1. Kale

My twin brother,Boston, and I were on 5th Avenue in front of the French Consulate talking about how many carrots our parents had sent with their last unwanted CSA shipment when I caught the first gust of a fall breeze in New York. Shivering, I gave a little wiggle of my shoulders and tossed the long end of my scarf around my neck to keep my throat warm.

"It's cold," Boston groaned.

I threw a sidelong glance at him, dressed down from work with a pair of dark gray slacks and a pale pink button-up. He had on a tie, the knot loosened, and if he'd started with a jacket, I couldn't tell you where it was now.

"And you made fun of me for this." I smacked him in the face with the ends of my cashmere scarf, also a present from our parents, but I'd lost track of when it had arrived at my brownstone. Maybe the winter before? Or spring? I didn't have the best sense of time because I was always busy and days bled into each other with no real separation or distinction.

"It was eighty earlier today," he said.

"And it's October."

He folded his arms in front of his chest and tipped his head back, most likely cursing the height of the buildings around us, the French flag whipping around in the breeze above us.

"Anyway." I was warm. "You were saying about the carrots."

"Like a hundred carrots, Kale." He threw his arms up, quickly returning them to his chest after another gust blew past us. "What am I supposed to do with that many carrots?"

"Maybe if you ate them, you could stop wearing your glasses."

He glared at me, pushing the thick black-rimmed frames up his nose. "You know that's not even a real thing, right?"

"Isn't it?"

"Beta-carotene is good for your eyes, but it was some WWII propaganda that got out of control," he said.

"Well." I wrapped my scarf a little tighter around my neck. "Stew or something."

"Do I strike you as the stew type? When was the last time you had stew?"

"I'm not a fan. I don't even like soup."

Boston snorted, rolling his eyes. "Gazpacho is soup."

"I don't know how to help you," I told him, "My box had pumpkins. Enough to start my own patch."

Boston let out a hearty laugh at that. "What are you going to do with them?"

"Donate them, probably."

"You could make a pie," he suggested.

"I could make a thousand pies with the volume of pumpkins currently sitting in my pantry."

Our parents were hippies in the best sense of the word. And the life my brother and I had built for ourselves couldn't have been any more different than what our parents had chosen. The money came from our paternal line, with roots and bank deposits settled deep in the city since the first high-rise buildings had gone up.

Our father had bucked tradition, though. And after finding himself in California for undergrad, he'd met our mom. She was a free spirit from the Bay Area with a degree in agriculture and a wild dream to chase. She was older than him by almost ten years and, as they told the story, it was love at first sight. Our grandparents had not been her number one fans, but dad had stars in his eyes and there was no stopping him.

Boston and I were both born in California, but farm life never appealed to us. Dad had always made sure we knew there were other opportunities available, even if they weren't things our parents wanted for themselves. When it was time to start Junior High, Boston and I both hitched a ride—that's a figure of speech, we actually flew first class on grandpa's dime—to a New York boys' school and never looked back.

I mean, we did look back. We visited our parents at least once a year since there was no way in hell they'd ever come to New York, and they made sure we always received care packages with whatever the commune had decided to provide. Hence the carrots and the pumpkins, and the scarf.

After high school, I'd gone to California for college because I was nothing if not rebellious, and I liked to keep my grandparents guessing as to where I'd end up. Boston stayed on the East Coast, but I'd known long before I graduated that the beach life L.A. offered was not for me. I longed for the massive concrete and glass towers of the city, for the winter, and for the sense of home I'd always found with my grandparents. Even though California had brought me one of my closest friends, Beamer, by the time I earned my diploma, I was ready to go home.

My grandparents set me up with a brownstone on Madison Ave, got me a job, and I'd been ready to go. They'd offered me a cushion so soft it fluffed all the rebellion right out of me, at least it had.

I couldn't tell you how Beamer and I met Brooks and Alex, but it was probably at a hotel bar, and as they say…

The rest was history.

I apparently had a little bit of rebellion left in me after all, though, and it earned me a membership at New York's most exclusive sex and kink club—The Black Door. Grandma and Grandpa didn't know about that one, of course.

Neither did Boston.

My journey into kink had been unexpected, but welcome, and I sometimes wondered how it had taken me so long to find it. Boston and I had been sort of late bloomers coming into boarding school because life on a farm in northern California was obviously nothing like the sturdy brick walls we found ourselves in after the move. But those boys and their old money worked fast. I'd known before our first winter break that I liked telling people what to do and, even better, there were people who liked to be told.

Admittedly, I'd come into dominance almost as a bully. But there hadn't been another way to adapt to the abrupt changes in our lives. While Boston and I had both welcomed boarding school and a life in the city, it was different and we were surrounded by boys who'd spent their entire childhoods prepping for something we'd only just been thrown into. I was a fast learner, though. And before I knew it, William would carry my books to class and Tim was doing my homework, and none of it had come from a place of fear.

It was reverence.

