19. Brooks

CHAPTER 19

brOOKS

When I sat down at lunch, opposite Ford and Alex, I could still taste Tate’s cum on my tongue. It was there beneath the coffee and the toothpaste, embedded forever in my taste buds. The waitress brought me a drink while we waited for Kale to arrive, the tension at the table thick enough to cut with a butter knife.

“It’s almost like old times,” I said, tipping the rim of my glass in Alex’s direction.

It was nice to see him out amongst the living again after his depression spiral over Beamer’s marriage. At first, I had thought the whole thing was a little over the top, but it was easy now to think about what I would do it Tate were to ever leave me. Tate, who was so perfect for me, like we’d been cut from the same fucked-up scrap of fabric. Alex had just started to find some of that connection once he and Beamer started sleeping together, and then it was gone in the blink of an eye.

“Almost,” Alex agreed.

“But Kale is somehow more of a prick than before,” Ford said .

“At least he can’t harass you about sleeping with his assistants anymore.”

Ford sighed, smile pushing the corner of his mouth, but falling away when Kale sank into the seat beside me with a frustrated noise.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said to no one in particular.

“It’s far from your worst quality,” I said.

Kale flagged down the waitress and ordered himself a drink, leaning back after she left to get comfortable in his seat.

“What is my worst quality?” he asked.

“The way you meddle,” I answered before anyone else could.

Ford arched a brow and glanced sideways at Alex, but neither of them said anything.

“Don’t act like I’ve personally victimized the whole lot of you,” he grumbled.

Then it was my turn to arch a brow at him. “Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not see it?” I asked, turning toward him and taking a calming swallow of my drink.

“Do I not see what?”

“You absolutely lost your mind on Beamer when you found out he was sleeping with Alex.”

“I was mad he let someone mark him,” Kale argued, doing his best to not look at Alex, who was across from me, his stare narrowed and focused on Kale as he spoke.

“You mark people often,” I reminded him, giving my head a bobble to either side. “And the fact that you’re upset about Ford and your brother is mind-blowing to me.”

Kale curled his fingers around the edge of the table and started to push himself to his feet, but I reached over and shoved him back down on his ass.

“No,” I said simply. “You will stay.”

“Is this an intervention?”

“It’s a reckoning,” I said.

“I just wanted to get lunch,” Ford said. “I was told there would be food.”

“Speaking of food, your best friend”—I pointed at Ford—“bought your brother a farm to keep him here. You owe him a thank you.”

“I owe him something,” Kale groused.

“Is there really a better outcome, Kale?” I rolled my eyes, tired of Kale’s ongoing pursuit to pretend he was holier than the rest of us. “Is there a better man for your brother than Ford?”

He opened his mouth and I raised my hand to silence him.

“Think long and hard before you answer,” I suggested. “And think about what Christian’s friends would have said about you if they had any inkling of your past. Of the man you were when that prince fell into your arms.”

Kale dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth, reaching out with a desperate hand when the waitress reappeared with his drink. He snatched it from her and Ford waved her off, clearly not ready for an interruption.

“I imagine Parrish would not have approved,” Kale finally grumbled.

“I imagine not.”

Kale looked across the table, his tongue still working in his mouth. He turned his gaze on Ford, who looked amused but tense .

“He’s my brother,” Kale tried to explain, sounding defeated.

“And I’m your best friend,” Ford said simply.

“We’re all best friends,” I reminded the lot of them. “We want the best for each other, right?”

Kale nodded and the other two gave me verbal agreements.

“We think the best of each other, yes?” I asked next.

“Yes,” Kale agreed.

“Then who better to love your brother than the man you hold in the highest regard?” Ford asked.

“I wouldn’t say highest.” Kale pointed at me. “I like him more than you.”

Ford scoffed, but the concession felt like a step in the right direction. Kale was going to take some work, but I knew he would come around.

“And I like him more than you,” I said, gesturing to Alex.

“Ford is my favorite,” Alex teased.

“I like Beamer better than all of you,” Kale said, a smile flashing across his otherwise sullen mouth.

“Now that that’s settled.” I raised my glass, giving it a shake to settle the ice and coax them all into joining me in a toast. “Here’s to getting the fuck over this and getting back to normal.”

We clanked our glasses together and drank, the tension around the table sinking away enough for us to get through lunch without murdering each other in broad daylight.

“Speaking of normal,” Kale said, clearly eager to change the subject off of himself. “Tell us more about your boyfriend .”

I sighed, and Alex laughed, leaning back and getting comfortable for the show .

“His name is Tate,” I said. “I think I might love him.”

“Lord help you,” Ford mumbled under his breath.

“Love?

“Don’t act like it’s such a foreign concept.” I flicked my hand at Kale. “You fell first, then that one.”

Ford huffed a breath, and the table went silent.

“Anyway,” I went on. “He’s…”

I trailed off, swallowing back any words that came to mind. All of my friends had been around for my relationship with Tyler and the subsequent breakup. They all understood how hard his departure had impacted me, the betrayal of it all, and I hoped they knew how serious I had to be about Tate to call him my boyfriend, to even bring him up in the first place.

“He’s Dylan’s roommate,” Alex said, filling the break and offering me a reprieve from all of the things I didn’t have words to explain.

“Who is Dylan?” Kale asked.

“A bartender at a place called Tryst,” Ford said. “Alex knows him.”

“How do the two of you know him too?” Kale asked next.

“I’ve been to Tryst with Alex,” Ford answered with a shrug.

“And I met him at The Black Door with Alex,” I said.

Kale inhaled sharply, biting his cheek so hard between his teeth his expression went hollow. He swallowed, and I watched the muscles of his jaw work back and forth while he tried to process the fact that even though he’d been holed up with Christian alternating between being an idiot in love and just an idiot, life had gone on for the rest of us.

