Chapter 2: An Indecent Apology

Ten minutes. Elijah had been standing outside his own bedroom door for ten minutes, that damned can of ginger ale growing warm in his sweaty palm. Every rational thought in his head screamed at him to go inside, lock the door, and pretend the last half hour had never happened.

But rationality had apparently packed its bags and left the building the moment he'd seen Sam spread across her bed like some forbidden offering.

The house felt different now, charged with an electricity that made his skin prickle. Every creak of the old wooden floors seemed amplified, every distant sound from Sam's room—the soft pad of footsteps, the whisper of drawers opening and closing—hit him like a physical touch.

He'd changed his shirt three times. First because the grey cotton felt too tight across his chest, then because it smelled like his cologne and he didn't want her to think he was trying too hard, then because the replacement looked like he was trying too hard not to try. Now he was back in the original grey t-shirt, running his free hand through his dark hair for what had to be the hundredth time.

Just knock, he told himself. Apologize properly. Act like a decent human being instead of some perverted creep who gets off on walking in on family members.

Except she wasn't really family, was she? Not blood, anyway. They'd been thrown together by circumstance and their parents' second chance at love, two teenagers forced to navigate the awkward territory of instant siblinghood. Maybe that's why it had always felt so...charged between them. Maybe that's why every argument felt like foreplay and every accidental touch sent sparks racing up his spine.

Stop making excuses, he snarled at himself. You're sick. This is sick.

But his feet were already carrying him down the hallway, past the abandoned ginger ale can still lying on the floor like evidence of his earlier cowardice. Sam's door loomed ahead, white paint slightly scuffed at the bottom where she'd kicked it in frustration countless times over the years.

He raised his hand to knock, then froze as voices drifted up from downstairs. His father's deep baritone, Helen's lighter laugh. They were home from their gallery opening, probably settling in with wine and stories about pretentious art collectors. The sound should have been comforting—normalcy returning to their suburban fortress—but instead it felt like a spotlight illuminating exactly how wrong this was.

Normal families don't have stepsons lurking outside their daughters' bedrooms with hard-ons and guilty consciences.

"Fuck," he whispered, pressing his forehead against the cool wood of her door.

"Elijah?"

Sam's voice was so soft, so close, that he jerked backward like he'd been burned. She must be standing right on the other side of the door. Had she heard him? How long had she known he was there?

"I..." He cleared his throat, trying to find his voice. "I brought you that ginger ale."

Silence stretched between them, thick enough to choke on. Then the soft click of the lock disengaging, and the door swung open just wide enough for him to see a sliver of her face. She'd changed into an oversized hoodie—his hoodie, he realized with a jolt of something that felt dangerously close to possessiveness—and her blonde hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail that left her neck exposed.

"You could have left it on the floor with the other one," she said, but there was no real bite in her words. She sounded tired. Shaken.

"I wanted to apologize. Properly." He held up the can like a peace offering, hyperaware of how stupid he must look. "And to explain."

Sam's blue eyes searched his face, looking for something he wasn't sure he could give her. "There's nothing to explain. You walked in without permission and saw something you shouldn't have seen. End of story."

But she opened the door wider, stepping back to let him enter. The gesture felt monumental, like crossing a threshold he'd never be able to uncross.

Her room smelled like vanilla body spray and something else—something warm and intimate that made his mouth go dry. The bed had been made, pillows fluffed and arranged with military precision, but he could still see the ghost impression of where her body had been. The vibrator was nowhere in sight, probably hidden away in some drawer where it belonged, where it couldn't remind him of the sounds she'd been making...

"You're staring," Sam said, settling onto her desk chair and drawing her knees up to her chest. The motion made his hoodie ride up, exposing a strip of pale thigh that he forced himself not to look at.

"Sorry." He perched on the edge of her bed, the can of ginger ale forgotten in his hands. "I'm not handling this well."

"There's nothing to handle." But her voice cracked slightly on the words, betraying the lie.

"Sam." He leaned forward, studying her face. Without the armor of anger, she looked younger. Vulnerable in a way that made his chest tight. "Are you okay?"

She laughed, short and bitter. "Am I okay? You just walked in on me getting myself off and you're asking if I'm okay?"

The crude words hit him like a slap, but underneath the bravado he could see something fragile. Something that looked almost like...shame?

