Twins For My Bestie’s Brother (Billionaire Daddies)

8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Jackson

T he drive to Lily’s is long and quiet.

However, my head is doing a great job of filling the silence. My thoughts have been racing all night, double time since our kiss on the dance floor. She probably knows now. That one kiss probably told her everything about my years of wanting her.

“So . . . I should probably start joining you for your morning runs,” Lily says, offering a distraction from my loud brain.

I veil my excitement. “Only if you want to.”

“I probably can’t keep pace with you, but—”

“I’ll keep pace with you.”

Lily giggles. “That will look so stupid. Your legs are too long.”

I rub the steering wheel to try and calm my nerves. “We can just walk too. That’s fine.” A couple of weeks of not running won’t be too bad. I can just go for runs another time or longer bike rides or—"

“We can hit the Labor Day festival too. Everyone will be out and about so that would be a good time to be seen. Holding hands and . . . whatever.”

I chuckle as I pull up to a stoplight.

“What’s so funny?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

Lily shifts in her seat, turning toward me and leaning on the center console. “Come on, you have to tell me.”

I can smell the liquor on her breath and the citrus scent of her hair. Damn her. “Nothing, it’s nothing.”

“ Jackson . . . ”

I stare up at the traffic light, waiting for it to turn green. “Just . . . and whatever .”

Lily doesn’t say anything. I glance at her. She’s looking right at me with a smirk.

“Just funny to think about what . . . whatever is,” I say. God, I’m being much too forward. But that one kiss can’t have been a mistake. Lily was there for it. Not just physically present, but I could feel her energy pouring into me. Neither of us had to try hard for that kiss to be really good.

So ‘ and whatever ’ could be more of that. More touching. More kissing. And . . . whatever might come after that. If I let myself go there, I’m going to have a very obvious problem between my legs.

Lily leans closer to me. Her lips part.

My heart starts to pound. Here? Now?

“Light’s green,” she says, her voice low and sultry.

I shudder back into gear, gluing my eyes to the road.

And she laughs. A laugh that creeps down my chest and into my pants. Fucking hell.

After we drive in silence for another minute, I speak up. “Anyway, how about I take you out on a picnic or something? We can do it in the town square on a Friday night or something, and people can see us.”

“That sounds like a great idea. A picnic. And whatever .”

I try to laugh, but my breath is trapped in my chest. “Okay, Lily, listen, I didn’t mean to imply that we ever had to do—”

“No, no, I like ‘ and whatever ’.”

I grip the steering wheel harder and throw on my blinker.

Thankfully, Lily fills the void of my embarrassment. “ ’And whatever ’ leaves a lot of room for possibilities. Like picnics and dinner dates and . . . whatever .”

I turn onto Lily’s street, my face growing hotter with each passing moment. Thank God we’re close to her home so that I can have a moment alone to collect myself.

Or any other number of things.

“Yeah, I think it will be easy to convince Will he doesn’t have a chance,” Lily remarks.

“I hate that guy,” I mutter. And I hate when she says his name too.

Lily sighs and unbuckles her seatbelt. The click is a harbinger of my eventual loneliness. “You don’t have to hate him, Jackson.”

“Oh, no, I’m happy to,” I reply as I pull up to the curb in front of her house. I put the car in park and finally look back at her again, now that I can’t be distracted away by any traffic lights.

She’s got her hands folded over her clutch in her lap, her eyes downcast. No muscles in her body tensing to make a move to get out of the car. “Don’t let me do something stupid. Okay?”

“You’re afraid he might . . . ” I gulp, “convince you?”

“I know I don’t want him,” Lily says. “I don’t want to be with him. Ever again. But . . . ” She finally turns back to look at me. In the darkness, the brown parts of her irises look black while the green still seems to flash and sparkle. “I don’t have much going for me right now.”

I resist scoffing. “What are you talking about, Lil?”

“Just . . . I’m living with my parents, working at the family drugstore the same way I did when I was sixteen. I’m single and almost thirty and—”

“What’s wrong with being thirty?” I ask.

Lily waves her hand. “It’s different for men.”

“How?”

“You don’t hear the ticking of the clock like we do.”

I watch her for a moment. “You think it might be easier to go back and at least have a partner so that the clock isn’t so loud?”

Lily sighs, leaning back on the headrest. I’m just noticing her dangling red earrings are glass tomatoes. “Yeah, maybe. Even though I know I don’t want that with him.”

“You don’t want to have a family with a guy who wears one dangling gold earring.”

“You’re obsessed with his earring!” Lily laughs. “I’m wondering if you’re just jealous.”

I balk. “Never in a million years would I want an earring.”

“You sure? A little stud? Right here?” She reaches out and pinches my earlobe between her fingers.

