30. Tate

CHAPTER 30

TATE

I was one hundred percent certifiably in love. I’d already told Brooks, but somehow I woke up every day feeling the truth of it in the ache of my bones and in the satisfaction that wrapped around me like a weighted blanket.

The morning after Dylan’s gig, just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, Brooks woke me up with my cock in his mouth. He sucked me until I screamed, clamping a hand over my mouth as I thrashed around the bed and spilled into the back of his mouth. Then he crawled up my body, spit my cum into my mouth, and kissed me until all I could taste was him. Sending me to work with an erection the size of the Empire State Building was cruel, but by the time I got to his place at the end of the day, I was ready to explode.

My week again rushed by in a flurry of sex and sleep, and then the weekend was upon us and it was time for our trip up to the farm. To say I was nervous about being with Brooks’ friends would have been an understatement. Even though I’d met them all on more than one occasion, the setting of his friend’s upstate farm felt more casual than anything we’d done before. Brooks assured me all his friends were teddy bears, but that was only half the worry.

Alex was coming for the weekend and Dylan was not.

“I promise you, I’ll be fine,” Dylan swore to me in the middle of our kitchen, my duffle bag packed with clothes I wouldn’t mind getting dirty.

“I know.”

Even though I’d spent most of the week still with Brooks, I’d heard that Alex had been chasing Dylan around, doing whatever it was they’d been doing. Even though Dylan hadn’t divulged any secrets about the nature of their relationship, I was under the impression it had to do with Alex making decisions and Dylan taking orders, which I didn’t think was going to be sustainable. Maybe for Alex, but definitely not for Dylan.

“I’ll check in if it makes you feel better,” he said, a half-empty water bottle crinkling as he squeezed it, the tension in his grip not betrayed in the slightest by the cool expression on his face.

“With me or with Alex?”

At the mention of Alex’s name, Dylan’s face flushed red and his eyes darkened.

“I’ll check in,” he repeated, not clarifying one way or the other.

I dropped my bag and hauled Dylan over to the couch to sit. It felt like a lifetime ago we’d tucked our bodies into the cushions and shared stories of our weekend adventures. Mine had mostly been chasing down men who could never be like Brooks, and his had been gig after gig and bartending stories that had us laughing until we were blue in the face. Knowing now that he’d been cut off, that he’d been putting himself at risk .

“Are you still doing sex work?” I asked, taking the water bottle out of his hand and setting it on the table. “I don’t care if you are. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just want you to be safe about it.”

“I made a couple of bad decisions, Tate.” He touched his throat, the bruising gone. “I’m not making a habit of it.”

“Can we talk about this before I go?”

For two weeks, we’d been skirting around all of the problems in Dylan’s life, and I didn’t want him to think for one second that just because I had a boyfriend I didn’t have time for him anymore. He hadn’t bothered to share with me in the first place, and that was a trend I wanted to stop as much as the bad decision-making when it came to the jobs he took.

“Fine.” He sighed, kicking his legs up onto the coffee table.

It was as if he wanted to look casual, but his fingers drummed nervously against the top of his thigh and his eyes darted around, looking anywhere in our shoebox apartment besides my face.

“Why did your parents cut you off?” I asked.

It was a start.

“They told me my interest in music had gone on long enough,” he said.

I scoffed. The idea was absurd. Dylan’s parents had funded his pursuit of music for his entire life. It was thanks to their dedication to him and the money they forked out for lessons that he was half the artist I knew him to be. The rest was him, of course. Pure and unbridled talent.

“They said if I hadn’t made a go of it by then, by now, that there was no point in pursuing it further.”

“What did they want you to do?”

“My dad was pushing an internship with his top VP,” he said, frowning. “Quit the music, drop out of school, quit the bartending, and get a nine-to-five.”

“That’s not you.”

“Something honest.” His tone came off mocking, and I knew it had to be a verbatim commentary from his parents.

“And you told them no?”

“I asked for more time,” he explained. “I had been enjoying the gigs here and there, but I hadn’t been trying to make a big go of it.”

“Because you didn’t have to.”

Dylan sighed, shrugging. “I was trying to do both, but they changed the rules. They said I’d had enough time.”

“I still wish you would have told me,” I said.

“You barely make enough to cover your half, Tate. What would you have done?”

Licking my lips, I hesitated before deciding to reach forward and grab his hand in mine. “We could have figured it out together. You’re my best friend here, Dylan.”

“I didn’t want it to be your burden.”

“You’re not a burden.”

He snorted, rolling his eyes, giving me the impression he’d been told quite the opposite on more than one occasion, and I hated that for him. Hated that he hadn’t felt safe to share with me or that I’d been too consumed with my own shit to notice the change in his behavior.

“I saw the way you were hooking up. Not that what you were doing was wrong, but how you were looking for something so specific with it and always falling short. I figured there had to be a market for it.”

My blood ran cold, palms going clammy. “Please don’t tell me you were out taking jobs with men who fuck the way Brooks does.”

“The way his friends do,” Dylan whispered knowingly.

“Have any of them hurt you?”

He was quick to shake his head. “Alex is the only one I’ve been with, and no. He…well…no. Alex isn’t like that.”

“I don’t know a single thing about him.”