“Okay,” Kale said quietly .

“He works next weekend,” Alex said. “If you wanted to go.”

Kale swallowed. “I’d like that.”

“You can bring Christian,” I offered.

“And Tate,” he said. “I want to meet him.”

Ford sucked his teeth and Kale stared straight ahead, his entire body swaying forward and backward.

“Please tell me my brother isn’t…” Kale trailed off.

“Don’t ask him to lie,” I interrupted, patting Kale on his thigh. “Boston should come too.”

“I don’t know if he’d want to,” Ford said with a shrug. “He enjoys the farm now that the weather is getting warm. There’s always something for him to get into up there.”

“Maybe we should go to the farm instead then,” I suggested with a laugh. I didn’t entirely mean it, but I did appreciate how awkward it would be for Kale to be at a sex club with his brother, knowing that Boston liked to get railed in unexpectedly kinky and dirty ways by one of his brother’s best friends. “Would that be doable?”

“We’d both love that.”

“I don’t know if I’m cut out for the farm,” Alex wavered.

“It’s not another planet,” Kale said, turning his focus to Alex, who looked uncomfortable with the shift in attention. His eyebrows lifted into his hairline. “There’s running water and electricity. I doubt my brother is going to make you get on your hands and knees in the dirt.”

Judging by the way Ford looked across the room with a sickening quickness, Boston might have been more than likely fully capable of making someone get on their knees in the dirt. I loved the idea of Ford being into that sort of thing, and I imagined it would only endear him to Kale more than he already was. We all knew the kind of man Ford was, the kind of men we all were, and if he was willing to go that far for love…

Boston Sheffield was luckier than his brother would ever know.

“I’ll ask Tate,” I said, even though the prospect of bringing Tate around my friends was enough to spike my blood pressure into another stratosphere.

There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the group of them, but they were a lot on a good day, and I liked having Tate in a little bubble where we were the only thing that existed. The only thing either of us had to worry about was finding time to be together. Bringing him around my friends would make the relationship more real, and by extension, more breakable.

I swallowed the rest of my drink, hoping it would chase down the nerves that had started to knot together at the base of my spine, and it was pure luck that the waitress came back to the table, a tight smile on her face. We were only on our first round and we hadn’t even bothered to order food yet. She was probably worried about her tip, though I had no idea what about the four of us gave the impression she wasn’t going to get her gratuity in the end.

We ordered a second round of drinks and some lunch, and after that, the conversation almost felt like normal old times. Back when Beamer was with us and Kale was his usual amount of domineering, not the overbearing piece of shit he’d become after Beamer’s husband showed up. I realized as I watched him beside me, it wasn’t necessarily the things happening that were the problem for him, but the change itself.

I stood up quickly, hooking my hand under Kale’s armpit and hauling him to his feet. “Come outside with me.”

“Fuck you, Astor.”

“It’ll be quick.” I pulled him away from the table.

“Do we need to intervene?” Ford asked, sounding like there was no way in hell he would bother. I imagined he actually hoped I was ready to take Kale out back and beat some sense into him because even though we’d talked through a lot of things, he was still brittle between us.

Outside on the sidewalk, Kale brushed me off, mouth pulled into a tight frown.

“What is your problem?”

“You should be so lucky that a man like Ford loves your brother. That a man like Dalton Fox is married to Beamer. They’re both good fucking men and you know it. You’re just a stubborn piece of shit who is mad he’s losing control of the puppet strings. Scared that things are changing?—”

“I’m not scared,” he snapped.

“You hooked up with Christian and you ghosted us. You were gone, holed up and happy with that prince of yours, and guess what, Kale? Life fucking goes on. It went on, it’s still going.” The more I talked, the angrier I felt. The rage simmered in my bones, vibrating through my fingers and I sincerely worried if I touched Kale again, I was going to shock him from the force of it. “Love changes people, Kale. It changed you; it’s changing us. Stop fighting it.”

“I’m not fighting it.” His protest was weak and his shoulders sagged on a tired exhale.

“You’re going to lose your brother,” I warned. “And not because he’s with Ford, but because of how you’re acting toward them both.”

I’d known about Boston and Ford far longer than Kale knew, and I loved my friend, but I was going to take that secret to the grave. I’d seen firsthand the way Ford agonized over his relationship with Boston, and I’d seen it with Alex when he started playing with Beamer too.

“I don’t want to think about anyone sleeping with my brother,” Kale groused, “let alone someone whose dick I’ve seen.”

“At least you know where it’s been.”

He scoffed. “Everywhere.”

“Have you told Christian’s best friend how many men you fucked before Christian fell into your lap?” I asked, raising a brow. “I bet he would have some choice words if he were to find out how many extra pages your little black book has.”

Kale sucked his teeth, shoving his hands into his pockets. He stared down at his feet, but answered that comment with a knowing nod.

“I’m trying,” he said, looking up at me. I saw the truth of it in his face, the sadness and the fear all etched together in the corners of his eyes and the tight downturn of his mouth.

“I believe you.” I grabbed his face in both of my hands, even though it was a reach. “But you need to try harder.”

He licked his lips and nodded, bending down to bump our foreheads together.

“I’ll try,” he promised.

“I know.” I pushed onto my toes and kissed his forehead before shoving him off. “Now go try harder. Come back inside and I’ll tell you about Tate, alright?”

“Alright,” he agreed, following behind me toward the door, but pulling me to a stop before we reached the threshold. “Thank you, Brooks.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Not letting me ruin this.”

“You couldn’t even if you tried,” I assured him, tilting my head toward the door. “Now, let’s go eat.”