Page 92 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
I look at him, and my chest twists violently.
I slept with him.
I slept with the quiet brother. The one who brought me a brownie when I was starving and hadn’t realized it. The one who arranged the tow truck for my car in a dark parking garage without asking for a thank you.
I slept with him after sleeping with Owen. After Ethan took me on his desk. And I brought him here. Into my sanctuary. Into the one place that was supposed to be safe from the Branson gravity well.
“I am a disaster,” I whisper to the quiet room.
It wasn’t a mistake. I can’t call it a mistake, because I wanted it. I wanted him. I wanted to solve the puzzle of Asher just as much as he wanted to solve the variable of me.
But waking up and seeing his sleek, matte-black smartwatch on my chipped nightstand, sitting next to my half-empty water glass, makes it real.
I’ve completed the trifecta. I have slept with my boss, his brother, and his other brother.
And I cannot handle the fallout.
I sit up, pulling the sheet against my chest. My body aches—a dull, sweet soreness in my thighs that reminds me exactly how thorough he was. How precise.
Asher shifts. His arm drops from his face. His blue eyes open.
There is no grogginess. No confusion. No blinking awake. He goes from asleep to awake in a single second, his gaze locking onto mine with laser focus, as if his internal processor just rebooted.
“Good morning.” His voice is rough with sleep, a low rumble that sounds far too intimate in my small, cluttered bedroom.
“Hi,” I croak.
He reaches out, his hand finding my hip under the sheet. His fingers are warm, grounding.
“Your heart rate is elevated,” he observes.
“I just woke up.”
“You’re panicking,” he corrects gently.
He sits up, the sheet falling to his waist. He is unashamedly naked in my bed, his skin marked with the faint red lines of my sheets. He looks around the room, his eyes scanning the stack of books on the floor, the peeling paint on the windowsill, the cat sleeping on the rug, the open closet door revealing my chaotic wardrobe.
He’s collecting data. He’s analyzing my life.
“I’m not panicking,” I lie, swinging my legs over the side of the bed to put distance between us. “I’m just… late. I have to go to work. We have the launch prep.”
“Tessa.”
He says my name like a command code.
I freeze, my back to him.
“Do you regret it?” he asks.
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s the question I was dreading. It’s the question that turns this from a moment of connection into a moral referendum.
Do I regret it?
Do I regret the way he made me feel? No. Do I regret that I have now complicated an already impossible situation to the point of no return?
Yes.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