Dylan loosed a scornful little laugh. “He’s a good man. A little lost is all.”

“Like you.”

He rolled his eyes at me again. “Anyway, they cut me off and I changed career course. It worked really well for a while, and then I just had a string of bad luck with it.”

“You could have died,” I said, dropping his hand. “Why didn’t you just call your parents and take the job back? It wouldn’t have to be a forever thing, just a for now thing.”

“You can’t really be asking me to settle when you never could.”

I reeled back, caught off-guard by the honesty in the comment, and the truth of it too.

“You’re right,” I agreed. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I knew without looking that it was Brooks letting me know he was downstairs and waiting for me. Dylan’s stare flickered toward the sound, and he pasted a smile on his face that would have read as sincere had it reached his eyes.

“You’ll be back on Monday,” he said. “So will Alex, if that makes you feel better.”

“I don’t know how I feel about Alex.”

“Neither do I.” His eyes sparkled, a flash of sincerity. “But he has helped more than he’s hurt.”

“I’m sure you could still come with him this weekend if you asked.”

“That’s not what we are to each other.” Dylan stood up, clearing his throat and tossing my duffel bag onto my lap. The weight of it knocked the wind out of me, and I grabbed it to stand.

“Will you call me if you need anything?” I asked.

“I won’t need anything.”

“But if you do?”

Dylan sighed. “I’ll let you know. Maybe Monday night we can hang out and you can tell me all about it?”

It was the first hint of my old best friend that I’d seen in two weeks, and some of the dread evaporated, making way for a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel.

“I’d like that,” I told him, wrapping him into a quick hug before he could get away from me.

Dylan wasn’t a hugger and he fought it before settling into my arms and dropping his nose into the crook of my neck on a heavy exhale. His shoulders sagged, and I was happy to hold the weight of him until he was ready to pull away.

“When I get back, I want to talk about the money and the rent,” I told him. “You’re my best friend and I’ve been caught up in my own shit. I want to be a better friend to you.”

“You’re in love,” he said, like that excused or explained it.

“And you’re my best friend,” I repeated. “I can do both.”

Dylan wormed out of the hug and I gave him one last look before grabbing my bag and slinging it over my arm. There was a knock at the door, and much like the unread message, I knew it was Brooks.

“There’s your man,” Dylan said, turning his back on me and heading for the door. He unlocked it and pulled it open, drawing in a sharp gust of Brooks’ sandalwood soap as he did.

“Sorry,” I called from the living room, checking my pockets and my bag to make sure I had everything I needed for the trip.

“You’re fine, darling,” he said. “The farm isn’t going anywhere and I’m told the corn doesn’t pick itself.”

“Are you really picking corn?” Dylan asked, pressing his back against the wall to reveal Brooks on the doormat in a pair of worn jeans and a fitted gray t-shirt. He had on a pair of running shoes, fancy watch still around his wrist and not an ounce of pomade in his hair. The dichotomy of him, half put together and half taken apart, fried my brain. For the life of me, I couldn’t decide which version of him was hotter, though I did favor the version of him buried balls deep inside of me, cock spurting cum while he pressed my face into the floor.

Or the pillows.

Or the wall.

“I think the day laboring is to be determined.” Brooks held out his hand and I handed him my bag.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I told him.

“Nonsense.” He threw my bag over his shoulder and turned to Dylan. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

“Did Alex put you up to this?”

“Alex says you’re your own man.”

Dylan swallowed, nodding. “I don’t want to go, but thank you for checking. I already promised Tate that I’ll be fine here.”

“I’m sure you will be,” Brooks murmured, reaching for my hand. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. ”

I said goodbye to Dylan one last time, then followed Brooks downstairs to where a black town car idled in the street.

“I know this is a stupid question, but doesn’t it get expensive to be driven around everywhere?” I asked.

Brooks opened the back door before the driver could get out and around to us, and I bent over to climb inside, which earned me a low growl from his throat.

“My accountant will tell me if I have to stop, which…I don’t expect to ever happen.”

He crawled in after me and closed the door.

“I wish Dylan’s parents could be like yours,” I said.

Brooks hummed thoughtfully, pressing a button on the door that rolled up a tinted security screen between us and the driver. “Everything I have came with more stipulations than you can imagine. But I was brought up knowing how to play the game. I gave them their way long enough to make sure I could get what I wanted out of it.”

“They bought your penthouse.”

“A substantial investment, but they hated what I do for work. They didn’t see the worth in it.”

“In helping other people?” I found that hard to believe.

“They were fans of helping themselves. Much like Dylan’s parents, I imagine. Though to a lesser degree.” Brooks sighed dramatically, dropping his hand onto my thigh. “I don’t want to talk about anyone’s parents this weekend, though.”

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked. “We have a long drive.”

“I’d like to spend most of the drive not talking at all,” he murmured, turning his head toward me at the same time as he slid his hand around to the inside of my thigh. “But first I want to know if you submitted your passport documents.”

His fingertips grazed over my sac and I arched off the seat, hips bucking toward his hand whether I wanted them to or not. “The day after you paid for it.”

“Good,” he said softly, working his way toward my zipper. He pulled it down with an achingly slow precision, and he moved his hand inside, over the top of my boxer briefs, even slower. “Now, onto the not talking portion of our drive.”