My Brother's Sexy Best Friend (18+)

Making Love Was The Only Thing That Could Repair It

Matt

When I awoke, she was gazing absentmindedly into the fire, a frown tugging down the corners of her full lips. She hugged her knees to her naked chest, the fire bouncing off her skin and making it gleam with a bronzed glow. 

"Hey," I whispered, scooting up behind her on my knees and wrapping my arms around her heated body. "Is something the matter?"

Sighing, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear before glancing over at me. "I feel as though I've betrayed my brother."

Hands dropping to my sides, I sat back, my shoulders sagging beneath the weight of my guilty conscience. "Yea, I know what you mean."

She tugged at the fibers on the furry white rug. "He would be furious with me if he found out what you and I just did."

I swept her hair off her neck and placed a featherlight kiss on the nape. "V, you're his twin sister. That's an unbreakable bond. True, he might be angry with you at first, but he'll eventually forgive you. If anyone is at risk at jeopardizing their relationship with Jake permanently, it's me."

She shifted so that she was facing me, her cocoa brown eyes heavy with remorse. "He seemed...off today. I'm not sure what's going on with him, but he had a breakdown over something. He destroyed all his trophies. You should have seen them, Matt. Smashed bits littered the carpet. It was quite sad."

"Oh?" I chewed my lip, wondering if there was more to Jake's cancellation earlier today than he had let on.

She nodded. "And then, I found..."

"Found what?" I placed my hand on her arm, encouraging her to continue but she just shook her head.

"Nothing," she murmured. She pulled herself up, wandering over to a bookshelf beside the fireplace. I watched as she trailed her fingers over the spine of a worn photo album before pulling it out and flipping through the brittle pages. 

Coming up behind her, I gazed over her shoulder at images of a young couple frolicking in the sand, splashing in the spray of the ocean, and cuddled into each other's arms in front of a roaring bonfire. 

"My parents," I supplied, offering up an answer for whose carefree lives she had glimpsed into.

She cocked her head to the side, squinting her eyes. "I can see the resemblance. You have the same dark hair and unique eye color as your mom." She turned the page to a photograph of a young woman in a black swimsuit, lifting her chin up towards the sky and smiling broadly at the sun's rays. "You even have her dimple."

"Yea, I suppose I do," I said wistfully, instinctively fingering the indent on my left cheek.

Vanessa shivered, goosebumps pricking her arms. "I can't even begin to imagine how tremendously you must miss her."

I took the picture album from her hands and turned through the pages, conjuring up a free-spirited moment in time from a period before I existed. The story of my parent's lives briefly re-enacted itself at my fingertips, every flip of the page providing a glance into a time portal.

As I neared the end of the album, an object slipped from the plastic covers and fell onto the wooden floorboards with a thunk. Scooping the rogue piece of history up, I realized that I was staring down at a seashell. And not just any shell. 

Written over the front ridges, in a child's messy scrawl, were the words, "I Love U." I flipped over the treasure from the ocean in my palm, revealing another inscription: "To Mommy." 

A sad smile raised up the corner of my mouth as the memory flooded back to me. It was a crisp morning at the end of summer. The kind where mist fills the air as the chill of the night meets with the warmth of the dawn. My mother and I were strolling along the shore when a wave rushed in, washing over our bare toes. As the tide receded, nature left us a farewell present.