“It was nothing, Sara.”
He was lying to her. Sara turned her head so she could see his profile. He didn’t move, he didn’t blink, as her eyes perused the side of his face. “It was something,” she clipped out.
“You’re right. It was, but…” Lincoln sighed. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” She waited for his answer, wondering why she was having such a hard time sucking air into her lungs.
His eyes fixated on her; there was something about the endless gray depths of them; the way they smoldered like smoke from a fire, mysterious and magnetic. “I’m trying…so hard…to do the honorable thing, Sara,” Lincoln said, his voice harsh with emotion.
She frowned, moving back a step. “What do you mean, Lincoln?”
“I feel like Jekyll and Hyde most times I’m around you.” He studied her face. “You must think I’m crazy.”
“Right now, at this moment, yes, I do,” she said.
Lincoln didn’t laugh; he didn’t even smile. “When you want something so bad, when you deny yourself it, day after day, for so long, after a while, you ask yourself why you’re even doing it. You hope it will fade and die; you hope your secrets won’t be revealed, because it wouldn’t just kill you if they were, but it would kill other people as well. So you forsake yourself for the greater good, but sometimes, most times, it’s too much of a burden, Sara. Do you know what I’m saying?” he asked slowly.
She backed up another step, shaking her head. “No. I don’t,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Sara.” Lincoln moved for her.
Sara put a hand out. “Don’t.” She spun around, hurrying up the hill. He called after her in a ragged voice, but she didn’t pause, didn’t turn around. Tears, warm and unwanted, trickled down her face and her chest hurt so bad she wondered if she could pass out from it. Whatever he was trying to tell her, she didn’t want to know it. She couldn’t know it.
***
As soon as the door opened, she blurted, “I’m sorry.”
He blinked tired eyes at her, moving away from the door to let her enter. “For what?”
“For the other day, when I left. I’m sorry. And also, for now, for showing up so late and unannounced. It’s almost ten at night and you probably have to work tomorrow.” She was shivering, partly from the cold, partly from the words that had haunted her since the minute Lincoln had spoken them.
Lincoln groaned, rubbing his eyes, making them redder than they already were. “Oh my God, Sara, I’m so sick of hearing you say that. I don’t want your apologies.” He turned away from her.
“Then what?” She swallowed; eyes on his tense back. “What do you want?”
He swung around, locking her in place with his gaze. “Do you really want to ask that?”
Sara backpedaled from the power of Lincoln’s gaze, from the ferocity of him. “I don’t know what you mean.” Yes, you do. She felt like she was playing a game and one false move and she would lose. But it wasn’t a game; it was their lives.
“You always say that. But I think you do.” He cocked his head. “Maybe you just don’t want to.” Lincoln stepped toward her. “I’m sick of this, Sara. I’m sick of you blaming yourself, I’m sick of seeing you hurt like you do. I’m sick of pretending, I’m sick of being your buddy when all I want to do is…” Lincoln pressed his lips together, shaking his head.
Sara sucked in fast breaths, her hands opening and closing at her sides. She showed Lincoln her back, his words incomprehensible, the look in his eyes undeniable. Sara closed her eyes against it, but it was burned into her retinas. She couldn’t make it unseen. She couldn’t remove it from her mind.
“I saw you first,” whispered through the air.
Sara stiffened, her heart immediately beating too fast. She kept her back to him. “What?” came out strangled.
“I saw you first. Only days before he did, but I still saw you first. I was walking in the woods and I saw you along the road. Your hair was in a ponytail and it bounced against your back as you walked. You had on jeans, white tennis shoes, and a pink hooded sweatshirt.
“The sun made you glow like an angel and something happened in my stomach. It felt like the air was knocked out of me and it was a kind of sick feeling. You stopped to look at some purple flowers, picking one to tuck behind your ear.” He inhaled deeply, his voice ragged when he continued, “The next time I saw you, you were with Cole, and that was that. But I saw you first, Sara. And when I saw you, I knew you were meant for me. I’d never felt like that before and I’ve never felt like that since. I tried to deny it, I tried to forget you. Every woman I dated; I hoped she’d be the one to take the place of you in my heart. Only it never worked. Not even the fact that you were my brother’s could make it stop.
“The guilt I felt, have always felt, it’s torn me up inside. The anger and resentment I’ve fought against every day since that first day I saw you with him; at myself, at Cole, at fate. It hurt every time I saw you hug or kiss, because I wanted to be the one doing the hugging and kissing. The way you looked at him…I wanted that for me as well. Wanting my brother’s girl, wanting my brother’s wife; what kind of horrible person was I? Didn’t matter. I kept wanting you.”
She couldn’t breathe. Sara was struggling to breathe and nothing was happening. She wanted him to stop, to shut up, to quit saying the words he could never take back, the words that could never be erased once spoken.
“Then the wreck happened and the guilt became too much, because, sometimes, I’d thought about if Cole wasn’t around, maybe it would have been you and me. Not that I’d ever wanted anything bad to happen to him, but just, like if he’d moved away, or was married to some other woman. I never would have wanted to happen what did, but sometimes, in the back of my mind, I wondered if I was to blame. Maybe it was my fault, somehow, for wanting the woman I could never have. And the pain of losing him was horrible, agonizing, but the thought of losing you was unbearable.
“The worst thing is…after everything…I still want you,” Lincoln ended softly, his voice raw, pained. “I saw you first, but you never saw me. Never have. Not even now.”
Sara closed her eyes. The air shifted behind her and she felt his heat seep into her back and knew he was close. “Don’t. Lincoln, I can’t hear this,” she said, her voice cracking.
“It’s already done. I can’t stop. I won’t stop,” he said raggedly. She felt the feather light touch of his hand as it brushed hair away from her neck and Sara shivered. “I’m done stopping, Sara. See me. Please. Just once. Turn around and see me.” His hand wrapped around her upper arm and slowly turned her around. Sara kept her eyes closed, not strong enough to accept what she knew she would see in his eyes.
“Look at me. Look at me, Sara,” he commanded, his fingers digging into her shoulders.
Sara mutely shook her head, tears dropping from her eyes and falling down her face. Her heart hurt from the tightening in her chest.
“Look at me,” he pleaded.
The entreating note in his voice was too much and Sara could no longer deny him his request. She finally did. Sara looked at Lincoln. Her eyes drifted over his lowered eyebrows, his intense gray eyes, his straight nose, and stopped on his full lips pressed together. The tightening in her chest and heart deepened. God, he was beautiful. Lincoln was wrong. She saw him. She had for a long time. Sara just hadn’t been able to acknowledge it to herself.
“Cole had it all. Good looks, easy-going manner. He was the well-behaved one, the quiet one, the one that didn’t blow a gasket at the slightest provocation. There was the slightly reckless side to him, but nothing too major. He got decent grades and didn’t get into too much trouble. I was never jealous though. I never felt less than. He didn’t let me. I never wanted what he had.
“Until you.” Lincoln’s fingers tightened on her arms. “You I wanted. And that was the first and only time I was jealous of Cole. I’m still jealous of him. I’m jealous of my brother, who’s dead. How fucking sick is that? I can’t stop it though. I can’t stop the way I feel about it, about you. He still has you. The only thing, the only person, I ever really wanted, and you’re his. Still. Always. You never see me, not even with him gone.”