Boston thought I was being mean, but it couldn't have been any further from the truth. Back then, I didn't have a name for how I was or how I treated people…how they wanted me to treat them. It was simply a part of my personality and I'd always been a take-or-leave-it kind of guy. I carried that with me into adulthood, and my friends either adapted or they left.

Just like my partners.

"Did you want to get a hot dog?" Boston asked.

My eyes went wide at the sound of his voice because I'd gotten so lost in my head, I'd forgotten he was there. We'd walked well past the consulate and his building was to our right and a shortcut into Central Park on the left.

"I don't think I've ever had a hot dog in my whole life," I said.

"No stew and no hot dogs?" Boston scoffed at me.

I gestured behind me, toward Columbus Circle at the far corner of the park. "Per Se is right there. There's hundreds of fine dining establishments in this city and you want to pop across the street for a fucking hot dog?

"Or a gyro." He grinned at me, head bobbling from side to side.

I wanted to smack him in the mouth, but I loved him too much.

"You must have had a hot dog," he said.

I shook my head.

"You're missing out."

"If you say so." I crooked my finger into the scarf looped around my neck and loosened it a smidge. "But no, I'm not interested in sharing street food with you tonight. If you want to have a decent meal, I'd be happy to oblige."

"The gyro is decent."

"You're a heathen."

"You're classist," he countered.

I sighed, shaking my head and giving Boston a dismissive wave.

"Enjoy your processed meat trimmings, Boston."

"Enjoy your pumpkins!" he hollered.

I flipped him off before letting my arm fall and tucking my hand into the pocket of my pea coat. Fall was definitely coming on quickly, and as the sun dipped down below the skyscrapers of the city, all the warmth of the day fell toward dusk. As I headed away from Boston's apartment and toward my own home, my phone vibrated against my chest. Reaching into the interior pocket of my coat, I pulled it out to find a decent volume of unread text messages, the most recent being from Beamer.

It was a photo of him on the beach, his blond hair almost the same color as the sand. He looked relaxed and happy, and I couldn't help but think about how funny it was…the way California life suited some, but not others. It had only been a matter of months since he'd moved across the country with his husband, Dalton, and I honestly missed him terribly.

Dalton and I had not gotten off on the right foot, and I wouldn't say Beamer and Dalton had left with us on the right foot yet either. We'd reached some tepid kind of truce, which was all Beamer had hoped for and pretty much all I was able to offer. Because I couldn't help the way I was, or if I could, I didn't want to. I would never apologize for being controlling and protective. It was as much a part of my personality as my unbridled ambition or my gross mistrust of people who said calculus was simple.

I snapped a picture of myself, scarf and pea coat in clear view, and sent it back to Beamer. He responded with a cry laughing emoji. I told him I missed him, and he said the same. That was enough of that, because if I thought too long about it, I would get emotional over it, and I tolerated having feelings about as much as I tolerated collegiate math.

I also had an unread message from Ford, which riled an entirely different kind of feeling inside of me.

Ford: Black Door?

Me: It's a Wednesday

Ford: BLACK DOOR?

Me: I need to eat first.

Ford: Brooks and I will meet you.

Me: I wanted to enjoy my meal.

Ford: I meant at The Black Door, but now you make me want to find you and ruin your dinner.

I turned off friend finder and sent him a middle finger emoji.

Thinking of the duality that existed for Boston, eating what had to be fake meat that cost pennies to make on the elevator ride up to his multi-million dollar apartment was enough to send me right into a small Italian restaurant that didn't have a name over the door. The restaurant was small and modern, with those flower vases that only held a single stem flower in the center of every white cloth-covered table. There was a small bar against the back wall, with mirror-backed shelves of decent enough looking alcohol that I decided I'd be able to find a passable meal and a strong enough martini.

"Can I eat at the bar?" I asked the bartender as I settled onto one of the low-backed leather stools.

"If you like," he answered.

I bit the tip of my tongue to swallow back the first condescending thought that popped into my mind at his answer. Instead I forced a smile and unwound my scarf from my neck. Shrugging out of my coat, I laid both garments on the chair beside me, averting my gaze when he slid a paper menu in front of me.

"Do you have Nolet?"

"We do."

"Martini, then," I said, giving the menu a fast glance. "Please and thank you. Also the caponata."

"Wet?" he asked, bottle of Nolet already in hand.

"Dry."

"Shaken?"

I arched a brow, my lips quirking up in the corner against my will. "Thrown."

The bartender locked his stare onto mine, eyes nearly as green as the bottle of gin in his hand.

"Coming right up," he murmured, eyes still searching me out through the dark fan of his lashes. His chin was tucked against his chest, a clear sign that he knew I was reading correctly.

My cock stirred—the eye contact, the posture, and the commentary clearly a challenge. I licked my lips, waiting for him to get started and hoping that Ford and Brooks would be okay on their own for a while because dinner was shaping up to be far more engaging than I'd initially expected.