Twins For My Bestie’s Brother (Billionaire Daddies)

18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Jackson

M y head is throbbing. My body feels like it’s been crumpled like a sheet of paper.

But I don’t regret anything. Not a single second.

However, I can’t see myself moving from this spot for a very long time. Drowning in a sea of throw pillows and quilts on Lily’s bed.

I’m not totally sure how I got here. Not because Will jostled my brain that hard, but because the anger pulsing through my veins back at the bar made me lose time. I’ve never been angry quite like that before. Even when it comes to business deals gone awry, I generally try to stay away from the emotion for this very reason. I’ve always known it could eat me alive.

But after learning what happened between Lily and Will . . . well, I wasn’t just going to sit there and watch him speak to her like that. Touch her like that. After everything he’s put her through.

I glance around the room, lit only by a warm lamp on the desk in the corner. It’s a time capsule of Lily in high school, which isn’t far off from Lily now. This isn’t to say that Lily never grew up, no, not at all. Lily just took the things she loved and ran with them until she could make a life for herself. That’s admirable. Especially as someone who has worked with facts and figures and dollar signs. No one is passionate about dollar signs, not the way an artist is passionate about the pen.

Above the desk, the wall is cluttered with pencil sketches, charcoal drawings, and small watercolors. The paper is faded and worn from years of being up on the walls. I can’t make out most of the details, but there are several portraits. I recognize one as Kayla because she had a phase of always wearing her hair in two braids tied with different ribbons.

I smile to myself.

The door to Lily’s room cracks open and more light pours into the room. Lily starts to step inside but turns at the sound of someone’s voice. There is some quiet whispering, words I can’t quite make out. I think she’s talking to her mom. It might be Kayla though. She was here at the house when we showed up, totally out of sorts at the sight of me.

The conversation finishes up, and Lily steps into the room, closing the door behind her as lightly as possible, like the click of the latch might somehow cause me pain. Her hair is now piled on top of her head, the way she keeps it when we go for walks some mornings, revealing a tattoo of a straight line that starts in her hairline and ends with a spider unthreading their web.

I’ve never understood why so many people have decided tattoos are somehow inappropriate or unattractive. It’s vulnerable to wear the art you choose on your skin.

“Why do you get tattoos where you can’t see them?” I ask softly.

Lily whips around, her eyes wide. “I thought you may have fallen asleep.”

I don’t say anything; I just try to keep my breath steady. It’s hard when she’s so utterly intoxicating in every moment in so many ways.

“I . . . have more ice,” she says as she comes over to the bed. She sits at the edge beside me, fluffs a few of the pillows keeping me leaned upright, then goes to place the pack of ice over my eye socket. “It’s cold.”

“That’s generally true about ice,” I mutter.

She smiles, her lipstick worn away, leaving a darkened outline at the edges of her lips. “Still have your sense of humor, that’s good.”

“Told you I didn’t have to go to the hospit—aah!” The ice is, as she says, cold. But it’s a shock to the system you can’t really prepare for.

Lily pauses before putting more of the compress onto my eye and the side of my face, letting me adjust to the temperature.

“You didn’t answer my question. About the tattoos.”

She smiles sadly. “I guess you don’t always have to see beautiful things to know they’re there.”

Does she know that’s how I’ve felt all these years away from her? Knowing her beauty exists in the world even when I’m not there to witness it wholly?

Lily pushes a lock of my hair off my forehead. “You shouldn’t have done that, Jackson.”

“Done what?” I ask, squeezing my one good eye open.

“Let Will get to you like that. He’s . . . you shouldn’t have done that on my account.”

I place my hand on the top of her thigh, a touch of comfort and presence. “Of course I did.”

Lily’s brow tightens. I notice one of her sleeves has fallen to the wayside, showing off the curve of her bare shoulder. “I’m not worth all that.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Jackson—”

“Yes, you are,” I repeat, feeling blood rushing into my face, the throbbing growing. I’ll remind her for the rest of her life if I have to. But . . . “Why don’t you believe me? After everything?”

Lily sighs. “Because, Jackson, we’re—”

“If you say different, I’m going to lose my mind,” I say, trying to add some humor with a half laugh in the back of my throat.

“We are.”

“We’re not.”

Her shoulders slump forward. “Jackson, you’re lying in my bedroom right now. Not my childhood bedroom. My current bedroom.”

“Why are you so hung up on that?”

“Because you deserve much more than a woman like me.”

I take the cold compress from her but keep my other hand on her thigh. I won’t let her walk away. “This is because of him, isn’t it?”

