Dirty Secret (The Burke Brothers #1)(59)
Author: Emma Hart

Oh, hell.

She draws in a sharp breath at my words.

My true words. We both know it. The more we used to argue, the more desperate and rough our inevitable make-up sex was. The angrier we were, the tighter we were wound, the more we needed the release.

Sex isn’t a problem solver, but it always paved the way for us to settle things. They were always settled naked and cuddling, but they were still settled.

The issue with now is that there’s so much tension and so many unspoken words that both of us are wound tightly all the time. At least I am. There isn’t a second where I don’t want to grab her and kiss her, just because I need some of that frustration to disintegrate against her sweet mouth.

But that ends tonight. The unspoken words will no longer be unspoken. We have a thousand things we need to say that will only end explosively if we talk in private. I know us so well.

Despite Mila, despite the time passed, we’re still us.

We’re just buried beneath a bunch of bullshit.

I pull up in the parking lot of the restaurant and kill the engine. Sofie’s still looking everywhere but at me, and she blushes like hell when I lift her out of the truck.

I slam the door behind her and put my hand on her waist to stop her moving. “Don’t be embarrassed of the truth,” I whisper into her ear. “You know it’ll happen.”

“Maybe,” she replies. “Maybe not.”

“No maybe about it, princess.”

Sofie trails the backs of her fingers up my chest, and red-hot tingles travel across my skin. She brings her eyes to mine, bright and clear, and quirks her lips. “Oh, there’s a giant maybe.”

“You sound sure.”

“I am.” She’s almost my height with the heels on, and she leans forward. She moves to close the distance between our mouths, but stops when her lips hover within touching distance. “Maybe I’ll be the one doing the fucking tonight.”

Her words shoot straight through me and settle at my dick. And when she raises an eyebrow and sashays toward the restaurant door in that little red dress, every muscle in my body goes taut with that thought.

Shit. How the hell am I supposed to get through dinner and a serious talk if all I can think about is Sofie straddling me, grinding her hips against mine, breathing in my ear?

I grit my teeth. With a very inconvenient hard-on, that’s fucking how.

I follow her to the door and open it, ushering her through. The host greets us and guides us to our table, one hidden at the very back of the restaurant. She sits down and I take the seat opposite her. I’m not going to lie. I’m wondering where the hell that came from. When I told her I’d fuck her hard, she all but froze, yet only five minutes later she’s threatening the same thing back to me. Very damn confidently.

And fuck me if it wasn’t sexy as hell.

I hand her a menu and look at my own, the words blurring together. The waiter comes to take our drinks order, and Sofie orders a glass of Chardonnay. I take a beer.

I could do with a vodka, but I’ll take a beer. After all, I’m driving.

When he returns with our drinks he takes our food order. I stumble through mine, finally settling on a seafood dish, and Sofie picks the lasagna.

I knew she would.

“We’ve been here before,” she murmurs, fingering the stem of her glass. “Haven’t we?”

I nod. “I brought you here for our first date.”

“Our first-first date,” she corrects, looking at me in wonder. “How did you remember that?”

“I didn’t forget a thing,” I admit. “I played our relationship over in my mind so many times after you left that I could never forget.”

She lifts her glass to her lips and takes a small sip. “I did the same.” Her voice is small and hesitant. “Over and over, until I wore out every memory.”

“I wish you’d lied to me, you know? I wish you’d called me and told me that you were okay but you didn’t want me anymore. That would have been easier.”

“I was already lyin’ to you, Con. I couldn’t lie again.”

“I wish you could have.”

“Me, too.” Her eyes flick up to mine. “No, I don’t. I wish I’d never lied at all. It breaks my heart every time I see you together because you lost so much time with her.”

I wish that, too. And I wish she’d trusted me enough to tell me the truth.

Our dinner is placed in front of us. Sofie breaks our eye contact by looking down at her plate. I decline the waiter’s offer of anything else and sit back in my seat.

I drop my eyes from her and pick up my fork, stabbing it into a giant shrimp. There’s a quiet clang as Sofie picks up her own, and we both eat in silence.

The background noise of the restaurant is the accompaniment for our dinner. Laughter, shouts, excited conversation. They all filter through up to our table, making our own silence a little less painful.

Every time we speak then stop, we make it harder for ourselves. A thousand more fucking unanswered questions pop up every time I look in her eyes. Every ounce of regret and guilt I see eats into me and makes me want to pin her down until she tells me the whole truth.

Because she’s holding back. Still, she can’t talk. Still, she’s keeping something from me.

I can see it in the shadows in her eyes.

“I was afraid,” she says softly, setting her fork down. “I was afraid for you because I didn’t want you and the guys to risk everything you’d worked for your whole lives.”

“You already told me that. I want the rest, Sof. The part you refuse to tell anyone.”

She looks up, startled. She pauses before grabbing her wine and drinking half of it in one go. She sets the glass down, takes a deep breath, and lets her gaze settle on mine.

“The day I found out about Mila, my whole world was tipped upside down. Everything I knew was about to change. I was going to get sick and fat. I was going to be responsible for this tiny person who would depend on me for everything. I was petrified, Con. I was only just nineteen. I was supposed to go back to college, not to the maternity ward.”

“I woulda been there.”

“Shhh,” she says, holding up her hand. “Let me finish, then talk, okay?”

I nod. Reluctantly.

“You guys were in LA, meeting with your manager for the first time, so I had a couple days to wrap my head around it. The only problem was that when I did, a whole new set of fears arose.” She swallows hard. “I was afraid for you and the guys, yeah. I was. I didn’t want to take that away from you, but honestly I was afraid for me, too.”