"I shouldn't have barged in," he said carefully. "I was angry about the music, and I wasn't thinking clearly. That's on me."

"The music wasn't even that loud," Sam admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. "I just...I needed something to cover the sound."

The implication of her words sent heat pooling in his belly, but it was the way she said it—small and almost apologetic—that undid him completely. Sam never apologized. She doubled down, she fought dirty, she went for blood. She didn't shrink into oversized hoodies and look at him like she expected judgment.

"Sam." He set the can down on her nightstand and shifted closer, drawn by some magnetic pull he couldn't resist. "You don't have anything to be ashamed of. What you were doing, it's...it's normal. Natural."

She snorted. "Right. That's why you look like you want to crawl out of your own skin."

Because he did. Because sitting here talking about her pleasure, her needs, was torture of the sweetest kind. Because he could still see her as she'd been—lost in sensation, chasing something that had nothing to do with their complicated family dynamics or years of careful distance.

"I look like this because I can't stop thinking about it," he said before he could stop himself.

The admission hung between them like a live wire. Sam's eyes went wide, her lips parting slightly, and Elijah realized he'd just crossed another line he couldn't uncross.

"Elijah..."

"I'm sorry." He started to rise, to flee like the coward she'd probably always known he was, but her hand shot out to catch his wrist.

"Don't." Her fingers were warm against his skin, her touch sending electricity racing up his arm. "Don't run away. Not this time."

"This is wrong, Sam. We're family."

"No, we're not." The words came out fierce, determined. "We're two people who got stuck in the same house by circumstance. Two people who've been dancing around each other for seven years like we're afraid of what might happen if we stopped pretending."

Her thumb was stroking across his pulse point, such a small gesture but it was driving him insane. He could feel his carefully constructed walls crumbling, brick by brick.

"You don't know what you're saying."

"Don't I?" She shifted in her chair, leaning closer until he could smell her shampoo, could count the faint freckles across her nose. "You think I don't notice how you look at me sometimes? How you find excuses to touch me when you pass me things? How you get that look in your eyes when I'm arguing with you, like you want to shut me up by—"

"Stop." The word came out rougher than he intended, edged with desperation.

"By kissing me," she finished softly.

The air between them crackled with tension so thick he could barely breathe. She was right, and they both knew it. Every fight, every heated exchange, every moment of friction between them had been building to this. He'd been lying to himself for years, pretending the pull he felt toward her was just irritation, just the natural conflict between two strong-willed people forced into close quarters.

But it wasn't. It had never been.

"Sam," he whispered, her name a prayer and a curse on his lips.

"Tell me I'm wrong," she challenged, her voice barely audible. "Tell me you don't think about me. Tell me you don't wonder what it would be like if we stopped fighting each other and started fighting for each other."

He couldn't. God help him, he couldn't form the words because they would be lies, and they'd both know it.

"This is insane," he said instead. "Our parents—"

"Are downstairs drinking wine and pretending their precious blended family is perfect." Sam's grip on his wrist tightened. "They don't have to know. No one has to know."

"And then what? We pretend it never happened? Go back to the way things were?"

Something flickered across her face—hurt, maybe, or disappointment. "Is that what you want?"

What he wanted was to pull her against him and kiss her until neither of them could think straight. What he wanted was to lay her back on that bed and worship every inch of skin he'd glimpsed earlier. What he wanted was to make her make those sounds again, but for him this time, because of him.

What he wanted was wrong on every level that mattered.

"I want..." He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

"What?" She leaned even closer, so close he could feel her breath against his cheek. "What do you want, Elijah?"

The question hung in the air between them, loaded with possibility and danger in equal measure. His heart was hammering against his ribs, his skin fever-hot where she touched him. He could hear his father's laughter from downstairs, could picture Helen organizing tomorrow's gallery schedule at the kitchen counter, could imagine the perfect suburban peace that would shatter if anyone knew what was happening in this room.

But Sam was looking at him like he was the answer to some question she'd been asking for years. Like he was salvation and damnation rolled into one. Like she'd been waiting her whole life for him to find the courage to cross this final line.

"Tell me to stop," she whispered, leaning closer until her lips were barely an inch from his.

He opened his mouth to say the words, to do the right thing, to be the man his father had raised him to be.

But what came out instead was: "I can't."

And then her lips were on his, soft and warm and perfect, and Elijah Vance was finally, irrevocably lost.