Lily’s eyes narrow. She’s so tired. I can see how the evening has worn her so very thin.

“Your mom and dad told me about why you left him,” I explain.

“Oh, my God,” she says, trying to pull away.

I move my hand up to her waist and hold her tighter. “Don’t be upset with them, please. They told me not to tell you, but I need you to know that I know.”

Lily’s hands lay limply in her lap, not only her eyes downcast, but her whole head hanging.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Lily?”

“Because I didn’t want you to think he was right.”

“How could I think that?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Look at me, Lily.”

Lily exhales. Her pain is palpable. But she does as I ask. The light of the room splays out around her, casting her in shadow, but the tears in her eyes are impossible to miss.

“I’ve told you how much I adore you over and over again. As you are now. As you were then. Why won’t you believe me?”

She swallows. “Why? All this time. Why?”

“You don’t have to see beautiful things to know they’re there,” I say, echoing her words as best I can.

Lily’s eyebrows lift, and then she laughs. It is a pitiful noise. Trapped in a place between sadness and hope and . . . incredulity. “I’m trying to understand, Jackson. I’m trying so hard. To believe you. To accept . . . the truth.” Her voice starts to shake. “I left Will because I know that’s not how love is supposed to be. And yet, at the same time, it’s the only way I’ve ever known love to be. I’m in this catch-22, and I don’t know how to escape it.”

“You know I’d never do that to you. Tear you down and make you feel less than. You know that, right?”

“Yes! And that’s exactly the issue. It scares me.” She places her hand on her chest. “Safety doesn’t feel safe yet. And I don’t think it’s fair to put that on you, I really don’t. I have so much to work out on my own before I’ll be good for anyone.”

“You’re good for me.”

“ Jackson .”

I grip her waist harder. “You are.”

Her lower lip trembles. “It’s not fair to you.”

“Tell me you don’t want to be with me, then,” I say.

Lily’s body tenses.

“I’m telling you, I can take it. Fuck, I want you exactly how you are now. It’s up to you to walk away if you don’t want it.”

Tentatively, Lily places her hand next to me on the bed, unable to risk touching me, but wanting so badly to be close.

Fuck it. What is more vulnerable than telling her I’ve wanted her since we were kids? I’ve put my heart on the line . . . put all my cards on the table.

All except one.

“Lily, I love you. Exactly this way. You could stay this way forever, and I’d love you.”

Lily tries to laugh. “Jackson, that’s ridiculous.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s . . . we’ve . . . ”

I slide my hand from her waist to her back, pulling her closer. “Fourteen years. I’ve wanted this, wanted you for fourteen years. Why would loving you be ridiculous?”

Lily blinks, a few tears rolling down her cheeks, streaking through the dusting of blush. “You don’t even know what it might be like to be with me.”

“I don’t care. I want to know.”

She starts to shake her head, but I can’t tell if it’s dismissal or disbelief.

“I love you,” I say again because I’m compelled to, not because I’m trying to force the message.

“Jackson . . . ”

“I love you, Lily,” I repeat. “And if you walk away now, I still will. So it’s up to you.”

The next few moments are too slow for my sanity, but I won’t press her any harder than I already have. She takes the wrist of my hand holding the compress and pulls it gingerly, lifting the ice from my skin. Lily examines the wound like there’s something objective about her decision. “God, Jackson, I don’t want you to do anything like that again.”

“To be fair, he sucker punched me. That was out of my control,” I say, again, trying to infuse levity into the room.

Lily traces her fingers across the swollen parts of my face that are numb now thanks to the cold. Eventually, her hand splays out to cup my cheek. She leans in, and, thank fucking God, she kisses me.

I wrap my arm further around her. Pull her closer. If I could get her closer, our hearts would be merged as one. They beat in time, in lockstep, just as I’ve always dreamed.

The kiss is tender and short, but afterward, she does not pull away or apologize.

I slide my hands up her back, soft and slow, back and forth. “I’d do it again. I’d do anything for you.”

“That’s silly.”

“Not. Not silly. Not when it comes to you.”

Lily lets out a heavy sigh and smiles when it’s finished. “What am I going to do with you?”

I say nothing because the answer to her question depends on what’s really going on inside that beautiful, curly-haired head.

Lily tucks her thumb under my lower lip, and then she nods. “I love you, Jackson. I really do.”

My heart leaps like it’s been set on fire, but I remain silent, letting the truth wash over me. After so many years of solitude in this feeling, I’m no longer alone. Maybe I’m still reeling from being hit too hard; maybe this is all a hallucination.

But when Lily kisses me again, I know it’s real.