couldn’t quite read… probably because I didn’t know his face as well as his body. In our meetings, those features had always been hidden behind a mask.

Someone had to give Cameron something. I had to be the one to
do it.

Time slowed to a crawl as I shifted my attention toward him. His eyes finally met mine; I couldn’t hold back the emotion that filled them. I let them flow, knowing there would be many more to come.

His brows furrowed, and he squinted as he searched my face. I
saw his fists clench beside him. “You two know each other...don’t
you?”

Ryder and I glanced at each other. 

“From where?” he asked as if he already knew the answer.

“Cam, listen...” Ryder started.

Cameron wasn’t interested in what his brother had to say. He
focused on me. “You’ve been with him…haven’t you?”

I was frozen.

“
Haven’t you?
” He was yelling now. Ryder didn’t move. He
didn’t say anything. He stood to the side, where he knew he belonged at the moment. This was between Cameron and me.

“Yes,” I finally answered.

His nostrils flared as his breath rushed in and out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I wanted to hold his hand. I wanted to move closer to show him how much I regretted having to tell him this—how much I regretted that it had happened at all—but I didn’t. As much as I hated giving him space, it was how he processed pain: alone. So I wrapped my
fingers around the back of the couch and squeezed until my
knuckles turned white and I filled my lungs with long, deep breathes.

“I didn’t know, Cameron.”

“You didn’t
know
?” His almost sounded like he was mocking
me. “We have the same last name, Charlie! How could you
not know?
”

“I didn’t know his last name.” I took another deep breath. “I didn’t know his first name, either.”

“What are you saying?” He knew. I was sure of it. But he wanted to hear one of us say it.

I glanced at Ryder standing mute off to the side. I had given my portion of honesty. Now I was going to give him a chance to do the same. “Do you want to tell him?”

A look I could finally distinguish covered Ryder’s face: pain. He’d never told his brother about the mansion…that was obvious;
Cameron would have told me by now if he’d known. I’m sure he
wasn’t
proud of it, and knew his brother would have been hugely
disappointed by it. But Ryder’s shame wasn’t my concern.

Cameron was.

He hadn’t judged me for my decision; I didn’t believe he would judge his brother, either. But Cameron was a father figure to Ryder;
he’d cared for him when no one else had. They were their entire
family. I couldn’t imagine what the dynamic of that was like. I only knew that I had no right to question it, or to compromise it.

And without realizing it, that’s exactly what I’d done.

“Cameron,” Ryder started, his hands dropped to his sides and
slipped into his pockets. He glanced to the floor, then back up. “I
guess I’m just not sure where to begin with all of this.”

I swallowed hard. “He knows everything about the mansion.” I
couldn’t stop the nervous flood in my mouth. “From my side,
anyway.”

He nodded, his stare shifting to Cameron. Ryder’s breathing was heavy; he rocked back and forth nervously on his heels. “I was with her at that house, brother. At the mansion.”

Until tonight, I’d never really seen Cameron get angry... or
violent.
The emotion that had come from him in the past was clipped and
reserved, more of a quiet frustration. His tone would strengthen
suddenly at times, but it would soften just as quickly. He held a lot in, and I was still trying to find ways to draw it out. But once those words left his brother’s mouth, it all came through at once.

He lunged toward the table, grabbed a thick, black vase that was resting there and hurled it across the room. “
Fuck!
” he screamed. It
hit the far wall and dented the sheetrock before falling to the floor
and shattering into pieces all over the wood. The horrible noise it made echoed through the apartment.

The vase had sailed past Ryder, not more than a few inches from hitting his shoulder. But he hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even flinched.

I did, though. My body jumped involuntarily when the sound filled the room. But my lips remained sealed.

I kept my eyes on Cameron, watching him as he stalked to the
elevator. He didn’t even turn around before the door closed. He
stayed pointed toward the back wall, his hands propping him up as he hung his head.

Ryder and I stayed where we were, too stunned to move. Each passing second gnawed at me. Having one of my clients show up in my new life was one of my biggest fears, and it had come true. And it couldn’t have been in a more personal way.

Why did it have to be Cameron’s brother?