I jerk away. “No! Never!”

Lily keeps laughing, her hand landing on my bicep. She leans back over the console a bit and looks at me. “At least in Seattle I could be a tattooist again.”

“You can do that here, too, can’t you?”

“I mean, I’d have to start my own studio, and that will take time. And I guess I have time, but I have an artist brain. Not a business brain.” She starts toying with a wrinkle in my jacket, pushing it back and forth and watching how it curves. “Plus money.”

I’ve got a business brain. And I have money. I have a feeling if I offered either one right now, she might jump out of the car with a flurry of goodbyes. The last thing I want is for her to run from me right now. I want her to stay. Right here. Next to me. “Good things take time, Lil. Just because it’s not happening right now doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen.”

“I know,” she says. “Or I guess my brain knows, but my heart is totally freaked out that everything I thought I knew is—” She stops, then lifts her eyes up to look at me. “Is different now.”

No more Seattle. No more Will. No more tattooing. That’s all different.

And me . . . am I different to her too? Is she starting to see me the way I’ve always wished she would?

“Thanks for doing this, Jackson.”

I shrug. “What are friends for?” My words are limp. Because I don’t want to be a friend. I want to be so much more.

Lily bites down on her lower lip, silent for far too long for me to be comfortable. “We should probably practice some ‘ and whatever’ ?”

I frown.

“Like, since we’re going to be going on dates and . . . whatever ,” Lily goes on, batting her lashes.

I half-laugh, thinking she’s joking, but her expression remains still. I stop. “Are you serious right now?”

Lily’s tongue nestles into the corner of her mouth. “Uh, sorry. I had a lot to drink. I’m not as clearheaded as I’d be if I was sober.”

She starts to pull away.

No .

I grab her hand and pull her across the center console until her lips meet mine again. We kiss. I fist her hair with my hand, letting my tongue run along the seam of her mouth until she lets me in. Her deep inhale propels me further. I grab at her waist, squeezing in a wanton way.

Lily does not resist, her body bending toward mine as far as it will go with this stupid console in our way. She grabs at the collar of my shirt. What if we were alone? In a bedroom? Without anything to keep us apart? Would she tear it off? Would she strip me naked? Use me?

My cock swells in my pants, and I don’t even care that my desire is obvious anymore.

I pull Lily over the console, spinning her so she sits in my lap.

She squeaks in surprise, then laughs. “Jackson—”

I cut her off with my mouth, running my hand up her leg to her hip, capturing the fullness of her in my hand. My hips want to lift and rub and grind against her, but I stop myself from “ and whatever-ing ” too far. Don’t want to scare her off.

Lily slides her arms around my neck, humming into my mouth. The frenetic pace slows until we are both languorous, knowing that practice might turn into performance if we aren’t careful.

She has to be the one to break away first, her mouth an inch away from mine. Her breath flutters across my face. “That was good practice,” she says.

“Yeah, I think . . . ” I swallow, trying to catch my breath. “I think we’ll manage to be pretty convincing if we keep that up.”

Lily’s chest heaves against me. I will myself not to look down at the swell of her cleavage. “I should probably—”

“Yeah.”

“My parents are still awake, they’ll be wondering—”

“Of course.”

Neither of us moves to pull away.

Lily rests her forehead against mine. “Thanks again, Jackson.”

I say nothing. Anything I’d say right now would betray my attempt at keeping myself on an even keel. Lily probably thinks this moment was born out of what happened tonight. No. It came from years of wanting this. Years of waiting. Years of waiting for the moment to be right.

And yet, still.

Not right enough.

Lily grabs onto the handle of my door. “Guess, it might be easier for me to—”

“Oh, yeah, maybe.”

She pops it open and scoots back until she can free one leg from between me and the steering wheel. She spins on her ass, to put her feet on the ground. I press my lips together because my cock is loving that, and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.

Lily presses down on my knee to push herself to standing. “Okay, well, thanks, that was fun. I guess text me or—”

“I will.”

She starts to close the door on me, but I call out, “Wait!” I swipe her clutch off the passenger seat and hold it up to her.

Lily smiles and takes it from me. I watch each of her fingers clamp around the clutch, all of them covered in tiny tattoos I’d love to know the stories of. “You’re a lifesaver, Jackson.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

We say our goodbyes. Lily scampers around the car and up the front walk to the door of the Bolton house. I stay and watch until she’s inside, and the door is shut safely behind her. And then I force myself to drive home. Alone.

Something has to change. And whether or not it’s fair or kind of me, I have a month to make that happen.

I want Lily Bolton. And if Will fucking Scortello can fly across the country to chase after her, I can convince her that a real relationship would feel just as good as a fake one.

Better.